Friday, October 07, 2005
Pic: My window on the world and lunch at Howard Johnson's NY Times Square
from: A9.com
Local search Part 1 -- Where's the menu?
I really believe that a good part of the future for search and the advertising revenues will come from small businesses. That means 'Local" search, like you looking up the phone number for the pizza place 6 blocks away, or going online to check out their menu again for the millionth time because it's not on the fridge where it's suppose to be. Why use that dumb yellow book that is so bulky and the ads hard to read? They don't have the menu in there anyway. Instead, you can go online, type in your own address or zipcode, and the keyword "pizza" and boom there you have every pizza joint within a selected distance from where you are sitting right now. Not only do you have an address listing with a phone number, you have a map pointing out their location, directions on how to get there if you forgot, and in a number of locations you can click on a Satellite image and see the frickin place right there. Still more, you can zoom in and see the delivery guy's truck parked outside. That's all fun, but you wanted the menu. That means that you'd have to go to the trouble of clicking the link to the Pizza shop itself right on the screen there. Someday soon I'm sure you won't even have to bother calling them. You'll just select what you want there on the screen, and tell them to deliver it and hurry up.