Yahoo! Expands Local Search

Yahoo! this week moved to expand its local search offerings by allowing merchants to easily add detailed information about their businesses to the Yahoo! local search results pages.

The new initiative allows business owners to submit basic facts such as their hours, addresses, Web sites, phone numbers, category, operating information, and the nature of the services or products sold, at no charge, to be included on a page detailing their business. Entrepreneurs can also pay $9.95 a month for premium listings, which can include a tagline, business description, links to coupons, photos, and performance reviews.

Any material sent by merchants will be reviewed by Yahoo! before being posted, said a company spokeswoman. She added that Yahoo!'s goal was to increase the comprehensiveness of its local search listings.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which launched a local search engine in October after two months of testing, currently has about 15 million local business listings. To date, they have mostly been generated by Yahoo!'s crawler, and by information from other online directories that partner with Yahoo!, said the spokeswoman.

In the past, business owners could request limited changes to their listings, but the form used for those requests didn't invite comments about details such as hours of operation, or taglines.

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