AOL Local Search feature. First thing I put in our city and then tried to locate our insurance office which is located on the main street in town. Should be easy to find, right? We’re in the phone books and have been in business for over 10 years. I put in my name, then the company name but unfortunately it didn’t return the listing.  Only when I put in the lesser generic word: “insurance” did our information come up (our office is two of the three listings for our town, nice!).

I changed the location to “Puyallup, WA” which is where our online business is domiciled and tried searching for “movies.” I noticed a couple of common features like the weather, but I already have that displayed via Desktop Sidebar. I wonder, really, who cares about the current weather locally when you can just look outside? A forecast of the future weather is more useful, and fortunately AOL figured this out and provides a two day forecast — nice. More quick thoughts:

• There is an events tab in the search results that integrates nicely with Mapquest to show specifically where events are held.
• The family activity planner isn’t new but is linked from within the search results when you query “movies” for example. This offers different local activities available like attractions, bowling alleys, fairgrounds, libraries, movie theaters, etc. Good idea
• A rating feature exists so that people can give 1-5 stars for listings. I don’t care much for online ratings because they aren’t very scientific or reliable, but they do add an element of interactivity that can be fun for some users.

All in all, not bad AOL. I bookmarked.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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