Newspaper sites have done a lot of window dressing with “hyperlocal” by adding neighborhood blogs and whatnot. But now some papers are challenging themselves to embrace hyperlocal in all things, as they seek to tame Google and Yahoo in search, take on the Yellow Pages in certain categories, and win back reader loyalty.
A lot of the discussion at this week’s NAA Marketing conference in Las Vegas focused on such issues – both on and off the podium. The Boston Globe’s Boston.com, for instance, is currently on a mission to make its onsite search more relevant at the hyperlocal level by optimizing all its news and features, while crawling local organization sites to come up with content that doesn’t typically come up with Google.
“We’re going for local hockey league schedules and things of that nature,” says Bob Kempf, who was recruited from Gatehouse Media’s WickedLocal effort in the surrounding Boston suburbs to hyperlocalize Boston.com. The site is also striving to clean up its own archives to bring out the relevance of stories during user searches, in part by building out keyword links in ways that Google’s computers probably can’t see.
Kempf, whose skunkworks reports into Michael Zimbalist at The New York Times Co., and may be applied to other company sites, says he is under no illusion that notices of a hockey schedule or clever article links will make the site a default search engine over Google or Yahoo. But he says the effort could extend the newspaper’s mission in a way that the search engines probably won’t. And that should translate to more effective local advertising.
One issue with such a federated search approach, however, is that readers don’t always want such a 360-degree view when they are searching their newspaper site. Kempf says that readers often just want to see what articles a newspaper has published, in their traditional chronological order. The site may have to offer an option to readers of straight articles, he says. It is a challenge to retrain reader expectations.
Frederick James has built a hyperlocal search prototype for NYC at http://www.frederickjames.com
It lists every business on a block and allows users to virtually walk through the city, block by block
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[...] Boston.com Ties Hyperlocal, Local Search “Boston.com, for instance, is currently on a mission to make its onsite search more relevant at the hyperlocal level by optimizing all its news and features, while crawling local organization sites to come up with content that doesn’t typically come up (tags: hyperlocal, search) [...]
[...] The Local Onliner: Boston.com Ties Hyperlocal, Local Search Boston.com is using hyperlocal web sites and local search to take on local advertising competitors including the Yellow Pages and win back reader loyalty. (tags: local search hyperlocal newspapers) [...]
[...] I’m flying in a day early to attend the e-edge mini conference, which takes place on Monday, March 12, the day before the keynote. Among the speakers there will be Nora Paul from U. of Minn. Institute of New Media Studies, Tony Lee from Adicio, Rob Curley from Washington Post Newsweek International, and Bob Granfeldt from Morris Digital Works. Other speakers at the show include Bob Kempf from Boston.com and Mike Blinder of The Blinder Group. If you are planning to attend, give me a shout so we can get together. [...]
[...] Also speaking at IPA, and again, fully blogged“>blogged by Owens, was Bob Kempf from Boston.com. I’ve written extensively about his efforts, but Kempf reveals new details of research showing why Boston.com is focusing on becoming a local information hub (watch out Yellow Pages!). Only one in three users and one of five non-users are happy with their current options for finding local information, he says. But access to local information doubles the likelihood that non-users will visit Boston.com. The research also found that 50 percent of users like the idea of getting all their information in one place. [...]
[...] I’m especially focused on #7, which is driven by Lisa Williams’ excellent H2oTown. Lisa, a former Yankee Group analyst, has really bootstrapped her entire community. She’s currently working with Bob Kempf’s team at Boston.com on its ambitious community project. [...]
[...] a local search tool that was supposed to be a big part of the site’s future. The project made perfect sense on paper: Readers would get search results focused on eastern Massachusetts. Those results would mix the [...]