yintercept - 6:44 pm on Apr 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

I've seen a 50% drop in the Google traffic to my local based directories.

Personally, I think a well designed human edited directory can enhance listings. IMHO, The true local directories really don't reduce the quality of search engines. The ones that reduce the quality of search engine results are national business that optimize for mytown widget for every town on the planet, even when they don't have a local presence in the town.

Yahoo, MSN, About and others took pathetic stabs at online communities for towns. Most have failed. There might still be a market for locally owned directories. The traffic just won't come from Google.