A9 Local Search has a Truck Going Around Taking Pictures

Online Commerce Getting More "Granular"?

[weeks]

Brett, do not ban me for posting false news. I read this in the Wall Street Journal today.

But, you can go to A9 and read about it yourself:

From the A9 "how we did it:"

Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.

The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. We are driving and at some point hope to cover the whole country.

Here is a short video showing how we did it:

Anyway, their local search rocks. I've tested it just a bit and the user interface in good and in my results are solid.

[chrisnrae]

We've been discussing this [webmasterworld.com] for several days now.