Driving home last night I was cut off by a shiny white Porsche Cayenne. Not one to honk my horn, I flashed my high-beams only to realize that one of the bulbs was out. Instead of showing my toughness with a flash of light, I winked. Today I set out for a new headlight bulb and I thought I’d give the mobile local search applications from Google, MSN and Yahoo a try. I searched “auto parts” 90046 (my zip code in LA) and called each listing. The search results were all very different and all really bad. Only Google had my neighborhood auto parts retailer, Autozone, but then gave me 9 bad listings (one wrong number). Yahoo had 9 listings on the first screen and 8 were auto parts retailers (no Autozone), but all were inconveniently further away than Autozone. Yahoo’s phone call answer rate was 78% and 5 out of nine had the bulbs (56%). Great scores, but not in my neighborhood. Last, MSN Live Search had 20 listings within 2 miles of my house, but no retailers w/ bulbs. 12 merchants of the 20 answered (60%) and 3 had disconnected numbers (15%).
I’ll note that there are a few more Autozones – in each direction, a Kragen and Pep Boys (all national chains) as well as several BMW dealerships in the area who would all have the part. I also live near a Target and Sears. Any of these would have been good sources for auto parts and are better choices than the results I found from Google, Yahoo or MSN.
The problem starts with the base data that every mobile local search property licenses from an aggregator. Google Maps credits Navteq (now part of Nokia) and in the terms of service (TOS) credits local data to Acxiom or infoUSA. Yahoo credits InfoUSA. MSN credits Navteq for maps and Yellowpages.com for sponsored results (I don’t know if MSN uses Yellowpages.com for organic results too, but they credit Localeze and Acxiom for data). Either way, these are the aggregators who license out-of-date, poorly categorized data to the industry.
Why hasn’t a solution been found to deliver a better consumer experience? Surely mobile local search is a high priority at the big three (Google, Yahoo, MSN.) This problem could be solved by breaking down the top 50 or so categories and a few hundred neighborhoods to identify the best results for each combination. Surely, auto parts in LA qualifies. I’d note the national chains and retailers who are in many categories like Target, Sears, Walmart and other brands like BMW.
FastCall411 breaks this model with a completely new approach. We call all our merchants to 1) test that the number is in working order and 2) ask the merchant if they will categorize themselves. Then, we use the record of the connection of each phone call (call length, etc) and consumer reviews of the call to weight our listings. We identify disconnected numbers, penalize merchants with busy signals and unanswered phones and we allow users to rate if the merchant had what they were calling for. Users can add meta data to correct a listing (the Rolls Royce repair shop listed on MSN would be a great example – what supper data to collect.) Over a series of phone calls the data begins to identify which merchants are relevant based on our Quaility of Service score . The result is the quality of Yahoo’s listings, the favorable geography of MSN and a much better consumer experience.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment