Chicago - 3:08 pm on Mar 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

Metromix as Jake points out, is an excellent example of a "local by locals" destination enviornment that contains much richer information, and is more in tune with our city, then any SE. Metromix has spent years upon years, aggregating rich content and user reviews and ratings, and is now sitting atop the universe of local search within Chicago.

It is very important to note however, that one goliath understood this, and that goliath The Tribune Company - Chicago Tribune (amongst others) came down and scooped up Metromix. The Tribune company now has metromix to add to its portfolio of sites that includes:

CareerBuilder.com Apartments.com Cars.com NewHomeNetwork.com Homescape.com OrlandoCityBeat.com southflorida.com ChicagoSports.com Go2Orlando.com --amongst many others.

And most recently the Tribune company picked up ShopLocal.com. Add this is a network of news and city sites such as Newsday.com LATimes.com ChicagoTribune.com BaltimoreSun.com Sun-Sentinel.com OrlandoSentinel.com Courant.com MCall.com DailyPress.com GreenwichTime.com and you can see that the local internet and local search extends much further beyond SEs.

The other media majors are not sitting by and just watching. I spoke with the team from COX (atlanta) in NYC - and in their words, "we Will dominate Atlanta". There is also Sacramento Bee which is really carving out new territory online in their city.

So sure, we talk alot about SE's webwork, but suffice to say that there are many many other interested parties that will help to shape the local arena. The SEs know this. And the battle is just shaping up between Local TV, Radio, Newpapers, SEs, YPs, and other major media outlets.

In the end, the battle is for the advertising dollar, regardless of the media outlet. And that is how I view local, webwork - in terms of the local advertising dollar, and its migration to the internet in its varying forms.