Comments on: Google Maps Vs. Yahoo Local Smackdown from a programmer’s perspective

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:45:07 +0000

He was comparing buisness listings between Yahoo Local and Google maps in a specific industry which presumably has a very high business website penetration level.

So while the basic info was roughly comparable Google's ability to attach a website/business abstract to that listing was an order of magnitude better.

I presume that while both companies index roughly equal amounts of the web, and buy similar business lists and other business data, it appears that Google's ability to match those disparate data sources and types into a single whole business record is better.

I would agree that if that is in fact the case they will become defacto leaders in local as well...

Mike

By: earlpearl

earlpearl — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:22:52 +0000

That is interesting. Did your programmer friend look at only one topic in one community or did he/she look at more than one topic.

I would have assumed that both Yahoo and Google assembled data from the same sources and number of sources but a difference between 90% and 52% is significant.

What is going on? Is google processing information better? Is it cleaning information better? Are more businesses contacting google local business center and updating information than contacting Yahoo Local and doing the same?

If google is doing a better job of entering and collecting data than it will be the more authoritative source by a long shot.

Dave