The Yahoo search and content information has now undergone some changes which will improve on how local content is served to users of the service. The content is now better focused on local results and will have options to revert back to global results if the user of the service wishes to revert back to the other option. One of these local content sources is based on local news which is important to nearly all users of Yahoo who use it to find information about news. With local search results being implemented with a much better results algorithm, searches will be targeted and more accurately served to users of the service.
The possibility of getting local news right to your inbox and other Yahoo services is simply a great opportunity for those who use the services often to learn more about their news. The appropriate use of various sources to provide high quality localized content is really a big step that Yahoo is taking to help improve the function of its service and increase the number of users it has based on the local content interest. Yahoo will also be showing interest in local advertising which will show advertisements based on the location of the users of the service towards the relation to the advertiser’s location.
Yahoo has been trying to find a way to stay relevant in today’s net culture. They still have one of the most popular homepages, but the amount of content you can find, sift through, and get lost in is completely crazy. I feel that the local move is great to try and be more relevant, but the amount of content, services, and complete chaos that can come from trying to find something on Yahoo needs to be looked at as well. They are simply to big and bloated in my opinion, and to couple that with the lack of many real products, minus Answers and Flickr.
Local search is extremely important, but for Yahoo to really dominate in it they need to be aggregating all of the content that is local. They need a Yelp like service, Google News for local service (even for those people in small towns and regions), and they need to keep it up to date. The problem with a lot of this local content is it is always dated, usually months old for smaller towns. If they can get past that part of it, they will be ahead of the game in my opinion.
