Despite its status as a pioneer of local search and early integrator of community and ratings/reviews, Yahoo has faced growing pressure -- from Google and Microsoft in dynamic mapping -- and then from new local and community sites such as Yelp. So Greg Sterling applauds the redesign of Yahoo Local, which launched last night. The site is divided into three tabbed sections: City Guide, My Local (saved content) and Directory (categories). While search remains central to the site, there's a great deal more category and browse functionality. Also, other Yahoo content, and community features such as groups, are more …

Wired blogger Terrence Russell got a demo of the stealth local search service Grayboxx with its CEO Bob Chandra. What sets Grayboxx apart from other local models is that it's removing the emphasis from user-submitted reviews, Chandra says. Relying on the human dimension means only 40-or-so categories get covered, because people like to talk about restaurants, but not necessarily notaries or patio furniture stores. Grayboxx uses a "preference scoring" system based on a patented algorithm. "When users take actions with a business by calling or visiting," Chandra says, "we call those implicit endorsements. What our system …

Ask.com on Tuesday launched Smart Answers, a search service that will provide a "smart answer," or brief definition of, a health term, along with links to authoritative sources. The definitions are coming from Healthline Networks. As part of its kick-off announcement, Ask.com released the results of a survey conducted in July by Harris Interactive showing that 70% of American adults turn to the Internet for health information.

The National Science Foundation is funding a search tool that claims to identify aesthetic similarities between pieces of music. The breakthrough would presumably make it easier for music enthusiasts to discover previously unknown work or artists. According to the patent and grant applications, the technology behind a "similarity search engine" comes from research into so-called Artificial Art Critics. These AACs are composed of two components: an evaluator to weigh how a typical human population would judge the aesthetic quality of a piece, and a feature extractor to identify its general qualities.

Technology columnist Christopher Beam gives a good overview of some of the emerging niche search engines, along with a mashup of his dream search engine. "If I could Frankenstein together the ultimate search engine, it would have the classy interface of Ask.com, the slang capabilities of YubNub, the page-preview functions of iRazoo, ChaCha's 'video wall,' and a Digg-like promote/demote feature. (It would also find me a cure for myopia, an affordable health-care plan, and a date for Friday night.) I could do without ChaCha's 'live guides,' but I plan to recommend the service to my grandmother." If …

There might be a dotted-line relationship between social networking and search, but social networking is all about finding people, and contacts -- so in my book it straddles the search camp. That said, Mark Hendrickson offers Part 2 of his laundry list of companies offering made-to-order or downloadable tools for building a social network, and invites feedback on your experience with them. (There's also a link back to Part 1 if you want each and every company he's identified to date. The initial installment focused on hosted, do-it-yourself, white-label social networking solutions.)

Top Rank Marketing's Lee Odden interviews SEO author and columnist Mike Grehan, who recently joined the Bruce Clay organization as vice president of international business development. Why, asks Odden, do so many SEOs get their knickers in a twist when anyone publishes "SEO as we know it is dead" opinions? Answers Grehan: "This is still a rising medium with a long way to go. An emerging industry with, seemingly, a lot of people who can't deal very well with change. Just when they've set their stall up to sell one thing, the search engines get a little more …

The folks at Compete issue a monthly analysis to measure the issues affecting vertical industries. This month the blog looks at the automotive, financial services, travel, and wireless industries. One finding from the AutoIntelligence group is that third-party automotive sites are growing in terms of both Web traffic and functionality. In fact, Compete is finding that as more consumers turn to the Internet to research autos, OEM-branded sites are losing ground.

Over at InfoWorld, Ephraim Schwartz lays out another case for why Google is riding high on the crest of a wave, while an almost imperceptible undercurrent spells trouble for the search giant's future. That undercurrent is the niche engines that optimize specialized searches. Schwartz throws out just a few names of engines that deliver fewer and more relevant results: ZoomInfo, WebMD, Travelocity, Orbitz, Petfinder, Kayak, Monster, and CareerBuilder. You get the picture. Schwartz compares the idea of Google becoming irrelevant to the magazine publishing industry, where general interest magazines such as "Life" and "Look" gave way to the …

Analyst Greg Sterling takes a look at the new satisfaction scores released yesterday from the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index. For the first time, Yahoo beat Google, and Ask.com, which got an interesting redesign a few months back, scored the highest jump. Until this year, Google had always ranked first. Putting aside whether the rating was truly "apples to apples," Sterling says, if the scores are predictive of future customer loyalty and behavior, look for some shifts in search market share in the next 12-18 months. If nothing else, Google should see these results as an …