YepMe : a true deep dive local search engine
In my earlier review of Indian local search market, few points came out very strongly:
- You can’t really beat Google in the local search by *claiming” to have a better algo (beat them at the global level first),
- And the only way one can beat Google is to either build more services around search or do a real deep dive in the local market.
YepMe, an Indian startup is taking the latter route and has done a deep local search of Delhi region (you can even find a barber or scrap dealer in Delhi!)
YepMe has organized searches based on few categories – Restaurants/Nightlife and Bars/Hotels/Shopping/Beauty & Wellness/Movies and Events; and has built contextual info based on categories, i,e.
- If you are searching for restaurant, you can filter the search results by looking for meal with two in price range of 500/1000 etc; liquor (yes/no)
- Similarly, for nighlife/bars, you can filter by the price of beer as well as type of music (indian/western/mixed)
- for movies – filter by language/show timings
The UI is intuitive and easy to register on your brains (repetitive queries made me realize the idea behind categories) and they have used minimal AJAX to keep the interface simpler.
YepMe also has a mobile version – send YEPME <cityname> <query> to 53030
Overall, excellent execution and a true deep dive search. What’s your take?
YepMe is currently available only in New Delhi, Faridabad, Gurgaon and Noida.
tags: yepme, local
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
excellent UI, very intuitive. But i can’t help noticing simillarity with San Francisco centric http://www.yelp.com . all these local search sites are getting Data from Infomedia . is it true for YepMe too ??
with that factor being common to all the sites we are only left with a single differentiator involvement of community …… in review and recommendation it would be interesting to see how they address this issue .
Prashant – Looking at the depth of their data, I really don’t think they are sourcing it just from infomedia.
I “hope’ they are going beyond that!
Reading your blog from Netvibes – and I can’t see an option to share your stories from the feed. Could you add it in? Would be very useful.
Thanks and keep up the great work
Thanks Ravi for that info (somehow the option was disabled from the feedburner). Have enabled this option!
-Ashish
Glad to help
As Prashant pointed out, the data and the community is an important part of the game. It is good to see that they are taking the “browsing” route as compared to “searching”.
A user searches something when he knows what exactly he wants, but if you are exploring new stuff, browsing helps. Say if I want to find about a particular restaurant or a cuisine, searching can help me. However, if I want to eat something good, doesn’t matter what cuisine or restaurant name it is, I need to browse and see my options.
I searched for some stuff in Faridabad on YepMe ad OnYoMo (I used it 2nd time today). I barely found any listings on YepMe. Hopefully they are in the process of getting more data.
You need to be logged in to send a listing to a mobile or to a friend. I think this is synonymous to curbing your growth. Open up and let visitors (not just users) help you grow.
Ashish maybe you should do a post on sites that are blatantly copying not just ideas but UIs from already popular US sites….
@ sunil : Look at this
http://tinyurl.com/2a82um
than check this
http://tinyurl.com/133x
its great fun
@Prashanth – this is just too coool!! great find!
thats awesome thanks Prashant….
its refreshing to see that India’s internet industry is following in the footsteps of Bollywood (copy from the west)…..we should put Anu Malik in the hall of fame….
@Ashish,Sunil
this is a discovery by Madhu
http://themadman.livejournal.com/23599.html
really its a great stuff Prashant….tc
http://www.yepme.com is in bangalore too…. did you people check some of the features like Malls, Events, Sales and Movies….. its really a great stuff…. these people are covering each and every Mall and its not there in any other site…. feel good… i think that these people are on right track…. in my view this is the right concept first they should concentrate on these cities and then launch any other city….
“all these local search sites are getting Data from Infomedia”.
Do you think they will just be copying this data from Infomedia or will they be buying it from them for commercial use?
I feel there is no problem in either of the two ways. As the listing information is basically public information…just that it is easier to copy it from an organized source.
Can someone throw more light on this, especially, if there seem to be any copyright issues in copying such data?
very true… but i think with these people copieng is not the only source and the reason behind this is… i was searching for gurgaon central mall which was recently opened in Gurgaon… and its really ammazing that the data of gurgaon central was no where except yepme and not only 30 or 40 brands they have aprox 190 brands there with floor wise description….. i tried it in google too and unable to found a single entry of it….. so wat was that…. i know copieng is the simplest source of getting data but if there is no data availabe any where so where a person can copy…… i dnt know that i am right or wrong, i am just putting my views….tc
Yepme is good
Neel as you are saying that all of these people are copieng data from Infomedia…. do you ever check the data of Infomedia…. i dont think that they are update old phone nos also…. i have a copy of infomedia on my desk and you cant belive there are some Delhi phone nos which are only seven digits…. my good how can these people do this, today i dnt think that there is any seven digit no exist in Delhi…..tc
“Do you think they will just be copying this data from Infomedia or will they be buying it from them for commercial use?”
I believe that these companies are Buying /Partnering with Info media ..copying DATA ( As in from Yellow Pages /Business Directory ) and then Digitizing them is a very costly and time consuming process . keeping that data updated is another problem
But i understand that AskLaila is investing heavily in collecting data by door to door data collection ..
So, what I understand from the above posts is that copying data is not a problem (legally) but it has its own limitations such as data being old or time required to copy it. Buy data /partnering is an easier solution if the source is reliable.
I have another question in mind which actually related to review and rating services in general. Ashish it will be really great if you can cover this topic separately also. The question is:
‘If you I write a bad review about a service, say a restaurant, am I protected by law?
Of course, those guys can come and beat me up, but generally, am I protected, or is it possible for them to file a compliant against me? While reviewing a similar website in the US, I noticed that the particular mentionned that as along as your facts are correct, you are protected by ‘So and so law). Can’t remember the name of the law. Similarly under which law in India will people writing reviews will be protected?
Thanks,
Manish
This yepme is a 100% copied website. i am very sure about this. They have copied data from various sources & that is the trick.Times of india’s India food guide is one of them.
Kapil i agree, This is a copied stuff. i know lot of similar websites providing even more info then them. One of them is http://www.gontry.com. Infact this gontry.com is also providing a free discount card to all its members. With this card you can avail discounts at restaurants in Delhi & NCR. I never used it but heard from my friend that it works!!