Tuesday, February 07, 2006

News is Limited

Scan of the editorial picture - notice the tool tip on the masthead - what a donkey As sent to Media Watch:

Today on page three of my local Cumberland Newspaper the Blacktown Advocate is a half page "advertorial" about the newspaper having it's own website. Been interested in the web I read the article and was stunned and outraged (hence this email) that their new online business search tool, truelocal.com.au is been quoted as Australia's first local search website. When you search local, you get local.

Now I have used the new tool previously (I even added my business) and I know that this is defiantly not the first local business search. For years there has been both Sensis's Yellow and White pages which allow for searching of a businesses based on their locality. But what really erks me about this statment is that the technology behind truelocal is made by ASL (as proven in the truelocal's terms and conditions). Australian Local Search is the same technology used by Get Local and Yahoo!7 Local Search which was launched well over a year ago, making the claim of "first" very misleading.