Heise.de (www.heise.de) announced on December 10 that the search engine giant Yahoo (www.yahoo.de) has announced that it will begin taking local information into consideration in searches starting in 2005. The function is made possible through co-operation with Dasortliche (www.dasoertliche.de), the online version of the German White and Yellow Pages. This partnership applies to searches for people and companies.
When a user starts a search with a combination of a term and a location on Yahoo's homepage or uses the presetting "local search", which is on an index card above the search field, Yahoo then displays hits from the database of Dasortliche.
Yahoo then displays the first four hits directly in the hit list. If the surfer then clicks on the link "display all local hits", the entire list of hits from the Dasortliche database is displayed. In return, the industry directory includes the Yahoo search in its pages.
The local search is considered a crucial issue in the recent search engine battles. In the American versions of their search services, the big three Google, Yahoo and MSN, already offer this function. But up to now, people in Germany have only been able to perform local searches directly in industry directories such as Dasortliche or www.YellowMap.de and in city directories such as www.meinestadt.de.
