The World Wide Web is now going local. If you haven’t noticed already, you soon will. All across Canada, the U.S., and the rest of the world companies (big and small) and individuals are jumping on the local search/local directory/Online Yellow Pages bandwagon. As they should. The more free space you have to sell advertising, the more money you will make. Small and medium sized businesses are usually the target and they want to increase their visibility. Its a win-win situation.

This is not an entirely new trend as I can remember talking with these types of companies several years ago, the difference today is the amount of new services I see popping up. The question then becomes, who will come out on top? Will the entire industry suffer from the flood of directory start-ups bombarding users to sign up to their service?

Those who are going to be successful in my opinion will tend to be those who have an existing, strong brand behind them. Someone like YellowPages, Idearc, etc. These two examples have had their brands built in the print directory market so moving to local search on the web is the next logical move, and they already have a huge user base at their disposal to market the service into. Another industry with strong potential is the larger media companies/networks. They often have a brand(s) established in all the major areas (print, tv, radio, web portals). Building a local search directory off of that brand is a logical next step as well. A perfect example in Canada is Canwest who is in the midst of entering the market. They have launched first in the Ottawa market but will be expanding from there.

Now I don’t think it will completely come down to a big brand behind the directory that will dictate the success of a directory. There is always a dark horse who enters a new industry and re-invents it. The key here will be the technology they bring to the table, and their overall offering. If you can differentiate yourself from the competition and make yourself truly unique, users will find you. This is why I think it is important to keep an eye out on the lesser known companies in the space to see what they are doing. A perfect example of such a company in my opinion is GenieKnows.com.

If you ever were to do a Google search for local directories, online yellowpages, business directories, etc. you will see that there are hundreds of thousands of results. Everything from sites running on their own custom built technology to college kids running open source scripts just cause they can. Some are entirely free to submit to, some are paid, some are a mix of free and paid. The fact that its a money maker has caught on.

As a small business, I would want to submit to as many of these as possible for the simple reason that generally these directories are well optimized for search engines. Meaning your business profile page is likely that much more likely to be returned high on a search than even your main website if you have one. That alone is worth the investment for me.