Taxonomies for Local Business Search

Yellow Pages and Business Directories on the Web have for the most part operated with the taxonomies that were used in print to help users find what they needed. You'll see examples of this at Yahoo Local Canada
(image below) and YellowPages Canada.



Brian Wool at Clickz, where search marketing is much discussed, noted in his article Local Searchers Hunt for Ideas, Not Categories (Feb 14, 2008) that there's a view that "the generation born from roughly 1980 to 1995, no longer think in terms of categories like previous generations." It's the old boomers who grew up with print who want the categories; young people use keywords. He specifically points to Google as an example of service that has dropped categories - "Gone are the days of matching local search queries to categories. In the last few years, Google has dramatically scaled back its utilization of a category schema in its local search results."

Not so quick. Mike Blumenthal writing for Search Engine Land (Feb 22, 2008) asks - Google Maps Categories: Will The Pain End Soon?. Google Maps is Google Local. He determined that Google uses the categories from SuperPages and allows businesses to add their own categories when using Google's Local Business Center. But the end result has been confusing (likely to users) and frustrating to small businesses who were not showing in the same search results as competitors.

Blumenthal learned through conversations with Google that "... Google's general idea about categorization was to not pick a single taxonomy, provider or structure and their goal was to increase confidence by using many data source signals. Their general approach was to create an overarching categorization system that is a natural reflection of the way people think about these types of searches." Google wants a flexible taxonomy that adapts with more user input.

Blumental -- "It is clear that a straight up flat, categorization system will not be sufficient to meet searcher needs in the age of internet expectations. I assume that the transition from this relatively flat structure to the more flexible taxonomy that Google is speaking about is one of the friction points currently causing problems."

And the other question is will it ever work? Might the rejection by the 'millennials' of taxonomies have been because of poor design of the interface? Putting like things together is an age-old practice of facilitating access. If the taxonomy isn't up front, it will at least need to be operating in the background.