Yahoo turns to its continued growth in social media to help fill its business listings in Yahoo Local with more relevant and timely information about local companies.
Consumers Submit To Yahoo Local
Social media paid off big for Yahoo in 2006 as its Answers product caught on in a big way with Yahoo users.
The company wants to ride that lightning again in a potentially more lucrative way.
Business listings on Yahoo Local picked up an injection of social media features with the latest update announced for it.
Consumer Submit allows anyone to add and edit business listings appearing in the index.
As a test, I tried adding the extra four digits for a business’ zip code to an entry without logging in to Yahoo.
The submission form uses a CAPTCHA to help limit automated entries, and noted after hitting the submit button that the edit would be reviewed before becoming part of the entry.
The edit will be noted as a suggestion in the notes for the business in question.
Yahoo said that for quality control purposes, such suggestions will not be permanent listing alterations, but ones that can be reviewed, and agreed or disagreed upon, by others in the notes.
This new feature adds on to the many others already present on Yahoo Local. Options for saving or distributing information about a listing abound.
Yahoo includes a map of the business location, and options for searching for more details about it, including a link to Yahoo Answers.
We see the potential of such information being useful, if used properly, for Yahoo in its efforts to capitalize on the growing local search market.
Consumer Submit edits present an icebreaker for a Yahoo ad sales pitch; the salesperson can open a conversation with something like, “Our users said you’ve changed your hours, is that correct?”
From there the conversation can shift into a more focused pitch, perhaps by asking for a time to talk more about online advertising with Yahoo. The pitch can come by email, if the address is known, or by phone.
Costs of an email or a VoIP call would be negligible, save for that of the human element.
If they could parley these Consumer Submits into new Yahoo Search Marketing customers, Yahoo should realize a nice return on its latest feature beyond its basic utility.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
