Gadgets Blog » EZLocal: a Search Engine for Local Businesses

While names like Google, Yahoo, and Bing immediately come to mind at the mention of a search engine, the fact of the matter is they are not perfect entities. Large search engines can do a great job of finding a particular website or photo, but when it comes to finding local businesses, the information provided can oftentimes be underwhelming.

The major engines have attempted to correct this via user ratings and reviews, but EZLocal.com takes things in a new direction. Branding itself as the first “with’ engine, which means it provides information on what services businesses have available, the company recently announced that it had been granted a patent for its idea.

The concept for adding a ‘with’ parameter to local search was born out of the insight that online consumers often know exactly what they want before they conduct a search. Up until our product release, search engines like Google and Yahoo and top Internet yellow page sites were not effectively organizing and delivering this. We overhauled our search algorithm to address this disconnect between user and data, and in the process created something highly useful,” said vice president of Marketing David Casper in a press release issued earlier this week.. “The applications and future scaling of this technology are capable of reshaping the way online business information is searched for, organized and delivered.

The exact method for this sort of With searching comes in the form of brightly-colored icons denoting things such as hours of operation and whether or not the business accepts credit cards. These icons, in the patented part of EZLocal, are called Zuluz. An article from CNBC offered detail on how this process works.

You’re looking to find a pizza place that’s both “open late” and “accepts credit cards.” Before, no matter what site you used, this would normally take several search steps – assuming this information was even available. Now, with EZlocal, you can do this all at once. Type in “pizza,” “your town or zip” and choose as many Zuluz categories as you want to get the search results you’re looking for — in one easy step.

EZLocal is currently engaged in a marketing push to get independent businesses to add their location and information to the EZLocal database. By having the focus of their business be on business location instead of web searching, the real companies at threat here are the phonebook makers, like the Yellow Pages. Will EZLocal be able to cut into this market? Their idea certainly has the possibility to.

Image Source: flickr.com/photos/pixeljones/24563726

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5. Microsoft Bests Google Maps with Street Slide?
6. Blekko Takes on Google and Bing
7. Where’d They Go? How Google “Lost” a Florida City
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9. Order Domino’s Pizza Through a Text Message