Yahoo! Local & Maps Blog

We have seen countless users struggle to find what they’re looking for in a specific area or neighborhood using current local search and online maps products (ahem…ours included). The results may be spread over too wide an area or not in a specific enough area.

While we have had refinement options to help users narrow by distance or neighborhood for a long time in Yahoo! Local, this required the user to make the refinement selections and run their search again. This is certainly useful in many cases, but it is a cumbersome way to explore and compare results in different areas.

What users really wanted was a way to visually explore the results on the map more directly. And now they can with the release of a unique and innovative search circle in Yahoo! Local.

To see the search circle in action, let’s suppose you’re looking for Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. You type in the query and get a set of results:

Not bad, but these restaurants are scattered across the city and you really want to see what’s closer to Golden Gate Park. So you click on the ‘Expand Map’ link to get a more detailed map view:

This is where the search circle really changes things. Now you immediately see how wide the search area is but can easily narrow this down…

…and just as easily drag the circle closer to Golden Gate Park…

…or perhaps you’re wondering if there’s a Chinese restaurant within roughly a one mile radius of the beach? No problem, just shrink the circle down a bit (it dynamically calculates the radius in miles) and drag the search circle again – it will even automatically pan the map if you hit the map edge…

What would once have been a much more difficult task has now become incredibly easy. So go ahead, try it out and figure out just how many Chinese restaurants, banks or nail salons are within a one mile radius of your house. We think you’ll like it, but as always, please let us know either way. We’re always looking for feedback (the good and the bad) from our users.

Tom Wailes, Yahoo! Local UED

You may have noticed that Yahoo! Local has undergone several front-end enhancements since its big makeover in August 2007. A couple of signficant changes took effect recently, namely, search refinement has been extended to allow users to drill down upon the exact businesses they seek. For instance, should you find yourself hankering for a family-friendly, California restaurant located within 10 miles of your home, you can make use of the Atmosphere, Distance, and Category locators to more readily identify the best options. To tighten results even more, filter by increasing the distance or narrowing to the highest rated restaurants.

In an effort to keep you better connected to new reviews from the people and places you prefer, Yahoo! Local now offers RSS feeds on key areas of the site so you can receive updates as they become available (Hint: look for the radiating RSS symbol ).

From our city guide pages, you can choose to “Add RSS” for recent reviews and stay abreast of users’ varied experiences with local businesses. If you encounter a great review from a particular user, click on a picture or name in order to view that user’s profile page and add an RSS feed to get his or her future reviews. Finally, you can establish an RSS feed to get notified when Yahoo! Local users comment on your reviews. Just navigate to your MyLocal profile page, scroll to the “comments on your reviews” section, and click to “Add RSS.”

Finally, a first review on a business really does get the ball rolling in providing valuable insights to other Yahoo! Local users. In an effort to encourage users to contribute that essential first review, you may have noticed the First Reviewer attributions that now appear on business details pages. It’s your key to finding out who the local experts really are, and to get credit for submitting a review that helps others make decisions.

We hope you make good use of the latest updates and as always, let us know your thoughts here.

Shawn Bolan

Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Local

Recently, Harris Interactive conducted a survey for us that studied the “psyche” of the online reviewer.  We wanted to determine what motivates people to contribute to online review sites like Yahoo! Local and we found that the majority of online adults feel compelled to offer their opinion in order to help others in their community through knowledge-sharing, followed by a desire to promote the business and help the merchant succeed.

Based on these motivators, it’s no surprise that three in four online adults (77 percent) agree that sites with online reviews of local businesses are valuable community tools, and one in three adults (33 percent) feel more connected to their community by contributing to online review Web sites.

Needless to say, we’re glad that we’re providing a service that helps connect others and offers invaluable advice when making offline purchasing decisions.  Four out of five online adults (80 percent) are likely to be influenced by a review, and seventy-one percent of respondents at least somewhat, if not strongly, find online reviews helpful in making purchasing decisions.  In addition, one in four adults (29 percent) say their purchasing decisions are either always or often influenced by online review content!  That’s a sizeable percentage of the population.  You can feel good knowing that the reviews you write on Yahoo! Local are helping others in your community make decisions about which product or service they plan to purchase.

We’re also happy to report that more users are influenced by positive reviews than negative reviews (27 percent versus 12 percent, respectively).  These numbers are inline with ones that resulted from a similar study last year and they show that while online reviews are helpful for users, they are also helpful for local merchants.

It’s great to work on such a positive community tool for both local businesses and consumers alike, and these survey results only strengthen our belief in the services we provide through Yahoo! Local.  We hope you’ll continue to find the site a helpful resource and we always welcome your opinions to make the service even better!

Frazier Miller - GM Yahoo! Local

Real estate is the ultimate local business. That’s why our friends at Yahoo! Real Estate are always focused on making their products as local as possible. Recently, their launch of a home loan rate finder that can search for the best local rates caught our eye. With all the buzz around mortgages and real estate, house hunters and home owners alike are looking for tools to help them better navigate the market. So whether you’re buying a new home, refinancing, or pulling out equity, this is a great new tool to find the most competitive offers right in your area.

This comes on the heels of a completely upgraded home loans research section, where home owners and prospective buyers hungry for information can leverage tons of mortgage calculators (i.e. ever wonder how much that million dollar home would cost you per month?), see the latest rate trends and learn the ABCs of getting a loan. In addition, users can connect with a local mortgage broker through a new module leveraging our Yahoo! Local search API.

We hope you find these tools useful. Happy house hunting.

Michael Lawless
Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

Remember the old adage “you reap what you sow?” Well, it’s nowhere more true than in the neighborhoods in which we live. If you’re like me, perhaps you’re tired of seeing your favorite small businesses close due to competitive pressure from a chain store. Who knows, maybe you could’ve helped save that fave if you gave that merchant some kudos and told your neighbors about your great experience.

Well, now Yahoo! Local will help you do just that. We’ve completely overhauled the site to make it easier to contribute your opinion and through a new, updated algorithm, we’re making sure that search results take your ratings and reviews into account. We want to make sure that people’s contributions to Yahoo! Local count in more ways than one.

An example of this in action is the “pizza” in Chicago, IL results which better reflect what the community says is the best pizza in Chicago (obviously a hotly contested debate, we’re not sure we want to get involved in…):

In addition to the improved accuracy of our search results, some of the other new features we’re rolling-out today focus on more ways for you to find what’s best and closest to you:

• Commenting on User Reviews – No longer will it feel like shouting into the wind when you write a review. Now the people who benefit from your tips can reply back. You’ll also be able to track comments on your reviews from your My Local page.
• Weekender – Offers a weekly selection of events, movies (including show times and reviews), dining picks, and more to help you plan your weekend.
• More “Local Buzz” – Shows the top-moving search terms in your hometown with a new search cloud and exposes the most recent reviews of businesses in your area to see what people are buzzing about.
• Best Local Events – Taps into the Upcoming social events database to surface the best events in your hometown.
• Most Popular – Highlights the best of a city in the key categories of Restaurants, Health & Beauty, and Home & Garden.
• My Local Improvements – A new “save for later” feature so you can quickly archive those hidden gems you uncover along with your recent reviews, tags, and collections.

So, make sure to update your profile with a picture or avatar, look up some local favorites, write a few reviews, and comment back on some helpful reviews you discovered along the way.

Got a great idea for what you’d like to see next? Tell us about it on our new suggestion board.

Thanks!

- Brian Gil, Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Local

Congratulations to the Yahoo! Real Estate team on their newly updated Home Values center that launched today!  They’ve used the Yahoo! Maps AJAX API as well as the Yahoo! Local search API to create a cool mash-up that provides users with a more comprehensive view of home valuations, community insights, and local connections. 

Searching for a particular home’s value takes you to an expanded results page that features estimated home values from Zillow.com, as well as two newly formed relationships with eppraisal.com and reply.com.  This allows you to get multiple home value estimates from leading providers in order to give users a more complete view on a home’s potential value range.  The real estate team also expanded their Zillow relationship to include home data (such as beds, baths, square feet), sale history and tax info, as well as recently sold comparable homes that are plotted on the map.  Additionally, you can view nearby similar homes for sale from Y! Real Estate to better understand the ‘ask’ side of the valuation process – what are sellers asking for similar homes right now?

To tap into the knowledge of the Yahoo! community, the real estate team joined up with Yahoo! Answers in order to surface home values related questions and answers directly on Yahoo! Real Estate.  You can browse the top home values questions and best answers, view more home values Q&As, search Y! Answers for any question/answer, or ask the community a question of your own.  Using the Yahoo! Local search API, they also surface local valuation professionals to help you connect with top rated real estate appraisers in your area should you choose to get a professional home appraisal. 

Check it out and let us know what you think!
Brian Rothenberg, Product Manager, Yahoo! Real Estate

Have a suggestion to make Yahoo! Local or Maps better? Use our new Local Suggestion Board to pitch ideas, vote and comment on others, and get notified if we use your idea.

Voting helps us quickly discover what’s most important to users. In addition to reading feedback from other users, you’ll find responses from Yahoo! employees about the issues. Product teams regularly read and take action on feedback. Though we aren’t always going to be able to act on your input, it’s incredibly helpful to us in making the best sites we can… and we’ve even been known to reward great ideas on occasion with awesome prizes.

New ideas are already starting to flow-in! Perhaps you want to vote for user-enhanced driving directions or GPS Aware mobile search, or maybe you’d like to submit a new idea. Either way, we want to hear from you, so Tell Us What You Think and help us improve Yahoo! Local for you and millions of others.

The Yahoo! Local Team

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

The Yahoo! elves have been hard at work in their toy shop for the Holiday season to bring you a nice little integration of Maps, Local, Mail and Search.

Users of Yahoo! Mail (classic version only at this time) can now do more with the content in their email. When mousing over any address or location (including international cities) a quick click on the purple underlined terms will bring up an instant map or satellite image, business information, driving directions and a slew of other options relating to that location. The new Shortcuts lets you do all this without ever having to leave your message or open a new browser window.

It’s a very handy new trick for those that don’t like to do a lot of cutting and pasting.

This not only works for addresses, but there is also additional information available for a variety of other items in the messages (phone numbers, key phrases, email addresses…etc). You can also disable this… but why would you want to?

Happy Holidays

The Yahoo! elves and Jeremy Kreitler

Are you ready to shoot, tag, upload, and collect?  The latest Yahoo Local features - released today - will allow our users to start organizing their world in a whole new way.  Here’s how:

• Everyone gets tags – well – maybe not everyone, but anyone who’s reading this blog.  We think tagging is a great way for users to organize Local content for themselves, and for everyone else. 
• While tags may just say one word, pictures say a thousand words!  Now you can upload photos into any local content.  Show the world what food you’re eating, or how good that plumber’s service really is. 
• If a picture says a thousand words, how many might a collection say?  Collections are groupings of anything you want….could be California Beach Towns…could be Seattle Sites and Sounds…could be Chicago’s Cuisine Scene.  We think this is going to be a great way for you get even more out of Yahoo! Local. 

Bringing it all together, a new “Dashboard” helps you get back to saved ratings & reviews or collections.  The dashboard also gives recommendations on places you might like based on your existing ratings & reviews.

Go ahead try it out and let us know what you think.

Frederique, Brian, Raghu & The Yahoo! Local Team