Yahoo! improves search results for local businesses

Friday 18 December 2009 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

The latest innovation from Yahoo! is a new way for Internet users to get more relevant results when searching for businesses. In a post on the Yahoo! Search Blog on Tuesday, Nitzan Achsaf (Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Search) explains:

"We just made it easier to search for local businesses. Starting today, you can see the Yahoo! local business shortcut when you search for a business, even if you don't include your location in your query. You can also refine results by neighborhood or nearby city right on the search results page."

Yahoo! now with local business results

By way of an example, Achsaf demonstrates that if a user in Palo Alto, near San Francisco, searches for 'evvia', Yahoo! Search displays the local shortcut for the restaurant, including address, 'phone number, and reviews:

Users also have the opportunity to refine the results by neighbourhood or nearby city on the results page itself, meaning that when you search for business categories (such as 'restaurant' or 'cinema') or chains (such as 'Pizza Express' or 'Odeon'), you will be able to filter them by area with just one click.

This innovation is not yet available on Yahoo! UK & Ireland and Achsaf's blog post makes no mention of when the new-style results will be rolled out. Despite the rocky road that Yahoo! has travelled, it still seems committed to making search more relevant and keeping the competition on its toes.

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