Are you in the know? Give us your local insights!
It’s time to announce a new feature on Yahoo! Local which empowers you to add your favorite new local business, alert others when an old favorite has closed, and add or change business info quickly. Now you can truly be our eyes and ears in your community!
To quickly add a new favorite business, please fill out this short form:
- In 24 hours it’ll be up on Local for everyone to see. Here’s an example of a recently added business in Redwood City, CA:
If you run across a business which has closed, needs a correction, or which is missing some important info like its web site, please click the “Edit This Business” link beneath the rating to tell us about it.
We’ll add an alert to the listing ASAP and show your proposed changes to other Locals in a pop-up window like this:
That’s it! Quick and easy. And of course, if you happen to know about a business that has been edited by someone in your community, you’ll be able to confirm that the changes are valid by clicking on ‘Yes’ in the pop-up window above.
As always, let us know what you think!
Brian, Ganesh, & The Local Team
January 4th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
[…] How does Yahoo handle this problem? Being the fans of user-generated content that they are, they let you and me do the heavy lifting for any business listing we want to edit. Business listings in Yahoo Local now have a small (much too small, frankly) “Edit This Listing” link below the star ratings, and that link is shown to anyone and everyone. Their thinking? If the business owner doesn’t want to add or edit the listing, why not let the customers? All the details are on the Y!Local blog: Are you in the know? Give us your local insights! […]
January 4th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
This is a very interesting idea, gang. But you really, really must make the “Edit This Listing” link more prominent. If you want to get Joe Q. Public involved in doing this, you have to bang him over the head with the link.
January 5th, 2007 at 9:00 am
[…] More from the new Yahoo Local changes at the Yahoo Local Blog. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
January 5th, 2007 at 10:38 am
[…] + Yahoo Local Wants Your Help Adding Content to Local Listings Film out the form and according to the blog, the change will be there in a day. However, the form on the web sites says it “may take some time to appear on the site.” It will be interesting to see how much verification goes on. […]
January 5th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
[…] From the Yahoo Local Blog: It’s time to announce a new feature on Yahoo! Local which empowers you to add your favorite new local business, alert others when an old favorite has closed, and add or change business info quickly. Now you can truly be our eyes and ears in your community! […]
January 5th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
[…] After presenting Yahoo! Local with a thorny bouquet a few days ago, today we learned they are now asking for user feedback to help add missing businesses and clean up incorrect listings. Great! […]
January 6th, 2007 at 4:36 am
[…] Read more about this and see some good screenshotsof how the process works here. […]
January 8th, 2007 at 2:55 am
Very interesting feature. When will it be available in Europe?
January 8th, 2007 at 8:47 am
[…] Yahoo! promises to allow the changes to go live with 24 hours (to permit editorial review and prevent mischief). Here’s more from the Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog. […]
January 8th, 2007 at 10:01 am
[…] For more detailed information on these updates, check out Yahoo’s full blog entry here. […]
January 8th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
[…] The Yahoo Local Blog announced that they have added the ability to quickly add and edit a business listing. For example, if you wanted a business added within about 24 hours, you can go to this form and fill out the details, about 24 hours later, the listing should be live in Yahoo Local. To edit a business listing, look for the “Edit This Listing” link directly under the business rating. You may also want to claim your business, if it is listed, by clicking on the “Edit This Listing” link and selecting that option. Posted by ezhulenev Filed in Uncategorized […]
January 8th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
[…] Posted: Monday, January 08, 2007 10:19 PM by Will Femia Yahoo is adding some “wisdom of the crowds” to its local listings. I think the idea is cool and should make for better listings. I wanted to give a good example or something, but while I was able to edit the entry of one recently closed restaurant in my neighborhood, I found their local listings generally a mess and hard to deal with. Maybe this new feature will be the first step in their improvement. If I were cynical I’d wonder if Yahoo already knows their listings are a mess and they found a great free way to fix them with a timely Web gimmick. Speaking of contributing info on your local scene, I read Susan Mernit’s announcement of Placeblogger which aims to index (with your help) all of the handy hyperlocal news sites and blogs that you use on a regular basis to get news that’s relevant to where you live. I have mixed feelings about this one. As an avid fan of local reporting who is very familiar with my local offerings this doesn’t look particularly useful. As a reporter who often looks for regional blogs where news takes place, this is probably one of the first places I’d go. It has a real retro feel in the way it makes raw lists. No tag clouds that might sort the locations more visually, no map mash-ups which would be the obvious interface. It reminds me of years ago when blogs were for socializing and people submitted their blogs to regional sites with the goal of mixing with and getting linked by their neighbors. When I was writing the Blogspotting blog for MSNBC.com in 2002/2003 I would regularly report on new cities with new lists of bloggers. Boston, New York, Dallas/Ft.Worth… Recently we saw a nice Cleveland round up. Anyway, it’s interesting to see that model with a new journalistic mission. The folks commenting at PressThink seem enthusiastic about the term “placebloggers.” Could that be the term I was looking for in place of Time Magazine’s incorrectly imprecise “you”? “Oh, my husband isn’t here right now, he’s down the street taking pictures of the flooded creek. He’s a placeblogger. I am a placeblogging widow.” Since I got a lot of critical mail last time I used the phrase “wisdom of crowds” let me quickly offer The Dumbness of Crowds. It contrasts collective intelligence with the averaged blandness that is collective negotiation. Speaking of collective creations, I spent some time Friday installing software on a new laptop (It’s got one of those dual core hard drives in it. Hoo!!). I got this machine so I could better monitor news in places like Second Life, so I popped in there for a bit. Realizing I had yet to see the Reuters facilities I teleported there. If I’d done a bit more exploring I might have seen their reporter filing this very story: Anshe Chung Studios cracks down on griefing photos. The story is so full of fascinating issues I can hardly list them all, but at the heart of the matter is the idea that in Second Life you own your character’s image so there’s a chance that people who “photograph” your character are infringing your copyright if they reproduce that photo. To my mind, it’s fair to use a picture of someone if they’re in the news, even if that someone is only a “second” someone. See also Boing Boing’s reporting. Speaking of Second Life, “Stepping up the development of the Second Life Grid to everyone interested, I am proud to announce the availability of the Second Life client source code for you to download, inspect, compile, modify, and use within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2.” There’s still some question about what this means exactly, but from the user/observer perspective it can only get more interesting. Still speaking of Second Life, next time in I’m going to check out Sears. Welcome to Wi-Fi-Ville Pop. 300 towns and growing - Eventually the Internet will be a public utility and you’ll be able to say you remember when it wasn’t. “But when confronted with contrary evidence, we become “motivated skeptics” … picking apart possible flaws in the study, recoding variables, and only when all the counterarguing fails do we rethink our beliefs…” See also: Selective Amnesia In talking about online atheism in my previous post I could have also pointed out the distinction between the atheists and the very vocal critics of the American Christian right. Just how much money can you make from blogging? Don’t quit your day job. I missed the premiere of the new Rolling Stone reality show, but hopefully I’ll be able to catch up. Meanwhile, I understand it’s possible to play along at home on their Web site: “At noon every Monday, we’ll announce the week’s competition, based on writing assignments the kids received on the show the night before. Entries are due Friday at noon, with weekly winners announced the following week.” It’s past noon now but I’m not seeing anything. Maybe they mean West Coast time? UPDATE: Here it is.Wait a minute, I just realized that this is a reality show based on writing ability. No eating bugs, selling ice cream in animal costumes, so wrestling in the sand in bikinis? I’m almost afraid to watch the show to find out I’m wrong, but can you imagine if reality shows were cerebral instead of stupid? Isn’t there a Gary Larson cartoon somewhere of an astronaut looking at the bottom of his moon boot and saying, “Oops.” “More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey also finds that older teens, particularly girls, are more likely to use these sites. For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends.” Speaking of social networking and who’s doing it, I don’t have a LinkedIn page, but I’m beginning to think I need one. Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn Speaking of not keeping up with the cool kids, yet another means by which people can assess my utter uncoolness: achievement points. The Law Catches Up To Private Militaries, Embeds - “They’re now subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the same set of laws that governs soldiers. But here’s the catch: embedded reporters are now under those regulations, too.” Currently listening to DJ Steveboy. I clicked somewhere that he had mixes that are good to run to, but got sidetracked by the Kate Bush remix. NOTE: If you’re playing dance music out loud at work you probably don’t need this warning, but there’s a sample of a moaning woman in the Kate Bush mix that may make the person on the other side of the cube wall ask you what the heck you’re listening to. Double maze - Level 1 took me forever so I didn’t play beyond that but I did get the hang of it by the time I completed that level so the others would probably go a little more quickly. Mariah wins porn battle - Not that I care, but this feels like justice to me. I never really understood why porn stars needed to have pun names. Speaking of justice at war, Leahy Introduces Bill To Combat War Profiteering - Though I don’t doubt that a company savvy enough to be in a position to commit this crime would be savvy enough to avoid being punished for it, it’s still a nice sentiment. Techniques for interviewing kids on camera Funny puberty instructional animation, probably NSFW. No, goats do not climb trees. I refuse. How death by hanging works - No photos or anything but still pretty disturbing. I don’t recall if it was reported how long it took Saddam to die. By the way, there’s another Saddam video out there, but I’m not bothering with a link. The camera catches up with his dead body on a gurney and pulls back the sheet. We see him still in his suit, his head turned sideways and a weird red spot on the side of his neck, which I decided was too gross to link to. It’s all over the place though, so you shouldn’t have a hard time finding it. I even clicked it by accident once wondering what “News Adam” could mean. How to go to M.I.T. for free - Answer: take the courses online. No degree though. This should be a holiday tradition in every office. This guy drew a map on an envelope instead of an address and it still got there. I’m guessing this is also the reason why this page of random things sent in the mail is in circulation lately. “Cancer cured” headline of the week: Remotely Activated Nanoparticles Destroy Cancer - Targeted nanotech-based treatments will enter clinical trials in 2007. Remember the article a few days ago asking if the U.S. was playing any role in the war in Somalia? I guess we have our answer. Will AdBrite spell the end of freebee Web video and herald a new age of ads on amateur video content? I don’t know, but hey look, Google Video Running Commercials Mohan Seneviratne was a man of the highest caliber. He will be sorely missed and fondly remembered. He set an inspiring example of the standard to which we should hold our lives. On his model I nag myself not to settle and remind myself to appreciate what’s here now. […]
January 9th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
My comment isn’t so much about this new feature, but a complaint. Your sponsored listings on search results pages take up way too much real estate!
January 11th, 2007 at 3:16 am
[…] Yahoo opens up their local links for editing. […]
January 15th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Did I miss something? How does Yahoo prevent mischief with this? It looks like one business owner could tinker with their competitor’s info.
March 4th, 2007 at 1:16 am
Looks nice
April 29th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Why is Yahoo not investing in local anymore? I have not seen any feature releases or expanded map coverage in months. Did Semel cut off your spending? You are making a very sad impression on the world, why not pack your tents and go home if you are notr ready to compete?
July 8th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Hello
I can’t be bothered with anything these days, but shrug. I just don’t have anything to say recently.
G’night
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Cool! I suppose this is free right?!
August 7th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Hey
I was surfing the web and i saw this site, pretty cool.
Currently im running and adult site:Wellness
k, just want to say hi
Can i link you from my site? im looking for quality content like yours. If no let me know if i can add u in exchange for a montly fee or something.
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Hi Amigos. Cool site. I wish successes in your business.
remain
October 9th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Very nice feature. Thanks Yahoo!