Yahoo! Acquires Upcoming.org
This past week, Yahoo! publicly acknowledged that they have acquired Upcoming.org, a social events calendar website, in an effort to expand on its local-content offerings.
Upcoming.org, which will now operate as a Yahoo! company, is a free website that lets people manage their social calendars and share information about upcoming events like local concerts and festivals. Users can also comment on events others have attended and can include a continuously updated listing of Upcoming.org events on their own websites.
Yahoo! recently revised its local search program back in August, adding such features as user-reviews and interactive maps. Now, with this acquisition, the company will have access to tons of local content and will no doubt use it to enhance their search capabilities and features even further.
For those of you unfamiliar with what has been going on in the local search industry, local search is now being thought of as a very profitable growth area for advertising. More and more people are booting up their PC or turning on a cell phone to find local services or to book local events. Because of this, search providers such as Yahoo!, Google, and American Online (AOL), are now banking on the draw for small and medium-size businesses to advertise when people are most interested.
Search engines such as those listed above have been doing their best to stay on top of the local search industry by finding different ways to locate and provide local search content, services, and tools... and why shouldn't they, the local search market is expected to attract somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 Billion in revenue within the next five years.
If you're a search engine marketer or if you operate an online business than I would highly suggest that you start taking advantage of the numerous local-advertising outlets that these "Search Giants" have made available. Local is where to be!
Upcoming.org, which will now operate as a Yahoo! company, is a free website that lets people manage their social calendars and share information about upcoming events like local concerts and festivals. Users can also comment on events others have attended and can include a continuously updated listing of Upcoming.org events on their own websites.
Yahoo! recently revised its local search program back in August, adding such features as user-reviews and interactive maps. Now, with this acquisition, the company will have access to tons of local content and will no doubt use it to enhance their search capabilities and features even further.
For those of you unfamiliar with what has been going on in the local search industry, local search is now being thought of as a very profitable growth area for advertising. More and more people are booting up their PC or turning on a cell phone to find local services or to book local events. Because of this, search providers such as Yahoo!, Google, and American Online (AOL), are now banking on the draw for small and medium-size businesses to advertise when people are most interested.
Search engines such as those listed above have been doing their best to stay on top of the local search industry by finding different ways to locate and provide local search content, services, and tools... and why shouldn't they, the local search market is expected to attract somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 Billion in revenue within the next five years.
If you're a search engine marketer or if you operate an online business than I would highly suggest that you start taking advantage of the numerous local-advertising outlets that these "Search Giants" have made available. Local is where to be!
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posted by Karl Ribas Friday, October 07, 2005 Read Comments (0) | Post a Comment | Subscribe  
 
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