Well, everyone knows that (cue my terrible Derek Zoolander impression) “local search, it’s so hot right now.”  Who is going to be the big winner?  Will it be the IYP sites, trying to find a new cash cow to replace the offline one, as the old yellow pages readership continues to decline?

Will it be the newspapers, looking for ways to expand their reach beyond the online classifieds?  Will it be the verticals, trying to get a lock on their particular market segment?  Will it be the local community sites, making themselves the destination for everyone in each particular community?  Will it be the service companies, offering local search as part of their base product (e.g. the recent Skype update).  Will it be the search engines, leveraging their existing user base?  Will it be one company combining two or more of the above?  Will it be some as yet unknown company in some new area that hasn’t been thought of yet?  Will it be Henry the mild mannered janitor?  Could be…  Or will the space just remain fractured, with leaders popping up in each of these areas?  At this point it’s really too early to say.  There is a large potential market out there - $3.38 billion by 2009, according to The Kelsey Group - that all of these types of companies want to grab a piece of. 

 
What do I think? Well, unless someone manages to somehow deliver the ‘killer ap' and become the ‘go to’ site of Local Search, it’s going to remain fractured, with partnerships and acquisitions being the way to extend reach for these companies.  Which means that there are going to be continuing opportunities for lots of different types of companies, including those that bridge those different types, acting as agents for local businesses, pushing their data out to as many of these areas as possible.  Your thoughts?