This just in…UrbanMapping, the guys who provide neighborhood data to local search companies, have just launched a free API. According to their CEO, Ian White, this means you can send them a lat/long and they will send you the associated neighborhood points contained within.
Ian was kind enough to provide me with a pithy quote as to why this might be of interest to my readers and here it is:
“Since major portals and IYPs have licensed the neighborhoods database product it’s important to push the standard further into the local search ecosystem. I’m positive this will result in more user-friendly local search, supporting related products we offer that cater to geotargeting, SEO and SEM.”
As I mentioned in my post on the value of neighborhood names for SEO, this data is gold. There are very few local search co’s targeting neighborhood names in this way and those who jump on this will have an advantage in search. All of you SEOs out there looking for a little edge may want to test this service out.
Here’s the neighborhood API info.
Full disclosure: About a year ago Ian paid me to tell him to do this. Now that he’s done it I think I undercharged him.
2 Response Comments
This is great news for local search! And for those who want to license the full geometry – neighborhood boundary databases – our company, Maponics, can help.
And so endeth the lesson in social media marketing. Well done Darrin. 🙂