Canpages Acquires ZipLocal to Battle YPG

The press release went out this am:

The acquisition, which is expected to be finalized in July 2009, will see Canpages’ advertiser base grow by more than 2,300 new customers and expand its reach to the 695,000 unique visitors(i) who conduct more than 3.2 million searches on the ZipLocal website each month. Additionally, it will allow Canpages to further enhance the functionality of its online search platform, Canpages.ca, with ZipLocal’s considerable amount of user-generated content that includes reviews, ratings and business tags designed to help consumers make more informed decisions during their search.

ZipLocal was a public company and also launched a US expansion. It’s unclear if that effort will continue. Regardless, the acquisition means the competitive landscape for local search in Canada basically looks like this: search engines vs. YPG vs. Canpages, Yelp, Weblocal.

Note: Ahmed corrects me on Compete’s reach and accuracy, saying it only shows US traffic.

Here’s a better representation:

I’m also reminded that there is 411.ca as well.