An interesting story just appeared on Bloomberg that reports Australian publisher Sensis, a unit of telecom Telstra, will be spared from a massive job-cutting program because it represents a critical component of Telstra’s growth plans. Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo has announced plans to cut 12,000 jobs over the next five years. Sensis is committing to …

Dex Media issued a press release today announcing it has achieved a comfortable lead as the most-used IYP/local search site within Dex's 14-state home region, with a 32 percent share of directional media searches for the period, according to comScore. Dex came out ahead of Verizon SuperPages, Yahoo! (Local + Yellow Pages), Google Local and …

My colleague Michael Boland blogged about Integrent's new geo-targeted network Centro, below. When I spoke, now some time ago, to Integrent CEO Shawn Riegsecker (who's on a newspaper panel at ILM:05) he told me he wanted to build a newspaper-based local network that had the same quality and reach as a Google or a Yahoo!. …

Suddenly everyone wants to offer offline retail information: Google, CNET and now Interchange Corp.'s Local.com. Interchange is providing ShopLocal’s newspaper circular/FSI data to consumers through Local.com.
Local.com is fast and clean, but thin. Interchange recognizes the need to fill out Local.com's content to be truly competitive. This deal adds valuable offline retail/shopping data to the …

A new company called Centro launched today that purports to be a one-stop shop for national advertisers to buy ad space on local Web sites such as newspaper sites.
It appears to be a local ad placement service for national advertiser display ads. The company’s president, Shawn Riegsecker, told Clickz News: "Search had SEM agencies …

Ingenio and Marchex, which is building out a proprietary network of local and vertical destination sites, announced that Ingenio PPCall advertisers would appear on Marchex's network of sites. Marchex subsidiary TrafficLeader is a "simplified search" vendor to YellowPages.com (SBC, BellSouth) and the Houston Chronicle, managing search distribution to local advertisers (and fulfillment) through their own …

comScore reported that, while Internet use grew 7 percent overall in 2004, online map site traffic increased 33 percent to 51.3 million. Mapquest held a 71 percent share of the market in September, according to comScore, while Yahoo! Maps followed with 32 percent, and Google Maps with 25 percent. The overlap in use across these …

Here's another movement in the transformation of TV (from reach to targeting) … per the WSJ, TiVo is working with Comcast and others to enable users to "search" for ads that are more relevant to them:
TiVo users will be able to set up a profile of products on their television screens by clicking on …

While Craig Newmark would undoubtedly bristle at that characterization, the network of sites that bears his name is the undisputed king of online classifieds (not counting eBay).
According to a report put out by Pew, using comScore data, traffic to classifieds-oriented Web sites has grown 80% in the past year (much greater than the 7% …

This approach has some risks, but it is clearly a way for the sales force to gain advertising in a world where the consumer is way ahead of the SMB in adapting the concept of local search. Obviously the name describes the product, but they reinforce that strongly by introducing a new brand design that …

The Canadian Finance Minster issued a ruling yesterday on the taxation of income trusts that has left Yellow Pages Group President and CEO Marc Tellier breathing a sigh of relief. The government decided to reduce the tax on dividend income, making the trusts more attractive to individual investors. There had been fears that the government …

Local search is getting a lot better, but one of the things that most engines and sites cannot now do with accuracy is deliver results consistent with the way people actually search. For example, I live in an area of Oakland, California, known as "Montclair." Montclair isn't an official place, and so it doesn't often …

Everyone has been speculating about whether Google Base is Google's entry into online classifieds. I have argued that it's about much more than classifieds. But I can tell you with confidence that MSN is soon to enter the online classifieds market. The company has been working some time on a classifieds site that it will …

Matching Yahoo!'s testing of PPCall, Google is testing "Click to Call." No phone numbers are exposed; the service connects advertisers and would-be buyers by clicking an icon. I was unable to find any of the ads live on Google, but Search Engine Journal (link below) has some examples in the mortgage category.
This is obviously …

Recognizing that video search is an increasingly important product feature, Ask has a deal with multi-media search engine (already in process) GoFish.

CNET News has this story about the advent of mobile visual search, a technology that lets consumers with camera phones use snapshots of products to receive various freebies as well as promotions and directional advertising.
It is based on image recognition software that identifies specific patterns in images and has heretofore been used mostly in …

I got a release of sorts from Google this a.m. explaining in more detail the offline/local product data that Froogle will be featuring online. As an example, here's "digital camera, San Francisco" — just in time for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
Here's Google's statement:
Thanks to a new feature in Froogle, Google’s shopping search engine, …

Because I'm working too late:
Russell Beattie's harsh AT&T (formerly SBC) logo analysis. AT&T Wireless was acquired by Cingular, which then rebranded the service and will now, ironically, lose its identity in favor of … at&t. If it weren't true, it would be worthy of a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
Speaking of which, Om Malik points …

CNET announced that it is now helping consumers find tech gadgets in local, offline stores:
CNET's innovative local shopping capability goes beyond today's standard local shopping services, which typically provide stock availability for a retailer, but not for a specific store. Product availability information, which is provided by Channel Intelligence (www.channelintelligence.com), is available for more than …

In addition to the data jointly put out by Pew and comScore about the rise of search are data on local search and IYP usage. According to comScore, Yahoo! Local was not far behind AOL in terms of the number of uniques. This is a big deal, showing how far Yahoo! Local has come in …