Yellow Pages Like You Have Never Seen Before

You have got to see this!!

Amazon subsidiary A9 has rolled out a new Yellow Pages service that allows users to view pictures of the storefronts and locations of businesses in 10 cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle and cities in the San Francisco Bay area.

"We allow people from their computer to look at the street, to walk to the left, to walk to the right, to see the neighborhood, to see parking. It's virtually like you're there," A9 President Udi Manber told Search Engine Watch. "Pictures get you information faster than any other way. Very often you remember a place but not its name. This is a very easy way to find it."

Indeed, search on "Art" for instance, and the site returns a list of stores in the city you select, a map showing where they are, and a photo panorama of the city block in which each of those businesses is located (pedestrians and all). Click on the photo and you can virtually stroll down that block, getting a feel for the neighborhood while thanking fate that you weren't one of those poor camera-equipped interns sent out to document the urban landscape.

So what's in this for Amazon? Right now, not much more than the satisfaction of stealing a march on Google, which owns its own digital mapping company, Keyhole, and is no doubt cooking up something that involves search, maps, pictures and ads. I suspect one day it may take commission fees for referrals to bricks-and-mortar stores. Or it will begin charging for "Click to Call, " a feature that lets customers phone a business at the click of a mouse, for free.

Says John Battelle, who runs the widely read Searchblog: "This is one small step away from a pay-per-call model, which is one of the most sought-after features from businesses."

Others see an untapped market for a mobile version. "This service should be formatted so that cell phones can access the service, not just computers, because the chance of using this on a cell phone will be much higher," Mark Anderson, the publisher of the tech newsletter Strategic News Service, told the Seattle Post Intelligencer. "I think we need the info, but I am not sure that it has been offered in a way that has been useful, such as in the right devices. I think these things are kind of spontaneous, because I am more likely to be in the streets when I want to know where the nearest Italian restaurant is."

To see an example, go to:
http://www.a9.com/art

This will take you to a search on art stores. From here, you can type any subject you want and the city you want to search. Have fun.