The Local Search Business in India – Traffic Check
The local search business in India, by all means is still ‘lopsided with only few players able to make a mark, and monetize their service. Here is a roundup of what local search business players are upto.
Justdial – The site has moved to Alexa Rank 60(India) mostly owing to aggressive television advertising. The company is creating a lot of awareness amongst small business users about their services on web and voice. Not much is happening in terms of new strategies or features.
Asklaila– Asklaila by all means must be considered the leader in this segment. Given that it covers only 12 cities and already enjoys an Alexa rank of 200(India) should sound the alert bells for Justdial. They have started monetizing through lead generation in some categories and cities. The company has done well in tying up with portals like Reuters, MSN and ACK. Asklaila’s success on web lies mostly in its SEO efforts.
Yahoo Local- Currently covering 7 cities. They changed their interface claiming to use some vibrant colors and highlighting major categories but personally speaking the site looks sick and doesn’t entail any user engagement.
Local Search Business in India - Traffic Check
Metromela- Currently covering 11 cities. The interface is really well executed. The company also publishes a monthly magazine and is concentrating on discount coupon distribution. They have a permanent user reward program to get user reviews on local businesses which is really doing well.
Burrp!- Got acquired by Infomedia18 and CNBC is taking care of their promotion on TV, though not very aggressively. The site is now being offered at in.com’s my city section. The company is doing everything from publishing magazine to offering deals and coupons. They are probably not worried about any cash (web18 is launching it’s own local search portal, using Burrp).
Onyomo– One thing that sets Onyomo apart from the crowd is that this is the only non VC funded company covered here. The company has being doing some small promo campaigns once in a while but not very aggressively. They had launched an app on FaceBook which again isn’t doing well. In terms of technology and execution the company isn’t poor at all but when it comes to marketing they take back seat probably because of being low on cash. They have completed 4 year of existence and still managing to stay alive is really appreciable. The site’s movie search is undoubtedly the best amongst all players. The company is currently involved in developing a new product targeting international audience (can’t talk much about it now) so the local search has been side lined for the time being.
I am not covering Google, Guruji and Sulekha as their local search strategies are integrated within their overall offerings.
Local Search Business in India - Traffic Check [Alexa
What’s your opinion on the local search market? Who are the winners in this space? How much of your local business search needs happens via web (as compared to phone?)
Disclaimer: I have been closely associated with Onyomo for the past 2 years.
Recent updates in local search market:
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Related posts:
- Traffic Stats of Indian Local Search Services – Who is Heading North?
- India’s Local Search Market in 2009 – Milestones/Failures & The Road Ahead
- AskLaila to power local search on Airtel – Mobile, Airtel Live and DTH
- OnYoMo powers Reliance’s Local Search on Mobile
- Burrp Launches Small Business Service – Receive Business Page Statistics, Activity..and more
About the author - Naman is a consumer web expert and helps startups with understanding consumer behavior and UX design. Follow @eViral
Dude, your analysis is so biased in places. You’ve made sweeping statements about Justdial and Yahoo (No strategies, sick UI etc) without any major data points for validation. This is exactly the reason why TechCrunch like sites beat our best tech portals hands down. You’ll never see a word like “sick” on TechCrunch.
-A
@ajay: It says “Not much is happening in terms of new strategies or features.” That means “no new strategy or no strategy change” and it does not mean “no strategy”.
And the Yahoo UI is really “SICK”. See the color combination, does it look “vibrant” as claimed by Yahoo. And the design is a “chaos”.
Well..if their UI is sick..whats the harm in calling it sick?
As far as strategy is concerned, isnt that visible, i.e. lack of strategy?
I agree that Yahoo missed the boat – the icons are pretty tacky (like Rediff) and there don’t seem to be too many reviews. Even Yelp is hardly very vibrant, but definitely more consistent and buzzy. I wonder if Justdial is just keeping its strategies under wraps.
Personally I like the Onyomo logo and visual design, especially the Solve the Movie jumble – a lot of it comes down to the play & conversation with users.
I’m surprised to see its comparison with other local search engines when it has only 15 Restaurants, 0 ATMs and 0 Banks in Bangalore city.
I’m surprised to see MetroMela’s comparison with other local search engines when it has only 15 Restaurants, 0 ATMs and 0 Banks in Bangalore city.
You guys might want to have a look at http://www.eventnu.com Its not a local search but provides pretty good information about local events..
I like their UI..
@Naman: I don’t know who is going to be the ultimate winner, but I surely feel that this area is alive and buzzing. Another player – http://www.greenmango.co.in
I prefer calling JustDial for any info i need pronto.. movie listings, businesses’ ..been using their service since lets see 5 years i think.
Burrp has excellent restaurant and the best feature i like on it is their TV listings, its very user friendly.. errr, and addictive too!
[...] a few. And then there are sites which work more as directory listings. Pluggd.in recently had a good overview (with specific numbers) of the state of local search entities – AskLaila, Onyomo, Yahoo [...]
Hi guys
i stumbled across Findnearyou.com a couple of months back and it is really good. I dont know what happened but those simply wnet and changed the UI and missed out on cities they were covering. The new UI is great but i am kind of wondering -what to do next…Guys at findnearyou -wake up you have a great name and promising UI great events coverage but way to go