Best of the Web
:BOTW Local Beta
Best of the Web
Best of the Web (BOTW) has recently announced the launch of BOTW Local Beta on June 18th 2008. While this will still be considered as a Beta release, BOTW Local shows you exactly what a quality local search experience should be like.
Since 1994 BOTW has been providing its users with a clean & quality directory to search through. While the original BOTW directory still offers comprehensive regional listings, BOTW Local provides extra listing opportunities for all brick and mortar businesses – including those that doesn’t even have a online presence yet.
The Logical Extension of Local Search
A web directory that contains some regional categorization is simply great. Using Google Maps and more than 16 million local listings, BOTW Local accomplishes what only few others have been able to. They’ve created a very robust, free local listing service that will fight against other local search platforms and could eventually make some antiquated Internet Yellow Pages useless.
How to “Jump Start†Your Listings
To get started with Best of the Web Local, you’ll first need to head on over to the Jump Start area. Jump Start allows business owners and managers to create free profiles for their local businesses. These profiles will increase their online visibility, especially for locations that do not have dedicated web sites or any sort of online presence.
While Jump Start is currently free for all users, you can also choose to opt in for a premium listing at a minimal cost.
That doesn’t mean the free version is weak though… In fact, BOTW Local’s free listings allows a business owner to publish their business phone numbers, hours of operation and they also have a option where users can provide ratings on your establishment and many more.
Businesses who opt for upgraded listings for $9.95 will receive VIP placement in the local results along with ability to list out products & services, website addresses, email and additional phone numbers as well as any coupons or special promotions you may have going on.
For those looking for even more exposure, Sponsored Category Listing services is also available starting at $15.95 per month.
Notes for Search Marketers
Many search marketers and link builders will be looking to purchase listings for the sake of increasing some relevant link popularity efforts or perhaps to saturate branded or local search results on other engines. It’s worth noting Greg Hartnett’s notes on the size of the site and just how much it’s being crawled / indexed by the search engines:
The site is huge – like 16.5 million pages. So in an effort to not scare the hell out of the spiders we’re doing a somewhat slow roll out. Most of the site still contains “no-spider†tags. Thus far, we have only introduced the spiders to the following markets: Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Chicago and Austin. As we feel comfortable with the indexing and crawl rate of each market introduced, we introduce more. So far so good with tens of thousands of pages indexed, and many many pages ranking very well. More cities coming soon.
