Orange E-Business Advocate
This is a concept I've been thinking about for such a long time - even before Google Local launched a year ago. (I know, Yahoo has had a similar service for a long time).
How many times have you found youself in this scenario: You're looking for some kind of local service (a doctor, a massage therapist, an Italian restaurant, a lawn-mowing service, etc.), you visit Google, you leave disappointed.
We need local search! A website, like Google, which aggregates data from the websites of local businesses, and lets would-be customers search amongst a smaller subset of the world wide web. In our case, just an orange-wide-web. Or, an Orange Index.
Sadly, search engine forcasters see the success of local search (and namely, the effectiveness of local-search-based advertising) being 2-5 years away:
"The point is, local search is incredibly powerful, but we're very far from having it be a vehicle for local advertisers that's anywhere near comparable to their top ten local choices, like newspapers, billboards, radio, flyers, [or] direct mail," Morgan said. "All are more powerful local advertising vehicles than search is today."
(Local Advertisers Lack Search Zeitgeist)
But hopefully, in a few years, such a website could really take off, and be a valuable resource to the consumers and businesses of Orange County. Thoughts?