Local and Mobile Search: Evolving Search Engine Experience Shailesh Bhat Senior Product Manager Yahoo! Local
Jan 20, 2015
Local and Mobile Search:Evolving Search Engine Experience
Shailesh Bhat Senior Product Manager
Yahoo! Local
Today’s Online Local Search Experience
28 Million Monthly Users
18,000 City Pages
17 Million Businesses
Reaching the Local Audience
• Yahoo!’s goal is to provide users with instant answers regardless of the entry point
• Local listing entry points on the Yahoo! Network– Yahoo! Local
– Yahoo! Web Search
– Mobile
– Maps and more
• Each entry point is optimized differently but leverage the same core data set
Optimizing for Local Search
• Proactively monitor and verify listings information
• Solicit customer feedback to nurture & manage online reputation
• Include details on special services and products carried– “copper re-piping” more valuable and
easier to rank for than “plumbers”
Source: ComScore qSearch, March 2008.
+76%
+23% CAGR
Local Searches
The Rise of Local Searching
Web Search today
Limited choice
Limited personalization
Limited visibility
Limited influence
Limited innovation
“Must Buy”
Local Search is Evolving within Web search
SearchMonkey is powering this evolution
• Publishers collaborate
• Meaning behind the link
• Richer experience
• Relevant and personal
• Faster task completion
Monkey parts leads to richer experience
Task linksTask links
Structured dataStructured data SharingSharing
MediaMedia User controlUser control
SearchMonkey: How Does it Work?
Index
Acme.com’s Web Pages
Acme.com’sdatabase
DataRSS feed
RDF/Microformat Markup
Site owners/publishers share structured data with Yahoo!
Site owners & third-party developers build SearchMonkey apps
Consumers customize their search experience with Enhanced Results or Infobars
1
2
3
Page Extraction
Web Services
Who is already there?
Where to find them
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
Answering Trivia Questions
Finding New Mobile Websites
Ringtones, Games & Graphics
Making Shopping & Price Comparisons
Local Movies
Checking on Flight Info
Nearby Restaurants & Stores
Directory Listings
Maps & Directions
Local Information in High Demand on Mobile Devices
Source: MMA Mobile Search Consumer Insight Report, August 2006
Mobile as an entry point for Local Information
Local Information usage (% of users)
2007 2008
Maps or directions 10.8 17.6
Products or services in their local area 9.8 15.6
Products or services outside their local area
6.4 14.3
Movies or other entertainment 8.2 13.7
Connected with a social networking site
3.4 9.6
Source: Mobile Market View, Nov 2008, The Kelsey Group
Y! oneSearch – The Mobile Starting Point
• Y! oneSearch is the exclusive or preferred search service with more than 60 mobile operators globally, covering over 800M consumers under carrier contract– Exclusive search service for AT&T in the U.S. on MediaNet
• Accessing Yahoo! OneSearch– Yahoo! Mobile Homepage – over 24 million unique visitors per
month in the U.S. Accessible through any mobile browser http://m.yahoo.com
– Yahoo! Go – runs on over 280 devices in 19 countries– Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice – downloadable client that allows
you to search for anything with the power of voice– Yahoo! oneSearch Shortcut for Nokia – downloadable idle
screen search client; includes voice integration and search assist
– Yahoo! SMS Search – Text query to 92466 (spells YAHOO)
Yahoo! oneSearch Offers Online Ease-of Use
A hungry person in San Francisco enters…
pizza
http://m.yahoo.com
Y! oneSearch Local Listings – Detailed Results
Relevancy & Accuracy is Key
• Mobile search queries show high level of local intent, though not always explicitly– categories like ‘movies’, ‘business listings’, ‘travel’, ‘weather’ are
implicitly local in nature, though user may not include location
• Mobile use-case is different than PC search– Seeking Answers, instead of weblinks
• Mobile local search multiplies the need for strong fundamentals:– Comprehensiveness– Depth– Accuracy– Relevance
“Get me lost once and you’ve lost me forever”
Actionables
• Monitor your online content and reputation across top local search engines and data sources
• Enrich listings with details, to help match multi-term queries and provide ‘answers’ in the mobile world
• Leverage SearchMonkey to assert your influence on a rich experience
Learn more and get started
• Search Gallery http://gallery.search.yahoo.com/
• SearchMonkey development http://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/
• Best practiceshttp://l.yimg.com/a/i/ydn/searchmonkey/searchmonkey-best-practices.pdf
Thank You
Shailesh [email protected]