Bizwatch

• Share

What Listing, Please?
Searching the Web can bring the world to your door. But if you only want a tap fixed or a pizza delivered, you can end up wishing the world would just go away. Business directory suppliers have been struggling for years to make money from their local online listings for small businesses; most pizzerias and plumbers don't need the global reach of the most popular search engines and are reluctant to pay to advertise on the less used, local ones. But the arrival in the U.K. last week of Google Local (local.google.co.uk), could be the answer. Google's new service, which has been available to U.S.consumers for a year, presents users with two search boxes: what and where.

The results are drawn from the 2 million business listings held by Yell.com, the online version of the U.K.'s Yellow Pages, and augmented with detailed maps showing the precise location of the desired establishments. Follow a link and Google Local will even draw the route for you. Why would Yell, whose own site offers similar services, sell info to a competitor? "It's a benefit to the advertisers who pay us money," says Yell spokesman John Salmon. Paying for more prominent listings, he says, gives companies "an additional shop window."

For Google, and its competitors like Yahoo!, local search advertising has become a hot new revenue stream; last week the California-based pioneer announced first quarter revenue of $1.26 billion — nearly double its turnover for the same period last year. "Search is integrating itself into every part of our lives," says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch. "And local is one of the big things the search engines are targeting, because they know there's a lot of money in there." In Europe, search engine marketing — paid-for listings and services that boost online visibility — will generate €1.9 billion this year, according to a survey last month by Forrester Research. Germany and France are the next likely markets for Google Local, but it takes time to get the details right. Keywords like "pubs" and "curry," and visual cues like making the map motorways blue to match the road signs, were important in England, says Kate Burns, Google's managing director of U.K. sales. "One thing we've learned as a company is to act locally and to treat each market as idiosyncratically as its demands," she says. As they say in France, "Cherchez la … pizza?"

Lower Taxes, Faster Tracks
Low-cost airlines are not the ultimate word in cheap transport, it turns out. EasyJet has halted its twice-daily flights from Paris to Marseilles because the discounter was losing a battle for customers with the French railways. The high-speed TGV train can now do the 660-km trip in just three hours, about the same as flying if you include early check-in times and travel to the airport, and has been offering one-way fares as low as €38. Jean-Cyril Spinetta, the chairman of Air France, says that airport taxes on that route alone come to €51, so there's no way airlines can compete on price.

"Is it legitimate that this can happen?" Spinetta asks, pointing out that the French national railway continues to receive huge subsidies — while European Union rules now ban airlines from taking state handouts. An EasyJet spokesman says the airline took on the route two years ago as a trade off for getting slots at Paris' Orly airport. It still flies from Paris to Toulouse and Nice, two destinations where the TGV doesn't travel at full tilt — yet. — By PETER GUMBEL

The Bottom Line
	We cannot compete with China on lower wages, so we must be better, not necessarily cheaper
		GUNTER VERHEUGEN, European Commission Vice President, calling for more investment in research and development