• by Shankar Gupta , May 6, 2005

Local information database company InfoUSA will license its U.S. business database to Google for use in its local search product, still undergoing beta testing, InfoUSA announced this week.

The additional listings likely will add significant comprehensiveness and depth to Google's local offering, said Greg Sterling, an analyst for the Kelsey Group. "I would guess that Google already has some percentage of this information--maybe up to 50, 60, or 70 percent--but they are buying in order to achieve comprehensiveness. They are filling in the blanks with this," Sterling said.

He added that InfoUSA is considered to be one of the top information database companies. Even if Google's local search engine already had bare-bones listings on many of the businesses in InfoUSA databases, the Info USA material will be able to flesh out those businesses. "What these [search engines] are trying to do to differentiate from each other is to add more depth, more content--to make them richer than the usual local information," he said.

Another possible motive for the InfoUSA buy, Sterling said, is to gain access to a direct channel to small business owners, which could be used to sell search advertising--Google's chief revenue stream. Earlier this week, TrafficLeader announced a similar deal with SBC's SMARTPages and Yellowpages.com, where the local listings providers aimed to use their close contact with small business owners to sell TrafficLeader's search engine marketing product.