Yahoo! Local Provides ’Answers’

When Yahoo! Answers launched it was immediately clear that people would be asking for local recommendations and seeking answers to questions with local implications.

Now, consistent with Yahoo!’s strategy to push user-generated content from anywhere within Yahoo! to anywhere else relevant within the network, the company has started to integrate Answers information into Local.

Here’s a San Francisco page that shows some of that content integration (middle of the page: "people are asking about.")

You can also find, among other information, local business content in Answers directly. (Scroll lower left for cities.)

Yahoo! is starting to reap the benefits of its multifaceted "social search" strategy and it could pay long-term dividends for the company. User-generated recommendations and referrals are uneven but often of very high quality or at least unique. That’s because this is information (online word of mouth) that might not be available through search or otherwise online at all.