Local SEO Predictions 2010 | Local SEO Guide

This has been an obsession of mine since early Praized days in 2006…

The Open Source Yellow Pages Will Emerge…

Business listing data online has traditionally been severely fragmented. Different sites have different business names, phone numbers, website URLs, hours of operations, services, etc. The backend data suppliers like Localeze, InfoUSA & Acxiom have done an ok job of trying to become the source of truth for business listings, but ultimately the world really needs a single source for the so-called golden record for each business. Twitter looks like it’s about to become that source. It’s recent purchase of MixerLabs and their GeoAPI product is the yellow pages API I have been whining about for the past year or so.

If this rolls out the way I think it will, Twitter will now become the central clearinghouse for a huge portion of local data. The data providers, yellow pages publishers, ad agencies will still play a part, controlling what proprietary info they feed into the system, but pretty much any application that involves local businesses will use the Twitter system, so much so that if you aren’t using it, your product will seem deficient. Mastering the inputs and outputs of this system will become a key differentiator for local marketers in ‘010.

Via Andrew Shotland – Local SEO predictions for 2010