Citysearch Content Available Through Ask.com's AskCity
Citysearch's Content and Ask.com's Search Technology Create a Comprehensive Local Search Experience — WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Citysearch, an operating business of IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq …
Context & Ripple Effects
Ask.com launched AskCity just days ago amid high expectations, and this announcement fills in what was then the open question: the content layer. Rather than sending local queries to crawled pages, IAC is wiring its own asset in — Citysearch editorial listings and reviews feed AskCity directly, with Ask supplying the search technology.
The strategic logic runs through IAC's structure, since Citysearch operates as an IAC business alongside Ask.com. That pairing follows a year of investment in the search unit — IAC said as far back as December 2005 that it expected to increase staff at Ask Jeeves — so the content deal reads as the demand side finally getting a proprietary supply of answers.
First-order effects
- AskCity users get Citysearch's editorial business listings and reviews surfaced natively inside Ask results from launch, giving Ask.com a differentiated local product instead of generic web links.
- Citysearch gains a built-in distribution channel: its content now reaches every AskCity query without competing for placement against outside directories.
Second-order effects
- IAC can now bundle local advertising inventory across the combined property — selling against Citysearch content that Ask itself controls end-to-end, which strengthens the case for advertisers to consolidate local spend inside IAC rather than split it across directories and engines.
- Standalone local directories whose listings are not wired into a major search experience face the same squeeze Citysearch just escaped: if the engine next door supplies its own answers, unaffiliated content risks being one click too deep.
Third-order effects
- If the owned-content-plus-search model holds, the line between search engine and directory keeps dissolving — engines increasingly answer local queries from licensed or affiliated data rather than ranked links, a shift that changes who controls publisher visibility and monetization.
- For portal-era conglomerates like IAC, cross-feeding assets between properties becomes the template for competing against larger search rivals: integrate what you own before trying to out-crawl what you don't.
The trend: Local search is consolidating around vertically integrated stacks where the engine licenses or owns the content layer it serves, trading open-web ranking for proprietary answer supply.