Study: YP.com outperforming local search

The study, conducted by crowd sourcing hub CrowdFlower, found that YP.com outperformed local search engines for named searches of specific businesses and 'remained competitive' with Google Maps during full search queries. Other interesting findings include:

• YP local searches show an 86% satisfaction rating, competing search engines show rates between 74% and 82%
• YP satisfaction ratings for Insurance queries were 100%
• YP satisfaction ratings for Restaurants were 98%
• YP satisfaction ratings for Credit Unions were 90%

"Most major search companies have their results manually reviewed by a team of people -- it's one of the best ways to measure the effects of constant updates to their search algorithms -- but a dedicated team can be difficult to scale," said Ari Klein, director of customer success for CrowdFlower. "CrowdFlower was, in fact, founded by search scientists solvingthat exact problem. By crowdsourcing the evaluation, we've been able to dramatically shorten YP's feedback loop and allowed them to perform more frequent and accurate competitive analysis. It's phenomenal to see that our innovative approach, coupled with their expertise, has helped YP maintain leadership in the local search space."

While the study shows the benefit of local business listings on the web, it also underlines a new trend - that consumers aren't 'surfing the web' as they did in the early days of the Internet. Rather, they are looking for specific products, businesses or shop locations, making the most of the time they spend online.

Tags: CrowdFlower, local marketing, local search, search marketing, Yellow Pages, YP.com