Dipping into the Blogpond

Michael Sainsbury’s article in the Australian IT today entitled “Search Party to Last all Year” has raised another interesting point for me. He states “…search (revenue) is tearing ahead at somewhere over 50 per cent, perhaps as high as 70 per cent.” He goes onto say “Much of the action has been, and will continue to be, in local search, the online category that threatens Telstra’s Yellow Pages in the medium term“. Although this is something we know at dLook (unfortunately we didn’t get a mention ;( ), it’s good to hear it being talked about in the general media.

Michael goes on to talk about the Sensis search failing to compete with Google and that TrueLocal and Mylocal have been inefficient in gaining market share so far (I couldn’t agree more). And also “…how quickly new companies can run over the top of longer and better established rivals…”.

This puts dLook in a very promising position, and given our:

• lower cost alternative to other local search sites (aka Yellow Pages and TrueLocal);
• the fact that Yellow Pages listings do NOT get indexed in the major search engines;
• our increasingly popular “QuoteMe” and discount coupons;
• flexible keyword search (which functions as a pseudo commercial search engine);
• mapping and mobile facilities which will be coming soon and
• our ability to operate as more than just a directory & incorporating display advertising

then the future looks very promising for us to substantially increase market share this year. Yep as the song says “future’s so bright, I’ve got to wear shades”.