A few years ago, the location of businesses became a big question mark, as well as a strategic issue, as people wanted to shop or dine nearby. These “geo-fencing” issues were especially important for Yellow Pages companies.

Since then, search has become more the norm, along with GPS-based phones, which have location baked into them. What hasn’t changed is that you still need the geo-fencing data tied with other meta data for local discovery. You still need to know what subway line is near, where the nearest parking garages are, or what your choices are for dining when you are visiting your friend in Chelsea.

Companies such as Maponics, Urban Mapping, Zillow and others are still licensing or providing their geo-fencing results. And now, the customer base is more universal among companies in the local space, along with key verticals related to schools, real estate and other verticals. Other companies, such as Yahoo, have used such data to introduce Proximity Search.

The result can be a seamless paradigm that integrates local mapping information with coupons, deals and other merchant information. But not everyone gets it.

“Some publishers still don’t get how to have cross platforms,” suggests Maponics CEO Darrin Clement. “They’re still looking for leads in the social world; still bolting on coupons to their results. They’re too intent on protecting the existing paradigm.”

Clement says mobile users, especially, need seamless roaming of information. He notes that some local services will just use the Zillow API. And it works well for startups. But Zillow only has 7,000 neighborhoods,” he notes. “We have 160,000. Zillow has 100 cities. We have 2,300 cities.”

“From where I sit, I am at the intersection of cool maps, our growing search share and local commerce,” said Sampson. “It is a great place to be at Microsoft.” What is quickly evolving are the troika of “context, time and location.” Each is enfranchised by the rising use of mobile devices, and “really change[s] the state of advertising,” he said.

Local is especially important, and 20 percent of all searches are now location-based — something that has been pushed up by the improving technology capabilities and open APIs for maps and other features. Windows phones, for instance, allow users to turn location on and off based on what time it is and where they are. Deals are being geoparsed as well.

Facebook Head of Groups Justin Shaffer told attendees at Where 2.0 that one of Facebook’s goal is to develop the largest database of “interesting” places. The collection of places has “really been the focus” of his division for the past four-to-six months he said. At the same time, the database of places is probably something of a commodity for Facebook, and other services. “The coordinates are approaching a commodity. But (we’re) pushing up the stack with services etc.”

Shaffer, former CEO of Hot Potato, a group software site acquired last year by Facebook, said that a “social network” involves storytelling, memories and serendipity. The latter is “where friends check in and find you.” He added that a social network itself can be broken down into three basic elements: “Open,” “Geo” and “Temporal.”

Open would mean your social network acquaintances; Geo would be a friend’s photo of the Eiffel Tower; and Temporal would show the four people that are “here” right now. The importance of Check-ins is “not really where you are, (it is about) who you are with,” he said.

Content-wise, it all splits into the “Open Graph,” “Data” and “businesses.” Data would include places and events, and businesses would include check-in deals and pages. While it would be ultimately helpful to develop standards, Shaffer warned that “everyone isn’t going to agree on meta data or categories.”

Speaking on a panel with Shaffer at Where, Fwix CEO Darian Shirazi, who has just raised a new $4.2 million round from Comcast Interactive Capital, agreed that the basic information is probably approaching commodity status. The challenge is to build a package that it unbeatable, said Shirazi. A listing of “The Top 10 Bars in San Francisco” would be an example.

Content, and geo-tagging of content, “is where this will realistically go,” added Shirazi. Fwix, a 22 person company that started two years ago as a news aggregator, is now expanding into vertical content areas such as real estate and video transcriptions. If Fwix could use places data to win even one percent of Google search results, it would be “huge,” he said.

SEO companies are a dime a dozen. How do you stand out? How about guaranteeing a front page rank on major search engines to SMBs? That’s what Relevant Ads’ Local Splash has done.

The fast-growing SEO company co-founded in 2006 by former Local.com executive David Rodecker has built a template for SEO that it hopes to sell to thousands of SMBs on its own, as well as via third parties. It guarantees a Page 1 ranking on a major search engine within six weeks of a contract, based on an extensive business profile that it develops, triggering placements on local maps, local organic search pages, mobile screens, as well as pay-per-click.

Local Splash also provides a bevy of other services for SMBs, including loan outs of its huge roster of exclusive domain names relevant to local business (i.e. PlumberInIrvine.com.). It also provide local video ads, merging business information into short, keyword-driven video presentations. The company also registers a Facebook page for clients, and encourages them to use various MerchantCircle tools (i.e. newsletters and coupons).

A recent visit to the company’s new headquarters in Santa Ana,CA shows a buzzing and large new workplace, with telemarketers crammed tight.

The company’s model is deliberately kept simple. It is $199 for a setup fee, and then $159 a month for a standard package. This gets customers into local map and organic result via direct feeds to Google, Yahoo, MerchantCircle, Bing, Yelp, Facebook and others. Other options include $40 and $100 monthly Adwords packages (or higher custom deals).

CEO Steve Yeich, a veteran of the domain registry business, and before that, a local search leader at Overture (and Yahoo, after the acquisition of Overture), tells us that roughly 25 percent of customers take an Adwords package. Yeich notes that the company has primarily reached out to SMBs via telemarketing, although it has some premise sales.

The company’s real growth, however, is its Agency/Key Account business, which targets national brands and their agencies. These accounts currently make up 25 percent of the company’s revenue, but will soon be about 50 percent. The company also has direct sales relationships with various organizations, including the American Association of Franchisees and Dealers (AAFD), a 50,000 member group.

To us, the company may not be all that differentiated from the efforts of third party resellers such as ReachLocal, WebVisible, Yodle and Orange Soda. But Yeich believes the company has a unique offering, especially with its emphasis on map placement and mobile. Such resellers are ideal partners, he says.

Sorting content by neighborhoods and ZIP codes can boost usage considerably, as HelloMetro recently discovered. The 10 year old city guide gets over six million monthly unique visitors, and has 1,500 local sites. In a case study published today, it said it has received a ten percent jump in traffic after it started using a neighborhood and ZIP sorting service from Maponics. Twenty-five percent of that boost, or 2.5 percent overall, was directly related to pages organized around neighborhoods and ZIP codes.

The site says its problem was that it had too much content coming in from its 50 writers and various news feeds. But it didn’t sort enough by neighborhood. Searches for subjects, names and points of interest could only be done on a metro-wide basis.

The Maponics technology for sorting neighborhood data essentially solved that. Now, searches can be conducted by neighborhood and also include such features as city resources, shopping ,theater, communities, schools, jobs, and other categories. Altogether, 90,000 fully optimized neighborhood and zip-specific pages have been developed. There are roughly 45 neighborhoods per metro, it noted.

Wooton said that Microsoft was one of only two companies that had the wide ranging platform that could meet all of today’s SMB media needs –the other apparently being Google. “We can support consumer experiences across any device supporting queries with geographic intent,” he said, noting that it goes beyond monetization via the Ad Center to also include Microsoft’s local business portal services, mapping platform and even its XBox games platform – the “only truly cool thing that Microsoft owns,” Wooton joked.

Microsoft sees tremendous opportunity in the SMB channel. $8 billion is likely to be spent on websites by 2013, and $15 billion altogether. The company is already well positioned via its “search alliance” partnership with Yahoo, which handles 30 percent of the overall marketplace. It also has strategic partnerships with IYPs such as SuperMedia, YP.com and DexOne Media,” noted Wooton.

Research commissioned from Bain & Co., by Microsoft supports his thesis. Twenty five percent of SMBs use partners; 35 percent of their total spend is indirect. Those that use channel partners spend 8X those that don’t.

We note with interest the new partnership between New York Magazine and Foursquare, the location based service now in 21 cities that lets friends see where you have “checked in” and lets you vie to be mayor (hail Outside.in’s Camilla Cho, our mayor at the recent BIA/Kelsey Marketplaces conference).

New York’s 7,000 followers on Foursquare will have access to tips from the magazine’s online database that includes 5,000 restaurants, 1,600 bars and 5,500 stores. True to form, most of the initial items are food and bar oriented, but there are also cultural, retail and sports items.

The addition of New York, which has both local and national readers, complements other sites that have joined up with Foursquare. The only other “local” site is Time Out New York, but local/vertical interest is also captured by partners such as Zagat, and to a lesser extent by sites such as Bravo, Zagat, Askmen.com, The History Channel, Bon Appetit and Gossip Girl.

Aside from the partner deals, FourSquare has been rapidly developing in other directions. For instance, it has localized national deals with chains such as California Pizza Kitchen, ChiChis and Athletic Warehouse.

It also has local deals, even in cities where it has not formally launched, such as San Diego. One local deal that caught my eye was for Del Mar Racetrack, where the Mayor will be entitled to a VIP paddock tour, four clubhouse admissions, their name on the tote board and will watch a race from the Winner’s Circle.

The site, however, has kept on hammering away at local/social trends, with a strong emphasis on sentiment analysis and local mapping – no surprise, given that its leadership is comprised of CTO Chandu Thota, the former Microsoft Virtual Earth leader; and CEO Jennifer Dulski, the former head of Yahoo Marketplaces.

Now, the success of Groupon and other deal a day sites has apparently lead the site’s executives to an epiphany: one of the next waves of local is likely to be deal aggregation – a path already taken by such sites as 8Coupons.com and Local Offer Lounge (and before that, by Judy’s Book). Research conducted by the company showed the power of the deal. Indeed, 80 percent of those surveyed said they feel “exhilterated” by finding a good deal.

Dulski previewed concepts behind The Deal Map at our Marketplaces 2010 conference in March, and the site went live yesterday. The Deal Map aggregates the whole gamut of socially driven deals and information, which include coupons, sales notifications, frequent-flyer type points, sweepstakes, new product information, events and recipes.

The goal, says Dulski, is to finally move deals beyond the silos of mail, TV and newspapers, store windows and emails. All are better served by a true cross-digital platform that might include the Web, mobile, social media, aggregated emails and APIs.

Dulski’s expectation is that a certain portion of the deals themselves may be sent in by users, some of whom will be motivated to contribute sites and reviews by cash incentives for super-frequent users. But other offers will be grabbed from a wide range of sources, including large, national deal providers; deal a day providers; and extracted from email newsletters, social media and other sources. A larger portion of the deals will eventually be driven from the social efforts than from coupon feeds, says Dulski. The site will also have several revenue streams, including revenue sharing with the deal a day sites.

Dulski makes a case for the Deal Map’s uniqueness by noting it is the only site that mixes “location,” “price” and “sentiment” (i.e. how people feel about a product or location). On the map, locations of deals are clearly coded by one of ten category icons (restaurants; health & beauty; shopping; events & attractions; hotels; food & drugs; automotive; Services; Home & Garden; and medical. The intensity of deal areas is also indicated by a heat map.

It all looks great and is very easy to use, compared to other maps we’ve recently played with where everything tends to bunch up too much. It will be even better in future iterations when users can set up personalized categories.

While The Deal Map is billed as a a project that is both separately branded from Center’d, and integrated within it, it seems realistic to think that it becomes Center’d’s primary purpose now, just as Living Social’s Daily Deal is its primary purpose, not its Virtual Bookshelf. The space is going to be big, and the people at Center’d seem poised to ride with it.

The event is totally dedicated to the higher value/conversion/engagement ethos of vertical media. For sure, this isn’t one size fits all of newspapers and Yellow Pages anymore (but then again, these traditional media are rapidly verticalizing too).

Featured sessions include 5 big keynotes; Mike Boland’s Mobile Vertical Superforum; a preconference session on the Tools of Marketplaces, including experts on search, video, enhanced calls, online scheduling, promotion and classifieds.

We also have cutting edge panels on new directories and city guides; small business marketplaces; vertical ad networks; vertical search; content aggregators (a great session with Examiner.com CEO Rick Blair); and local retailers and marketplaces. To top it all off, there is a special “making money” session with Classifieds Master Tony Lee, Chief Alliance Officer of Adicio.

Our keynoters include:
* Jon Brod, EVP, AOL Ventures
* Jay Herratti, CEO, Citysearch
* Andrew Mason, Founder and CEO, Groupon
* Sam Sebastian, Director, Local & B2B Markets, Google
* Craig Smith, CEO, ServiceMagic

The Mobile Vertical SuperForum has eight great speakers:
* Sam Altman, Cofounder and CEO, Loopt
* Alec Andronikov, CEO, MoVoxx
* Craig Hagopian, President, LocalAdXchange
* Scott Jampol, Senior Director of Consumer Marketing, OpenTable
* Steve Larsen, CEO, CallSpark
* Alexander Muse, Cofounder, Big in Japan (ShopSavvy)
* Eric Singley, Mobile Product Manager, Yelp
* David Sturtz, Cofounder and CEO, RepairPal

Other featured speakers include:
* Ethan Anderson, Cofounder, RedBeacon
* Jeff Beard, President and GM, Localeze
* Rick Blair, CEO, Examiner.com
* Reed Brown, President and CEO, Matchbin
* Jim Delli Santi, Cofounder and CEO, AlikeList
* Craig Donato, CEO, Oodle
* Todd Dubner, SVP, Development, NCI
* Jennifer Dulski, CEO, Center’d
* Sean Fox, COO, Reply.com
* Jordan Glazier, CEO, Eventful
* Krista Glotzbach, VP, Marketing, Vast.com
* Martin Herbst, GM, Kijiji U.S., eBay
* Greg Isaacs, Exec Director and GM, AT&T Interactive
* Jaan Janes, CEO, Pulse 360
* Joelle Kaufman, SVP, Marketing, Adify
* Warren Kay, VP, Local, Fox Audience Network
* David Kidder, Cofounder and CEO, Clickable
* Tony Lee, Chief Alliance Officer, Adicio
* Colin Pape, CEO, ShopCity.com
* Ben Saren, Cofounder and CEO, CitySquares
* Julie Smith, Group Product Manager, SuperMedia
* Mat Stover, CEO, Local Matters
* David Vazdauskas, President, Local Thunder

Do you think it will be a great conference? Do you think you can do major business? Please get more info here; or sign up to register here. Rates are better in advance than at the door.

Moreover, the site has an archive of 8. 5 million reviews about three million businesses, and the brand and its reputation now help to break in a wide number of new markets. The brand is also extended via the “Weekly Yelp” newsletters in every market, TV interviews with community managers, and other sources. BIA/Kelsey estimates that Yelp earned between $35 to $50 million in annual revenue, but the company has comment on the estimate.

Intrviewed by BIA/Kelsey SVP Matt Booth, COO Geoff Donaker said that Yelp’s well syndicated reviews are roughly 29 percent made up of restaurants, while retailers make up about 22 percent. “Then you get into the long tail of everything else…beauty, gyms, and things like that. Night life is small on a review basis.” But the relatively small quantity makes sense, as it does for services as well. “I tend to go to more meals than have root canals,” he observed.

The percentage of revenues from every category roughly follows the number of reviews in every category, he said. “We are not chasing any particular category for reviews.” Donaker noted, however, that it tends to take 18-36 months before “you get enough density for reviews to be useful.”

In terms of organization, Yelp now has 300 employees. Roughly 200 are working with its core constituency of SMBs for account management, ad ops and sales people. “Most of the sales people are inside, and they talk mostly over the phone. Most local advertisers are kind of ready to do businesses over the phone,” said Donaker – although “if they spend six figures, we’ll fly to them.”

Donaker also says that business has “been good. We’ve been profitable in the summer and fall, but we’ll go unprofitable again through next year. We want to expand through next year.

Looking forward, Donaker sees rich opportunity from mobile services, including its “Monocle” augmented realty feature, which allows users to point at a businesses using the compass and camera feature of iPhone. But Donaker said that such a feature is really only useful in a dense urban environment. “You don’t need it when you are on strip like Santa Monica Blvd.,” that is relatively unpopulated, he said.

Donaker also noted with amusement the fuss over Google’s new Favorite Places sticker, which has been distributed to 100,000 businesses and allows mobile users to scan over them and see reviews. Yelp has been distributing decals for several years, but they only go to less than ten percent of highly rated Yelp businesses. “This is a different kind of decal,” he says.