Local search, for the most part, is a matter of search companies assembling yellow-pages information and matching it to keywords. In some cases, as with Yahoo! Local, small businesses are actively recruited to submit information. Yelp Maptastic is a Google Maps mashup project that lets users submit reviews of local businesses, and then those businesses become part of the mappable database. Enter a search query, and a location, then drag the map around—the query is repeated for the current map display. You can do almost the same thing in Google Maps by dragging the map, removing the locator from the search string, then clicking Search again. But Yelp automates that series of steps delightfully. [via danhuard]
