Who’s Got Local News?

Now Google does. Here’s my write up at Search Engine Land. But Google follows other aggregators:

• Topix
• Yahoo
• Ask

And of course individual newspaper publications and other local media sites. Here are the top online news sites (12/07) according to Nielsen (via Cyberjournalist):

There are also “hyper-local” news sites such as EveryBlock or YourStreet or Outside.in. It’s probably a matter of time before Google offers a similar “map view” of news stories as these sites do.

Here’s Topix CEO Chris Tolles’ view of Google’s Local News introduction: “Local news is not a search problem.”

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Related: Marketing Charts presents NAA data about online newspaper traffic growth. And here’s an article about the broader rollout of MediaNewsGroup’s “TrafficMax” program (supported by WebVisible). I wrote the other day about Hearst broadening its own program.