The Local Authorities: Drilling Down 2007

If you're involved in local search, chances are you know about the Kelsey Group's Drilling Down conference. This year's activities included a couple of Ask.com appearances, a keynote speech from IAC's Peter Horan and a panel discussion featuring AskCity's Ryan Massie.	Copyright© 2007 The Kelsey Group.
Plus, between panels we hijacked a vendor's display equipment to do a quick AskCity demo and impressed the heck out of them. All in all, a strong Ask.com showing this year.

KEYNOTE: PETER HORAN Peter used his keynote speech to offer the big-picture take on local search and how AskCity exemplifies that. A pair of highlights: 1. The first decade of local content was about brand; the next decade will be about relevance. Live in San Jose? Look to the SJ Mercury News site. Live in Los Angeles? Try the LA Times. No more. Now, users are looking beyond brands for quality content--no matter where it comes from. 2. Local content exists between two extremes: - Broad subject matter relevant to a large audience (e.g. a trend piece from The New York Times or local news) - Narrow subject matter relevant to specific needs (e.g. local bloggers, user reviews, "where can I find a dry cleaner open Sundays?"

Peter finished up with a quick presentation of AskCity, showing how it leverages top online brands and deep content sources like Citysearch and recent acquisition InsiderPages to create relevant local search.

PANEL: CAN "HYPERLOCAL" WORK? (Panel included Ryan Massie, Ask.com Director of Product Management, Vertical Products)

Ryan stood out in his panel (among reps from Judy's Book, The Bakersfield Californian, Outside.In, and local data vendor Urban Mapping) largely by being the only search-driven site on the panel. And while there was no agreed-upon definition of what "Hyperlocal" meant (Facilitator Peter Krasilovsky dismissed the term with a "we all know what we're talking about, right?"), most of the panelists had the same measurement for success: ad sales. Ryan countered that AskCity's yardstick is quite different.

"When someone comes to that search box," He explained, "and we give them exactly what we want--the right result, the right content, take them to the right page--they're going to come back. That's success." He explained. "Or to take action on AskCity--to book (a dinner reservation) on OpenTable, and then to come back again--that's success too." He also mentioned that AskCity had no specific plans to include ads, but didn't rule it out.   Ken Grobe Product Content Manager Ask.com