Yahoo has expanded its local business listings and rolled out a service that gives businesses control over their listings in Yahoo Local through a new content inclusion program. Yahoo is enhancing its local search service by providing a free web site to business owners that will automatically be integrated into Yahoo Local listings.

An easier way to promote your business to highly qualified prospects in your area is just by listing your business on Yahoo! Local. Each listing features detailed information that sets your business apart. Yahoo Local now offers more than 15 million listings for U.S. based business. Now every business in the U.S. can get a FREE web site. The new program is available to any U.S. business that has a physical presence and serves a local area.

Yahoo has compiled these listings using several different sources of information, including web crawls, feeds from information providers and other sources. While Yahoo has long had a generic form available for businesses to add or suggest edits to a listing, the new Yahoo! Local Listings service gives business owners much more say regarding the content of local listings.

Yahoo! Local Listings now come in two flavors: basic listings and enhanced listings.

A) Basic Listing  : With a basic listing, a business can opt to appear in up to five categories in the Yahoo Local directory. In addition, Yahoo attempts to identify a link to the company's web site, operating hours and descriptions of services provided or products sold. Basic listings are free to any U.S. based business.

Yahoo! Local Basic Listing includes:

1) A FREE 5-page web site that you can easily customize with your logo, text and links to other sites.
2) Business name .
3) Contact information, including address, phone and fax, web site, email .
4) Service information such as hours of operation, accepted payment methods, services offered, and brands or products available for sale.
5) You can add or update, for no charge, your business' name, contact information and the categories under which your business is listed..

B) Enhanced Listings : Enhanced listings allow businesses to include additional information, which appears directly beneath basic listing information under the heading "More About business name ".Enhanced listings are equivalent to the bold inline listing in the yellow pages. These listings features include a company tagline, description, promotional links to the business' web site and allow the inclusion of up to ten photographs.

Enhanced listings cost $9.95 per month, with no cost-per-click fees, unlike the cost-per-click fees associated with Yahoo/Overture's Site Match paid inclusion program for web content. Enhanced listings are treated exactly the same as basic listings in terms of relevance ranking in search results, and will not get an added boost because of the fee.

Yahoo! Local Enhanced Listing includes:

1) Your business tagline or marketing message displayed in search results to help your listing stand out .
2) Two customizable links to coupons or special offers on your site .
3) A map that makes it easy for customers to find you.
4) A detailed business description that lets you communicate why customers should choose you over the competition.
5) Operational information like store hours, credit cards accepted and languages spoken .
6) Flexible messaging: you can update the messages and links in your listing to reflect current promotions, offers or services.
7) A reporting feature that lets you track the performance of your listing .

Yahoo! Local Enhanced Listing delivers:

1) Reach : Advertise to thousands of people in your area and drive customers from the web to your door.

2) Impact: You can provide detailed information about your business, so customers know why they should choose your products or services.

3) Ease-of-use :It's easy to set up your listing. You don't need technical expertise.

4) Value : At just $9.95/month, a Yahoo! Local Enhanced Listing is as affordable as it is powerful.

In addition to giving business owners more control over listings, Yahoo is encouraging users to help improve the local service. The new free business web sites, by contrast, are stand-alone destinations over which an owner has full control, and users can be sent directly to the site's URL. Yahoo will link to these sites in Local business listings, but perhaps more importantly, even though free business sites are hosted by Yahoo other search engines can crawl them, potentially broadening the scope of exposure for a business.