Posts Tagged ‘Suchdienste’
Yahoo! Maps is now multilingual
20 Mar. 2009 | Author: 
The USA version of Yahoo! Maps, the local search, map and route portal operated by Yahoo! is now speaking in German, among other languages!
In December 2008, Yahoo! expanded the international coverage of its USA-version (see our post), and as they announced then, 2009 would follow with further innovations.
The changes have started to be implemented: since an update in February, users are able to display the Yahoo! Maps website in several different languages. This was announced by Yahoo! staffer Gus Maldonado in the Yahoo! Geo Technologies Blog. Languages can be selected using the “Language” menu item [surprise!] on the right side of the map view, offering French, Italian, Spanish and German, alongside the original English. Further one is now able to display route distances in either miles or kilometers.
However, this service is not yet really implemented, for example, for Germany. The route planner for Germany recognizes a tiny selection of locations, and local search doesn’t function at all for Germany. For German-speaking Yahoo! users, it is better to use Yahoo!’s local search German-version de.local.yahoo.com and the German-version route planner de.routeplanner.yahoo.com.
Posted in Local Search on the go, Local Search, News, Practical features | 
Tags: Deutsch, Routenplaner, Routenplanung, Routenportal, Suchdienst, Suchdienste, Yahoo, Yahoo! Maps, Local Search | 
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Qype speaks Spanish
Qype is becoming more international: a year after its German launch in early 2006, Qype followed with a launch in Britain, and in early 2008 in France. In summer 2008, portals for Switzerland and Austria appeared on the web, and recently Qype made its Spanish debut.
Qype-CEO Stephan Uhrenmacher, made this announcement in the company blog. Not only Spanish nationals profit from this launch – other speakers will benefit from the new content, such as businesses, hotels and restaurants in Barcelona, Madrid and elsewhere.
With this latest launch, the local search and rating platform is now available in four language-editions: German, English, French and now Spanish.
Posted in Local Search per PC, Local Search, News |
Tags: Beurteilung, Bewertungsplattform, Community, lokale Informationen, Nutzerbewertung, Qype, Spanien, Spanisch, Suchdienste, User Generated Content |
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European Alliance for borderless Location Based Services
Location Based Services (LBS) as well as mobile location, will be offered cross-borders in the future. The German LBS provider Mecomo has joined with three European partners in the field of mobile local search, and formed the “Open Location Alliance” at the beginning of September 2008.
The Unterschleißheim-based (Munich) undertaking announced this in a recent press release. The founder partners, aside from Mecomo which offers local content and mobile services for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, are Mobile Commerce (for the United Kingdom), Visibilly, the Sweden-based company which also covers Norway and Finland, and Deveryware (for France).
Through this cooperation, the aim is to offer easily accessed localized applications and information in multiple European countries, from individual cell phones/mobile devices, said Mecomo. Further, the intention of the alliance is to draw up combined guidelines for cooperation, as well as business models, and develop technologies so as the expand the field of mobile localized services. Additional partners are being considered for the coalition, so as to expand to cover the widest possible geographic area possible.
Dialo.de: New look and revised navigation
Dialo.de, the local search and ratings service, had a relaunch in August 2008, beautifying the internet presence and optimizing its navigation.
Users are thus enabled with a faster overview of the site, says the service provider Dialo GmbH & Co. Kg in a press release. The site overhaul has placed the map search in a higher position on the start page, thereby relegating the City Guides to a stronger position in the center of the portal. The City Guides link is now not only in the right hand navigation bar, but also in the middle of the page in a tab, adjacent to the Branch-directory search. The City Guides provide users with city general information, photos and a selection of local top offerings.
The search option “Name zu Nummer” (reverse search) is no longer available; this previously returned the name and address of entered telephone numbers. Another lost feature is the ‘Person Search’ tab, which appears, however, only once a search has been started, within the results list.
The noted website however also introduces a new Web 2.0 service: according to Dialo GmbH, firms, craftspeople and service providers are now able to place advertisements on this ratings platform, via wallpaper and banners.
SEO for local search services: a fiercely contested battle for the top rankings
Recently the latest edition of the Search Engine Marketing Index SUMAXX was released. In the category “local search”, much has changed in the period since the last analysis.
Although there are numerous local search services, many users, seeking local search results, continue to use the web-search giants Google and Yahoo. Therefore it is important for operators of local search and online branch directories, to have their services reflected in the generated results (of the giants). For this sector, SEO (search engine optimization) is the magic word. SUMAXX indicates those providers who have successfully optimized their pages, frequently being found among the top results of the most important German web search engines,
The rankings (including local search services, among many other branches of the business) are assembled quarterly by the Search Engine Marketing agency Bloofusion Germany GmbH (see an earlier post). The 1st Quarter 2008 results are now available.
In the segment “Local Search”, Bloofusion notes much movement in the first 3 months of 2008, in comparison to the last quarter of 2007. Stadtbranchenbuch.com and goyellow.de have moved up two places to places one and two respectively. The online-directory gelbeseiten.de also has attained improved SEO, thus shunting up five positions to the new #3 position, followed by cylex.de and yahoo.com. The big loser with respect to SEO, according to SUMAXX, is the city-portal meinestadt.de, which slipped from position 2 to 10. On the other hand, the highest rank newcomer is local search machine suchen.de, which moved up nine places to position 7. Yellowmap.de also managed to find its way into the Top Ten in place 8. The ninth ranking was gained by dasoertliche.de
