Yell launches pioneering local 'Super Search' function on Yell.com - 15 July 2004
Yell today strengthened its position as the UK’s leading provider of online local search, with the launch of ‘Super Search’ - an innovative, keyword-based tool for Yell.com. The UK’s most advanced and sophisticated local search facility enables Yell.com to continue meeting the needs of buyers and sellers by combining rich and extensive local business data with pioneering technology.Developing the revolutionary new search tool has involved building new software to extend Yell.com’s search algorithm beyond the confines of a single classification search. Users can now search Yell.com’s 1.7 million business listings across multiple classifications - giving Yell.com competitive advantage, particularly at a time when the local search arena is increasingly under the global spotlight.
In a further significant move, specially-tailored software also enables ‘Super Search’ to match search terms in Yell.com advertiser products and on its advertisers' own websites. It then sorts the results by relevance and delivers them back to the user, resulting in higher quality leads for Yell.com advertisers.
This has been enabled through the detailed compilation of a unique thesaurus that recognises more than 40,000 product, service terms and brand names, adding significant ‘intelligence’ to Yell.com’s search tool. The thesaurus also recognises user inaccuracies such as misspellings and typos as well as synonyms, updating with new terms from users to further enhance its responsiveness.
Dr Eddie Cheng, e-business director of Yell, said: “Super Search is the result of extensive research and development and is a significant achievement for Yell.com. It enables Yell.com to provide users with a local search journey unrivalled by search engines.”
Eddie Cheng continued: “Super Search brings substantial enhancements to our service, helping us learn more about our users’ search behaviour. This will benefit them with even more efficient and successful search experiences to help them contact the right advertiser for their requirements. This marks the continued innovation and evolution of Yell.com, further positioning it as the leading UK local search tool and providing a strong platform for future growth through meeting user and advertiser demand.”
