Just stumbled upon the reincarnation of Judysbook.  For you youngsters in the local search space, JB, along with Insiderpages and Yelp, was one of the original social-local-search poster children.  I believe they even trademarked that term at one point.  Whomever is running the show over there has smoked the local search crack pipe and decided that there’s gold in them thar neighborhoods.  Judysbook had previously abandoned local business search in favor of creating a social network around coupons and deals, which now can be found at Couponlooker.  I am guessing that this is merely a SEO play by the investors to use their old reviews to gin up some traffic and flip it but I could be totally mistaken.

I am assuming Andy Sack, JB’s founder, is no longer involved as his blog has a recent post entitled Don’t Start A Company In The Local Online Space.

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8 Response Comments

  • David Saunders  August 12, 2008 at 6:38 am

    Always liked Judy’s Book and was sad to hear they were going – BUT now they’re back surely they’re worth something.

    David

  • Gib Olander  August 12, 2008 at 7:35 am

    Local Search is such an exciting and growing marketplace with amazing opportunity. A successful Local site will be filling a need for both consumers and advertisers it is a win win business and to date there still is no clear cut marketshare winner.

  • Andrew Shotland  August 12, 2008 at 8:29 am

    Says the supplier of picks, shovels and crack pipes… 🙂

  • Mike Wilton  August 12, 2008 at 8:50 am

    I got wind of Judy’s Book earlier in the year and though I didn’t see a lot of value in it at the time I figured there may be a future in it. One thing I did discover back then is that Google’s Local Business results will often pull reviews from Judy’s Book.

  • Andrew Shotland  August 12, 2008 at 9:31 am

    Mike, back in the day, when I was at Insiderpages, we all did deals with Google Local to send them a trusted feed. These ended up being some of the first reviews they showed in their local results.

  • Ben Saren  August 12, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    I got an inside scoop on the Judy’s Book’s reincarnation. From what I hear, Andy is not involved, at all, but it appears his mother-in-law still is – that’s her picture I think isn’t it? No, I’m totally not talking smack about anyone’s mother or mothers-in-law, just sayin, yo! Alright, I’m totally done talking, I’m outta here…

    P.S. – thanks for removing the nofollow, and for the jab at Gib, that was a good one.

  • Mike Wilton  August 13, 2008 at 10:32 am

    Thanks for the info on that Andrew. I am assuming that since I was coming across a lot of Judy’s Book reviews a while back that perhaps they still share some sort of trusted feed with Google. Hopefully this is the case since it has been one of the main reasons I have kept submitting for my clients.

  • Andrew Shotland  August 13, 2008 at 10:46 am

    Mike, it certainly couldn’t hurt to submit your clients to JB but at the moment there are stronger sites you could target.