By Monte Huebsch, Managing Director - Aussieweb.com.au

Australian Local Search, a brief look at the Australian local search scene - the good, the bad and the ugly!

Who are the major players in Australia?

• Google Maps
• Yahoo!7
• NineMSN - My Local
• Sensis - Yellow pages
• True Local
• dLook
• Hot Frog
• AussieWeb Local Search
• Phone Book

Google Maps was the most recent addition to the local search scene in Australia. Their raw business data is provided by True Local, but more on that later.

They have many additional features that can be added to your listing and these are all free.

You are required to “register” for these and they send a confirmation letter with a “pin number” so you can maintain your listing yourself.

Obviously, their mapping is very good. Their stated turn around times for updates is 1 month. Google is working hard to make the data available on mobile platforms – but no projected dates for Australia have been released. Google also sources additional information about the companies it lists from a variety of sources and it looks like they will eventually have their own database.

• Lots of money but short on people
• Moves slowly.

Yahoo!7 is an interesting arrangement. They also source their underlying data from True Local (who used to be owned by Australian Local Search until purchased News Corporation in 2005).

Updates are performed online and the site claims a 10 day confirmation – by phone for accuracy. Our experience is weeks not days, Yahoo!7 has both a “free listing” for primary data but additional information like trading hours, payments taken and tags lines, are all part of a “priority listing”.

Priority listings start from $63 per month for three categories, and one post code, maps are provided by Virtual Map.

• Lots of money and people
• Moves slowly.

True Local powers both Yahoo7 and Google! Go figure.

Their comparison for free to paid inclusion can be found here, as a partner with News Corp they offer “bundle arrangements” for both online and print advertising. Since the sale of Australian Local Search to News Corp in 2005, there appears to be significant cross promotions between the various media properties that News owns and this drives significant traffic to True Local.

• True Local’s maps are powered by Google!
• With News backing, lots of money
• Moves slowly

NineMSN trades as My Local and is powered by Acxiom. Maps are provided by MapData Sciences Pty Ltd, they have a cool feature that allows you to send the local contact information directly to your mobile phone but you must complete a free registration process.

They claim a free listing with updates in 20 business days.

• We are still waiting after 2 months, Hum….
• Lots of money but moves slowly

Sensis and its White and Yellow Pages properties are all based upon “old school” thinking, you can expand your listing by post codes and categories but all for a fee. Virtually no fees are shown on the site, you need to ask to talk to or see someone and the resultant costs are significant.

Maps are provided by the Sensis sister company Where Is. No surprise there.

The site claims a number #1 position for local search but uses 2005 research to support this claim, things have changed just a bit since 2005.

• Lots of money and asks for a lot too
• Lots of people as well

dLook is another site with a twist, they have the “Quote Me” system that allows a visitor to get 3 quotes from participating directory listings. Currently, there is no “mapping” feature but they suggest it will be coming soon.

dLook’s basic listing is, well, basic. Street and Phone number. That’s it.

A Premium listing with the Quote Me system is $488 per annum or $49.50 per month. Details – see here

dLook also allows paid directory participants to include discount coupons, another unique feature.

They also appear to be a privately held company, so I don’t know their financial strength position but they are innovative and quick to launch new features.

Hot Frog is owned and operated by the Reed Elsevier.

Big global money, they offer both a free listing, maintained by you, and a priority listing for $60 per month. Their media kit is here, they frequently show up in organic results but have minimal result information unless a paid listing is taken out.

• Big money, good automated system
• Responsive to quick updates

AussieWeb Local Search is a small privately held search company. (Editors Note, Monte own’s this company, just so now you know), it does not offer any premium or priority listings.

All listings are provided 100% free of charge, Aussieweb Local Search uses Google maps and is financially supported by Google AdSense, it offers most features of all other paid services, excepting the two unique features that dLook has, for no cost.

Quoted turn around time is 3 business days BUT since these are actually done and confirmed by people, it often takes a week. To save adding another entry to this narrative, AussieWeb Local Search powers www.PhoneBook.com.au and a subset of all the data in AussieWeb Local Search is available in Phone Book.

• AussieWeb has limited financial strength but has staff and is quick to innovate.

That that gives you a quick rundown on the Australian Local Search players – from one who is in the game.

So What? Well, more then half of these companies are BIG players, with multiple internet properties and lots of money. Some do not charge, like Google, NineMSN and AussieWeb, others charge a modest sum for a premium listing like Yahoo7, True Local, dLook and Hot Frog.

Then there is the BIG ask folks from the old media world who want lots of money to be in any of the Sensis properties.

I believe over time that big payments will dwindle, even many of the small payment systems may shrink or morph into a Pay Per Lead generation model.

What is important to know is that choice exists and it is best to have at least a free listing on all of these local search sites. Be careful what you pay for with Sensis.

The biggest challenge with Local search is that as much as 40% of the database can change in any one year.

That is a lot of updates to process and check for accuracy. At AussieWeb, we operate the site like a Wiki and so does Hot Frog, and to a lesser extent dLook and even Google, real time Wiki’s are fastest and that is what we will be moving to, once we have confirmation of the client’s identity and they have the authority to make changes.

I suspect this will be the norm in the near future, unless the lawyers get involved with responsibility and liabilities that scare the big players.

As for the future? It has got to be Local Search on your mobile devices, this is clearly when you most want and need local search.

If you have planned in advance, then the Microsoft ability to send local search data to your phone via SMS is very useful. But for the rest of us “spur of the moment” people, we will want to access local search from our mobile devices.

I’ll leave the next part of this discussion to the blog moderator Barry Smyth.

Thanks

Monte Huebsch CEO www.AussieWeb.com.au Local Search

(Note from Barry - Monte knows that mobile search is my hobby horse, more on that later on Search Week)

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Weekly Contributions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.