• Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search, Tuesday, September 9, 2008 2:01 PM

Mike Blumenthal pulls the best tidbits out of Eric Enge's interview with Yahoo local execs Frazier Miller and Shailesh Bhat (over at the Stone Temple Blog) to shed some light on the inner workings of Yahoo's local engine and how marketers should think about optimizing for it.

For example, "Yahoo Local relies very heavily on the licensed feeds that they get through data providers like InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze and these should be the primary sources for maintaing data accuracy in your Yahoo record," Blumenthal says.

There's also quite a bit of human moderation going on--something Google could learn from, Blumenthal argues--as the Yahoo Local team often validates merchant data changes, analyzes trends (i.e. huge influxes of spam), and even checks to make sure submitted URLs are valid.

Read the whole story at Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search »