Go Local with Yahoo!

Yahoo has had its share of issues in the past year. They had to let go their CEO and the co-founder of the company Jerry Yang was installed at the helm. They have been gradually loosing to Google over past few years. Recently with the management changes there is a new focus at Yahoo. They are getting rid of units which aren’t (Yahoo Photos) brining in much value and energizing the ones having potential.

Yahoo has been a long time leader in Local search. However the other big boys were gaining quickly with their own version of local services. So today as part of their new strategy Yahoo announced a newer and better Local service. This announcement brings much needed refresh to the service.

Here are some of the key features (from Yahoo Blog) they bringing to the table in this version:

• Commenting on User Reviews – Now the people who benefit from your tips can reply back. You’ll also be able to track comments on your reviews from your My Local page.
• Weekender – Offers a weekly selection of events, movies (including show times and reviews), dining picks, and more to help you plan your weekend.
• More “Local Buzz” – Shows the top-moving search terms in your hometown with a new search cloud and exposes the most recent reviews of businesses in your area to see what people are buzzing about.
• Best Local Events – Taps into the Upcoming social events database to surface the best events in your hometown.
• Most Popular – Highlights the best of a city in the key categories of Restaurants, Health & Beauty, and Home & Garden.
• My Local Improvements – A new “save for later” feature so you can quickly archive those hidden gems you uncover along with your recent reviews, tags, and collections.

The Yahoo! Go angle

Yahoo recently announced a new version of their mobile services application. This was a much desired and important move in the mobile sector. Yahoo offers a native mobile application with a very rich interface for users to interact with its services. Yahoo has neatly enabled its local features on this interface as well. The aforementioned local features along with the rich mobile interface offer a new twist to this offering.

The mobile application offers most if the local features via the handset application. So you can easily access your favorite hotspots, your weekend plans on the go. I have been playing with the application on my new and shiny Blackberry 8830 and I am certainly impressed.

Bundled with the mobile offering and with the new improved social features, Yahoo Local has once again taken the leadership in this domain. Both Google and Microsoft who have been trailing in this space, are pretty much left behind in the dust. Unless they can bring such features and true mobile access to the party, they won’t succeed.

I am already in love with this new service. I hope to see them utilize this and tap into the huge local advertisement market.