RossWal - 4:24 pm on Aug 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

I've had several conversations with Yahoo and Overture in an attempt to understand local match, including its relationship, if any, with Y Yellow Pages and YP sponsored listings.

Y said to call O about YP sponsored listings.

First call to O, they said yup we handle YP sponsored listings now, it's part of Local Match.

Next call to O said, Nope we have nothing to do with YYP.

Next call to O to explore Local Match said they use the dial-up number from the searchers ISP, and pass that to the GPS system to get a geographic fix for targeting ads. No, I'm not making this up.

To avoid specifics, lets say you were in the Big Apple and had a toothache. So you go to Y! to find someone to fix it. In the normal Y! serps you would find some yellow page listings at the top. But not from the Y! YP sponsored listings.

Are Y! Yellow Pages and Y! Local Match going to be side-by- side products competing with one another?

Any clues? THanks for any comments.