Local.com Offers Local Search Service for Regional Sites
Local.com is now offering a new service for local publishers – LocalConnect, which is a private label local search engine solution for those regional and local sites. With local search growing into a major search and advertising channel, this tool from Interchane’s Local.com will be a surefire fit for local and regional news, search, and blog pubishers. This is a smart offering from Local.com, filling a hole which competition like Yahoo, Google, MSN and Ask have not yet targeted.
LocalConnect offers web publishers a “simple three-step process to customize and build a powerful local search engine for their site within days”.
Besides adding a new sticky service for local sites, LocalConnect also represents added revenue opportunities for publishers by allowing them to integrate and enhance their own advertiser listings with Local.com advertisers. Seems that there may be a fee for the service and I’m not sure as to if the service can be hosted on publsiher domains or not.
From Local.com:
* You can broaden your reach in your own community by offering paid local-search advertising.
* You earn the advertising revenue generated from your web site.
* It’s all optimized for search engine rankings so you draw good traffic.
*You won’t have to make a big investment in new technology or new infrastructure on your own web site.
* You can even integrate your own advertisers into the LocalConnect solution.
“Since we’ve implemented the search functions, our online traffic has increased significantly,” said Allan W. Kiezel, Chief Technology Officer for Long Island’s LIDaily.com. “It has also greatly impacted our online advertising sales. This search capability has definitely gained interest and recognition from our members and is helping us bring Long Island local businesses and consumers together.”
