E-Media Tidbits

yokel.com Local shopping search engines like Yokel might help news orgs make money from mobile content.

OK, here's an idea for a savvy ambitious developer and a mobile-friendly news organization...

Today Search Engine Journal reports that Yokel, a local-shopping search engine, "has added new capabilities for local shopping search from smart phone devices including the Treo, Blackberry or Motorola Q, which all can now search Yokel's database of local stores and products."

I know that many news organizations offer various kinds of mobile-friendly content. (Google News offers that too, by the way.) And, as I've written before, pay-per-call advertising can help you make money from mobile content.

The problem with Yokel is that it misses much of what's really available from local stores. For instance, just now I searched Yokel for Grateful Dead t-shirts in my town, Boulder, Colo. It found no local vendors -- yeah, right! Walk down Boulder's Pearl St. pedestrian mall and you'll see Deadhead paraphernalia everywhere you look.

What if local news organizations, which already attract a strong base of local advertisers, rolled their own version of Yokel by offering a premium advertising service? The paper could develop a custom Yokel-like engine -- or if Yokel is smart, they'd license their engine. Then, for a fee local stores could tie in to that system a data stream from all or part of their current inventory to make it searchable online or by mobile phone. The mobile content then could be tied in to a pay-per-call advertisement.

And then, the news org's own local content could feature links to the local shopping database as appropriate.

Whadya think? Please comment below.