February 14, 2008

AOL to Distribute Citysearch Content, Ads

Amidst all the secret talks of mergers and deals between the top search players, AOL and IAC have agreed to a distribution deal. AOL will publish local content and pay-per-click ads from Citysearch across the AOL network. Content will include editorial reviews, user reviews, merchant videos, and photos, to be distributed on sites like AOL CityGuide, AOL Local Search and MapQuest.

Citysearch gains targeted inventory and reach for their advertisers, and AOL gets Citysearch content and a share in the ad revenue.

“AOL has the largest local online network and this partnership gives us the ability to enhance our local experience, expand our reach by incorporating Citysearch's rich local content in our numerous local sites and improve monetization of our local properties through Citysearch's local advertising network,” John Kannapell, SVP of AOL Search, said in a statement. “The combination of the enhanced content and reach into new markets will also increase the premium local advertising inventory available to advertisers through Platform-A.”

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:20 PM | Permalink

July 25, 2006

AOL Redesigns Local CityGuides

Thanks to Gary Price for pointing out that AOL has launched a beta redesign of its popular CityGuides. Here's the current version of the site for New York and here's the new beta version of the same city site. Of the more than 300 CityGuides AOL offers, the top 25 are part of the new beta.

Among the upgrades and improvements are a visually richer interface, more imagery, more dynamically generated content and more community features. Gary also points out that AOL's Moviefone and CityGuides have also been added to the AOL mobile application.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 4:12 PM | Permalink

June 9, 2005

AOL Makes Deal for Yellow Pages Listings

The Business Week article: YellowPages Goes for Gold on AOL, takes an in-depth look at the SBC-BellSouth to supply Yellow Pages listings to AOL.

The deal gives the Bells the ability to tell advertisers who use both the print and online Yellow Pages that their ads will reach more people for about the same price. "We're a media company, and our goal is to build the largest audience," YellowPages.com CEO Charles Stubbs said in an interview before news of the AOL deal broke. The joint venture has similar deals with Yahoo and Infospace (INSP).

AOL gets more complete listings of local merchants, giving surfers a reason to choose its Yellow Pages product over Google or Yahoo, as well as ad revenue. In effect, the pact gives AOL a cut of the efforts of the 4,000 sales reps working for the printed Yellow Pages published by BellSouth and SBC.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:57 PM | Permalink

April 21, 2005

Dialing in to AOL's Pay-Per-Call Program

AOL is offering a new form of search advertising called pay-per-call, an appealing alternative to pay-per-click programs for businesses that don't have web sites, but also to any business that wants direct human contact with prospective customers.

Today's SearchDay article, A Closer Look at Pay-per-Call Search Marketing, talks about the benefits of the program for all advertisers, including a potential "triple play" for savvy search marketers that can take advantage of the newness of the program to garner three listings on a search result page.

A longer version of this story for Search Engine Watch members provides detailed instructions for enrolling in Ingenio's pay-per-call program, including ad guidelines, how to determine competitors' bids and the performance reporting provided by the company.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 9:18 AM | Permalink

February 24, 2005

AOL Unveils New Local Search Service

AOL has just released their new local search service, AOL Local Search. It's available to both AOL subscribers and web users.

This announcement delivers on earlier promises that improved local search was in the words when AOL enhanced AOL Search in January (see our AOL Search: Playing In the Big Leagues Now article for more on this).

At the moment, listings and data for more than 13,000 million businesses, theaters, and other local establishment come from a variety of sources including powered AOL Yellow Pages, Moviefone, and AOL CityGuides for more than 300 U.S. cities. AOL plans to add more sources and type of info in the near future.

How It Works Searchers will first need to enter a location. Locations can be as specific as a street address or as general as a Zip Code. You can have multiple "saved" locations and by using your "AOL Screen Name" your saved locations are accessible from any computer.

I ran a search for "restaurants" in Silver Spring, MD (I did not use a street address) and received a variety of information on the results page including:

Recommended Sites These links include: "Best Family-Friendly Restaurants" and "City's Best Healthy Dining" come from the AOL CityGuide for Washington D.C.

Businesses and Venues I found directory information for local restaurants. Links to narrow your results by restaurant category (Brew Pubs, Italian, Mexican, etc.) along with the number of restaurants in each category are also provided.

Individual listings include address, phone number, and distance (from your search location). You'll also find links to rate the restaurant, an option to click and access an inline map of the location (from MapQuest) and driving directions.

Other categories included on results pages include movies (powered by Moviefone) and events (concerts, live theater, etc.)

In another form of integration, AOL is working with service like ShopLocal to provide local "sale" info and AOL Tickets to allow users to purchase tickets directly from event listings.

Finally, you'll find up to five sponsored links from Google at the bottom of the page, though these are not locally targeted in the way Google allows at its own site. AOL has also recently announced a partnership with pay-per-call provider Ingenio. That's not yet part of AOL Local, but AOL says it will happen in the near future.

Overall, I'm impressed after using this first release of AOL's new local search service. I'm looking forward to seeing how they integrate more data onto results pages. While it is possible to print/save useful material, it should be easier. It might also be useful if an option to send local info (listings, directions, etc.) to my cell phone via SMS. This is a service that Yahoo Local just launched.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:05 AM | Permalink

February 2, 2005

Search Executives Talk Local

Local search initiatives continue to build momentum, and no wonder: By most accounts, between 20 and 40 percent of all search engine queries have some sort of local intent. In today's SearchDay article, Meet the Local Search Engines, Shari Thurow covers a recent Search Engine Strategies conference where executives from Overture, Ask Jeeves and AOL discussed their local search programs and the opportunities they provide for search marketers.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:45 AM | Permalink

January 21, 2005

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