AOL Local Search Beta
News & Updates — Welcome! — The AOL Local Search Beta allows you to find a local business or location with AOL Local by following three simple steps: — Enter a query term, such as PIZZA, a business name or the type of business you're looking for, such as plumbers, in the search field.
Context & Ripple Effects
AOL's Local Search Beta lands mid-way through what is shaping up as 2007's local-search buildout. Ask.com opened the year by redrawing its local results in March (the new shape of local search), and this month's beta follows the same playbook: a stripped-down flow where a single typed term — pizza, plumbers, a business name — surfaces local businesses inside AOL Local.
Two weeks before the beta, localguides.com launched arguing that local needs a social and vertical layer beyond plain listings. Against that backdrop, AOL's entry reads as table-stakes rather than differentiation: the beta is deliberately simple, three steps from query to result.
First-order effects
- AOL Local gains a dedicated query-driven business finder, putting the portal's local property into direct side-by-side comparison with Ask.com's redesigned local results and the newer social-local entrants.
- Local advertisers and small businesses get one more major-portal surface where a listing can be found, raising the value of accurate business data across AOL's index.
Second-order effects
- Rivals now have to answer a plain-vanilla local product either by matching its simplicity or by out-featuring it — precisely the gap localguides.com is betting on with its social-plus-vertical pitch.
Third-order effects
- If every major portal ships a local search surface in 2007, raw query-and-listing lookup becomes a commodity, and competition shifts to whoever owns differentiated content — reviews, guides, vertical depth — forcing data and content partnerships across the industry.
The trend: Portals are racing to rebuild local search in 2007 as bare keyword lookup stops differentiating, pushing the real contest toward social and structured local content.