travel, hotel and booking Information

Yahoo! Launches Local Search Beta: An Innovative Way for People to Search for Local Information Online

New Product Leverages Yahoo! Search Technology and Comprehensive Local Content for a Precise and Useful Local Search Experience

Hotel Booking SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 3, 2004-- Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, today released a beta of Yahoo!(R) Local, available at http://local.yahoo.com. Building on Yahoo!'s position as the most popular local destination on the Internet(1), Yahoo! Local integrates proprietary Yahoo! Search Technology, leading Yellow Pages and maps offerings, and unique third party and user-generated content, to create an improved local search experience for consumers -- all in one place.
"A great search experience is about more than just offering users relevant and comprehensive Web search results. It's also about creating an experience where we can quickly and easily provide users the answers they are seeking, whether it's the best Italian restaurant in their neighborhood or the nearest museums while traveling," said Jeff Weiner, senior vice president of Yahoo! Search and Marketplace. "This beta launch marks just the beginning of what we are capable of achieving with local and will continue to leverage our world-class search technology and content to provide the most valuable category-specific search solutions for our users."

Target your local audience. Submit your site to local search engine programs like Google® Local, Yahoo!® Local, Live Search (MSN) and Local.com". mortar businesses only; only businesses. Or use Traffic Blazer to submit your blog to more than 75 blog search engines and directories.

Travel Agency "As part of Yahoo!'s commitment to providing the best search experience on the Web, consumers now have a more powerful way to find local information," said Paul Levine, general manager, Yahoo! Local. "Building on the debut of our innovative SmartView(TM) maps feature earlier this year, the beta release of Yahoo! Local reinforces our commitment to improving the way people find local content online."

Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture Services, Inc.) offers an advertising service referred to as Local Sponsored Search. Advertisements in the Local Sponsored Search service typically are listings for advertiser establishments located in the search user's geographic area. The listing usually will provide information concerning the local establishment, such as its location and hours of operation, but will not provide a Website specific to the location referred to in the listing. The advertiser must be offering products for sale at the location that bear the trademark they have bid on as a search term. Because Local Sponsored Search listings generally will not be tied to a Web site that can be reviewed for relevance, Yahoo! Search Marketing uses a different procedure to resolve trademark concerns.

Cheap Hotel New Benefits of Yahoo! Local

With Overture search advertising you target customers actively searching for what you sell. List Your Site with Overture and appear at the top of search results on leading sites like Yahoo!, MSN and Alta Vista. Overture search advertising reaches over 80% of active Internet users on sites like Yahoo! And now, they also can target your traffic to Local Searches. So, you can drive more foot traffic to your store.

Flight Booking Available today, the Yahoo! Local beta provides users with improved:

As group travel gurus, we take our group expertise and combine it with some technical knowhow to bring you hotel searches that are best suited for your group type. We understand that different groups have different needs in a hotel. That why we ask for your group type upfront. We use that information to deliver hotels in your search that represent the best combination of amenities, hotel class, location, and price. The hotels that appear first are the hotels best matched for your group.

Travel Agent -- Precision: When looking for local information, consumers have indicated that precision is paramount. Yahoo! is the first to develop a local service from the ground up with precision in mind. Users can now pinpoint businesses and services around an address or zip code - letting the user define their exact location. Yahoo! Local also features unique narrowing tools that allow users to quickly refine local searches - by distance, rating, category, and more.

shop travel booking engine searching for you the best travel deals throughout the entire web. Hotel search and booking capability through the most innovative satellite map searching system Earn easy money with zero investment and no technical know how. Commissions paid immediately after customer's date of booking. No delays like with other affiliate programs.

Hotel Chicago -- Comprehensiveness and Freshness: Yahoo! Local starts with more than 14 million businesses found in Yahoo! Yellow Pages - from dry cleaners and dentists to florists and fine dining - and integrates valuable information like store hours, accepted payment methods and products offered. Yahoo! Local also includes professional restaurant reviews, photos, and menus, as well as content from other areas of Yahoo! (like information about movies, tickets and hotels), to offer a more engaging and comprehensive product. Additionally, the product leverages Yahoo! Search Technology to identify official Web sites for local businesses and crawls those sites for content to create a richer, more relevant search experience.

Online Booking -- Usefulness: With SmartView, a new visual search tool, consumers can use a dynamic map to see where businesses or points of interest are located in relation to each other. For example, one can find a day spa to visit, and plot nearby ATM machines and restaurants on the same map. For some categories such as hotels and restaurants, consumers can even take the next step by making reservations directly through Yahoo! Local.

Travel Health Insurance -- Community Voice: Users can now rate and review almost every business in the country - from dry cleaners and dentists to florists and fine dining establishments. Consumers can also use the "email a friend" feature to share their favorite businesses or services with others who are in - or are planning to visit - their neighborhood.

Hotel Reservation -- Personalization: Yahoo! Local provides users the opportunity to save their most frequently used locations or view most recently used locations and quickly and easily access that information each time they do a new search.

London Hotel Booking High Consumer Demand and Expectation

Discount Travel The Kelsey Group estimates that as many as 20 to 25 percent of all Internet searches have a local intent.

Orlando Hotel "Consumers are increasingly looking for local information online, but the local search experience has generally failed to deliver against user expectations," said Greg Sterling, analyst and program director, The Kelsey Group. "Yahoo! is bringing together its formidable strengths in search and local content in an easy-to-use and tightly integrated format that ultimately delivers a much better local experience for consumers."

Booking Agency About Yahoo!

International Travel Medical Yahoo! Inc. is a leading provider of comprehensive online products and services to consumers and businesses worldwide. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo!'s global network includes 25 world properties and is available in 13 languages.

New York Hotel Yahoo!, the Yahoo! logo and SmartView are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc.

Online Travel Booking All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners. (1) Nielsen NetRatings, June 2004

Travel Medical Insurance Contacts

Miami Hotel
Yahoo! Inc.
Terra Carmichael
terra@yahoo-inc.com
or
Fleishman Hillard for Yahoo! Inc.
Tara Kirchner, 415-318-4121
kirchnet@fleishman.com

[ Comment, Edit or Article Submission ]