Dipping into the Blogpond

I know this is “yesterday’s news” but worthy of a mention.

An article in the SMH about Gary Cox being hired as the new “boss” of truelocal.com.au. An excerpt below:

“News Digital Media chief operating officer Nick Leeder said the appointment was part of the division’s plan to be a more aggressive player in the online local search market.”

It shouldn’t be too hard.

And a very interesting article in the Australian IT from Michael Sainsbury Truelocal Enlists IT Veteran.

Michael states “…But Truelocal and Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd’s local search attempts, Mylocal and local.live.com, have failed to make much of an impression on Google, which holds 85 per cent of the Australian search market.“

Maybe I don’t get it. Google.com.au is a search engine, as is yahoo.com.au, sensis.com.au and live.com.au.

Truelocal.com.au, mylocal.com.au and local.live.com.au are Australian business directories, as are dLook.com.au and yellowpages.com.au.

Sure some people use a search engine to find a local business (as a defacto business directory), so a search engine can be a business directory, but a business directory is not, per se, a search engine, well not in the broad sense of the term. A search engine uses algorithms, a business directory is human edited.

So let’s compare apples with apples.