For local businesses dependent on the Yellow Pages economy, there’s nothing more important that the telephone, especially when it rings. The idea of uniting phone leads and search is something of a holy grail in local search, and CitySearch today announced another milestone in its quest for the same. Release in extended entry.
]]>< ![CDATA[
New Product Makes It Easier For Local Merchants To Tap Local Search Users Online
LOS ANGELES, CA – December 6, 2004 — Citysearch, a leading local search service, announced the national roll out of its PFP-Calls product to enhance its PFP (pay for performance) advertising package. The new product allows local merchants to track business leads through the number of phone calls they receive. Merchants are charged a fee per call and when an advertising cap is reached the toll free number (which appears throughout the site) is removed and replaced with the local, non-metered number (which only appears on the merchant’s information page). The new service is offered through Citysearch’s partnership with CIRXIT, LLC, an innovative new company whose platform for web-telephony integration is leading pay for performance telephony initiatives.
“While Citysearch has been intensely committed to building up our content and improving search results to provide the best local search experience for consumers, we have also been focused on delivering greater value to our merchants. Launching PFP-Calls is a direct response to meeting our customer’s diversified needs,” said Briggs Ferguson, CEO of Citysearch. “Being able to connect people with businesses through trusted content is what makes Citysearch a leading interactive local advertising resource.”
PFP-Calls is an ideal advertising product for merchants who either don’t have a website or require reservations (restaurants, hotels, or spas) or inquiries (wedding, attorney, auto or medical services). Citysearch provides a toll free number wherever the local merchant’s contact information appears: PFP ads, search results, merchant information page, and/or Best of Citysearch listing.
Citysearch’s enhanced package of interactive advertising products better meets the needs of local merchants, who can now sign up for either PFP-Calls or PFP-Clicks. Separately, merchants can purchase traditional CPM units or sponsorships.
About Citysearch
Citysearch is a leading local search service, providing the most up-to-date information to over eight million people a month on businesses, from restaurants and retail, to travel and professional services. Citysearch empowers users to make informed decisions about where to spend their time and money by delivering more than two million editorial and user reviews and ratings of local businesses. Through its unique Local Pay For Performance (PFP) service, Citysearch enables businesses to capture their most relevant customers online while paying only for the leads received. Citysearch is ranked among the top three local search sites based on usability and content depth and relevance, according to The Kelsey Group (Nov 04). Citysearch is part of IAC Local and Media Services, an operating business of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI).
About CIRXIT
CIRXIT has deployed a new and powerful Internet service that seamlessly integrates telephony with the web. Through CIRXIT its partners quickly and easily deploy pay for performance (PFP) programs that manage, track, and report all calls made to a listed business, whether a call is made as the result of a click in the browser, or by dialing a toll-free or local number. As a technology enabled service provider CIRXIT complements and empowers the businesses of its partners. CIRXIT’s scalability, reliability, call quality, and number quality are unrivaled in the industry. Designed for quick, simple, and seamless integrations, and priced for broad deployment across a wide variety of applications and services, CIRXIT is the preferred provider of web-telephony solutions to leading companies in the IYP and local search markets. CIRXIT was founded in Silicon Valley in 2004.
Media Relations:
Kristen Wareham Doug Schneider/Natalie Svider
Citysearch Ruder Finn
(213) 739-3275 (310) 479-9929
kristen_wareham@citysearch.com schneiderd@ruderfinn.com
svidern@ruderfinn.com
In a sense it’s kind of back to the future. For years now companies have sought to get their web address into every search engine or publication. Now they will clammer to get their phone number over their web address in those same venues.
Think about this. Click fraud is nearly impossible with Pay-per-call.