Local Search Down Under

Sensis was recently featured in an article which shows how powerful they are in the Australlian advertising market. They believe they will be able to compete with Google for product search due to their strong ability to integrate location with the product.

"The Yellow Pages is a search book. We don't call it that because it's not trendy."

"Our biggest differentiator (from Google) is we have all this local content. So if (you) go to Google today and search for a restaurant in Kew, you might get two restaurants."

Sensis currently combines search results from whitepages.com.au, yellowpages.com.au, whereis.com.au, and cityseach.com.au. One thing people forget is that the Yellow Pages is just a single book or database which Google can easily fold into or bolt onto their product.

Currently Google is not using Local Search that way because it does not add enough value to their product. Mathematics is amazing and search is in its infancy. Google will not likely fall victim to the Yellow Pages. This is a simple question of "Who is really replacing who?"