e-Newsletter September 2009

Planet Discover local search was designed to allow our partners to further position their Website as the most trusted source for local news and information. Local search and vertical content applications offer a variety of benefits including:

• Delivering the ability for content providers to leverage their existing content and make it accessible to local audiences.


• Providing local audiences with access to the news and information they are looking for at the exact moment they are looking for it.


• Providing advertisers – particularly small– and medium–sized businesses – with an online platform to reach local consumers.

While local search offers many advantages, national search engines – Google, Yahoo!, and Bing – still maintain top–of–mind awareness for national online search. That being said, resources are available to boost the rank of local results in national search engines. One of the most effective resources is submitting sitemap files directly to the search engines as discussed in previous issues of Get Results.

New sitemap functionality
Search Publisher, the Planet Discover proprietary search platform, provides the ability to create sitemap files. Until now, sitemaps created in Search Publisher have only included data for enhanced business listings in the Planet Discover Local Directory. A new version of Search Publisher will be released soon that includes advanced sitemap capabilities. With this release, the sitemap file will include data for enhanced business listings, listing categories, user-submitted ratings and reviews, events and coupons for national search engines to index.

The screen shot below shows the Search Publisher interface used to establish the sitemap parameters for your site. This interface is only available to Planet Discover employees. Your Client Services team will work with you to customize – and adjust if needed – your sitemap settings.

In addition to advanced sitemap capabilities, the new version of Search Publisher also includes the ability to configure page titles in Planet Discover vertical applications on a site-by-site basis. The screen shots below demonstrate the configurable page title values for Planet Discover Events and Local Directory.

Our ongoing commitment at Planet Discover is to help you establish your site as the most trusted source for local content. Whether site visitors use local search on your site or national search engines, these SEO advancements in Search Publisher allow users to find the content they want on your site.

To establish the sitemap parameters and implement the configurable page titles for your site, contact your Client Services team or email support@support.planetdiscover.com.

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