How Does BlitzLocal Compare with CitySearch and MerchantCircle – two of the largest directories?
CitySearch Overview
Citysearch is a major local directory player owned by IAC–the same company that runs Ticketmaster, ask.com, and match.com. They’ve been steadily losing market share– from 19MM monthly visitors 2 years ago to 7MM visitors last month. When I checked a year ago, their sales team was selling flat rate clicks across all categories for about a dollar, then using second tier search engines to buy cheap clicks, thereby creating an arb play.
A fixed price per click would seem to insulate the local client from fluctuations in bid prices. However, what actually happens is that it creates an incentive for the agency to buy the cheapest clicks possible, since that enhances their profit. With no call tracking, nobody is the wiser.
Recently, CitySearch partnered with MySpace to offer MySpace Local, where CitySearch licenses part of their 18 million directory listings and does a revshare. MySpace is taking only restaurants, bars, and clubs– so this is not a listing opportunity for BlitzLocal, which is more focused on doctors and lawyers. But MySpace does offer self-serve PPC, a weaker version of Facebook’s tool.
Listings Page Comparisons
Back to CitySearch–here’s what their actual listing page looks like. Note that the ads are somewhat hidden and the navigational elements are very heavy.
Here’s MerchantCircle’s sample listings page, ad supported, but not too bad.
Here’s blitzlocal’s sample analyst page, compare to merchantcircle.com’s example analyst page, called a Marketing Advisor. We’ll be cleaning up our pages even more when we transition to the new system.
