So I had a thought… I do that sometimes. This was a local search thought. It was probably an amateur revelation at best but what if local search was set beyond the search engines and beyond the yellow pages (YP or IYP).
What if local search started thinking a little outside the box and started to take advantage of periodicals such as newspapers and / or magazines? In Northern New Jersey where I reside the local newspaper for the region is the Star Ledger. I occasionally read the paper. Sundays mostly, however during the week I go to their Web Site and look for information, news, and occasionally the classifieds for something. It also occurred to me that if I could not find what I was looking for there, it would have been nice to have the option to look for it via another tool employed by the newspaper to find whatever it is I was looking for in NNJ (Northern New Jersey).
I would suspect that the same use could be provided by periodicals such as USA Today, The Washington Post or The New York Times. When something online strikes the interest of a reader, they click the local search tool and get more information about what may be around in that geographic area. For instance, in the sports section, the life section, or World News section. The same could be said of a Fox News or CNN. Providing more relevant content about an area of interest can bolster content and advertising sales as well providing more profitable revenues to the Local Search provider than previously. Ad sales teams can add incremental revenues as they will know certain stories will be published about certain geographic areas. This will allow them to sell targeted marketing and advertising based on a new demographic of individuals seeing their area for the first time. I would suspect this would be a good area of advertising for the national hotel chains and travel services to those areas where a story may be breaking or a lifestyle visit might be in order….
I read many stories and articles on line from my news feeds, but never a button that says “take me there via armchair travel.” Armchair travel, being hypothetical, of course. The door is open for local search, and expanded search capability. It can add additional stickiness and interactive features to a news service offering and allow for a share in a revenue model with local search, while quietly promoting it at the same time.
Local search too can reciprocate by adding optional news feeds to their search query. Should I look up Pats Cheese Steaks in Philadelphia, PA via a local search tool, why should the local news, and possible other content not be made available to me in the event I want to go to Geno’s instead…
