MSN has a local search option.

Following in the footsteps of many other search engines MSN gives you an option for local search as well. I've tried it and I got to say that it's one of the best local searches I've seen. When you click on the local search tab and put in your search term, you get many results that are local to your area without having to put in your zip code. It gives you a listing of the results which in many cases is local business and then there's a map to the side which gives you the location of each one. One of the nice features about this is when you mouse over the results, you'll see the tabs on the map change in color denoting which one is which.
There's no doubt that local search is becoming a great tool for companies who want to expand their local business. Of course, it's important to get business from all over the country but many companies have certain kinds of business that is best serving local people. I think this is a lot better than some of the Yellow Pages sites that you see. Many of them aren't as sophisticated as this new MSN tool. It's an impressive thing and Microsoft continues to build up its search engine capabilities so that it can compete with the likes of Google and Yahoo. This is why you never want to count Microsoft out. They have great resources, great technology, wonderful marketing and the ability to change the marketplace to suit themselves from the operating system. It's not that Google is quaking in its boots, I don't think they are, but MSN continues to come up edging closer to the main leaders.

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