As in your example (and using our data) – searching for ‘cappuccino’ or ‘coffee’ or ‘hot chocolate’ (etc) would get mapped to ‘Restaurants – Coffee House’

We intend on publishing such a list eventually, but not yet.

“My point about Yellowbot in the specific context of the seminar was while the other three are data collectors/sellers, you guys aren’t.”

We’re both users of data (as you know, most feeds out there require some “post processing” to be usable) and believe me we are collectors. While Localeze is our “base feed”, we have hundreds of feeds that are being munged and merged.

Do let us know next you are in L.A. and we’ll buy you lunch.

– ask

Like I said – I have found that using tag as the base taxonomy leads to messy results. Warren Buffett could disagree with me and that wouldn’t matter – it is my opinion. My point about Yellowbot in the specific context of the seminar was while the other three are data collectors/sellers, you guys aren’t. I would have said the same if Yelp or InsiderPages or anyone else was there – it is a whole different ballgame when you are dealing with the raw data.

As for reviewing and critizing local search sites – I think you missed the point. I am posting about this on my blog, which quite a few customers of ours (and followers of the local space) read. I am giving you exposure, and also pointing out things you could do to make your site better. All win-win imo.

I would love to visit the Yellowbot office. I was just in LA last weekend, and I’ve actually lived in Burbank before (right next to the WB studio) I don’t know if I myself will be at the Kelsey conference (color me shy), but someone from iBegin will be.

This isn’t a zero sum game. I prefer smaller agile companies (like yourself) to win compared to bigger monolithic companies – always feels better.

As for basketball – I’ve been a fan of Toronto Raptors since the days of Stoudemire. And I think for once the Raptors > Lakers | Clippers

You are always welcome to email me – ahmed at ibegin.com

Interesting that you only touched on a few of my points…not all of them. Were you the first to build a local search site, for example? In regards to tagging, I seem to recall Yahoo doing it a while ago (but I don’t remember when). I also remember a Local.com/Furl relationship that allowed tagging of businesses (this one seems to be a couple of years old according to google)…there are plenty of others.

I never thought this was personal…we don’t even know each other (I’d love to meet you…perhaps at the November Kelsey conference?)…but you do call our experience into question in your post without researching who we are (when we meet, I’ll be glad to go over that with you if you prefer not to Google it yourself).

Your original post on yellowbot stated: “And so another chapter in my ‘reviewing and criticizing local search sites’.” which implies you like to pick on competing local search sites.

So, would you like to take us up on our offer to come to our offices. The meeting will have product, UI, developers, entrepreneur, VCs, and the like…people I would consider our peers. Who else better to judge?

In any case, I wish you the best of luck with iBegin. We should really take this offline at some point. Email me for my phone number. I’d love to meet with you sometime…preferably to discuss some basketball or something.

If you can show me a local-search site using tagging to build up taxonomy, I will be *more* than happy to update the post and point it out

You seem to be thinking this Yellowbot grudge is personal (when it isn’t). From my experience I believe tagging as the foundation is a bad idea – it creates too much ambiguity (and I say this as someone who has tried that very idea).

My original post on Yellowbot was critical for a reason – I was helping you out. I didn’t just say ‘oh this is stupid’ or ‘oh that is crap’ – I specifically pointed out aspects that could be much approved (and suggestions on how to). More than anything else I was helping *you* out by pointing out errors I picked up. If you prefer I never give any critical feedback again, let me know.

I’m pretty sure you weren’t the first to do tagging…just google it…in fact, you copied us since some of us wer the first ones to build a local search site…like I said, just do your homework!

We will be hosting a tech meeting shortly (tentatively scheduled for Oct 12) at our offices in Burbank, CA. I’d like to send you an open invitation to show up so we can go over our products and our entire staff’s (not just executives) experience since you called that into question. We can have the people vote! I can pick at your post here but, instead, I’d like to invite you to come to our offices and discuss this in an open forum and squash all yellowbot bashing by you on this blog! I’d invite the Loladex guy as well…but he hasn’t finished building his competing local search product yet.