Skyhook Wireless Offers Loki Local Toolbar

If you want to see something pretty cool, go to Loki.com and download Shyhook Wireless’ new Local Search toolbar. It’s the first toolbar built around Local and it’s got a bunch of really useful features:

• It can automatically locate your position so you don’t need to enter it when doing a search (you can change locations too)
• It’s got lots of local content “channels” (bookmarks) to quickly navigate to local news, shopping, mapping, restaurants, movies, wi-fi hotspots, traffic, etc. And those content channels can be personalized and expanded by users
• You can set a preferred mapping provider so any lookups send you to either Yahoo!, Google, Ask or A9 maps.
• Through an email button you can share your location with others

Loki offers a kind of metasearch for local. I haven’t fully explored all it’s capabilities, but it’s the first new toolbar in a long while that justifies its existence. Certain of the features are “power user” tools but that doesn’t deprive it of being valuable to consumers generally.

Approximately 12% of Web search (according to comScore) happens through a toolbar. Everyone expects that number to grow over time.