Grayboxx: A Better Local Search Engine?

John Battelle’s blog points to a new (yet another) local search startup: Grayboxx. The site makes some very lofty claims:

“grayboxx has innovated a patent-pending technique, called PreferenceScoring, which will do for local search what [Google’s] PageRank did for web search.”

I’ve asked them for a briefing to learn more and hear what’s behind such claims. Even if you’ve got a better relevance algorithm for local, you still have the problem of data collection — getting accurate and complete local information into your site. And then there’s the business model. If you’re selling ads, you have to have visibility and traffic. And if you’re truly local and not just another geotargeted outlet for national advertisers then you have the sales channel challenge.

These are not insignificant issues, so I’ll be interested to hear more.

Advertisement