Local Search | Jennifer Lind

On Thursday I attended a Webinar from ZipLocal. On the call, our ZipLocal reps ran through their site, the products, and service areas.

ZipLocal is one of Canada’s largest local business search directories with over 1.3 million business listings across Canada.

Unique features of Ziplocal.com include:

• adding pre-populated, related keywords to your category searches
• BestPicks, which are generated by user voting that occurs on an on-going basis (rather than other sites who only update once per year)
• easy to view profiles of ZipPeople
• neighborhood & city search
• proximity search
• user reviews remain on for all advertisers. ZipLocal has not had major issues with negative reviews. Most people use reviews on their site as a way to promote the businesses they like.
• French bi-lingual site

ZipLocal Partners include: LavaLife, Astral Media, Urban Mapping, Careerbuilder, Sweetspot.ca, etc.

One comment that really got my attention – one of the ZipLocal reps commented that there is no tolerance for error in local search. ZipLocal prides itself on having the most relevant information. Their system searches the internet for any changes and quickly updates their site. I don’t know how many times I have found a business and drove to the store only to find nothing there, or called a number that was disconnected, etc. This is very frustrating and looks poorly on the business rather than the search tool.

Another comment I found interesting is that ZipLocal claims to have minimal duplication over major competitors. 98% of ZipLocal users do not visit Canpages.ca, over 70% of ZipLocal users do not visit Yellowpages.ca, and 55% do not use Google Maps to find local businesses. If you are a Canada business, and you’re not advertising on ZipLocal, there is a high chance you are missing potential customers.

When will ZipLocal start servicing the US?