MapQuest Wants Your Local Content

by Matt on Sep 10, 2008 in Promotion

Local bloggers, MapQuest is looking for local content — I highly suggest you give it to them. :)

Here’s the scoop: MapQuest has just launched MapQuest Local, which is essentially a local start page filled with news, events, gas prices, business listings and recommendations, weather (and more) about your hometown. You can customize your own local page to show the content you want in the layout you want.

One of the big problems with efforts like this is that they work well in big cities, but fall apart when you get to smaller towns where there’s not as much data, activity, content, and so forth. But I can report that the page for Richland, Washington — not exactly a booming metropolis — looks pretty good:

Richland, WA, on Mapquest Local

That’s a pretty full page of content; only the “City’s Best” widget comes up empty. I’m impressed. This is probably the most compelling general local content experience on the web right now.

I’m curious: How does the start page for your hometown look?

Meanwhile, we’re local bloggers and we want our content to get exposure on sites like this. Right now, MapQuest is pulling data from sources like its AOL partners, Topix (news), Flickr (photos), and so forth. But, as they explained today on the MapQuest blog, they also want to bring in additional local content:

“…we’ll be opening up MapQuest to enable you to expose your content and drive traffic directly back to your site.

If you want access to the 12th largest web site audience in the US - an audience who comes to with an interest in one or more explicit locations - bring us your feeds! Bring us your location relevant content. Bring us useful information both general and niche.”

There’s a simple sign-up form here. All they require is a name, email address, and the URL you’re submitting. You can also provide your RSS feed URL and some additional information. They also start talking about APIs, which, when I submitted our Richland blog, prompted me to include a message like this:

Guys, PLEASE, PLEASE, don’t require APIs to submit content to MapQuest Local. There are thousands of great local blogs out there written by people who know their hometowns, but have no clue what an API is.

If you’re inclined to include that message when you submit, feel free — copy and paste it exactly as is, or write something similar in your own words. Either way, just get over there and tell them about your local blog today!

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September 10, 2008 | Filed Under Promotion 

Comments

8 Responses to “MapQuest Wants Your Local Content”

  1. MapQuest Nails the Local Start Page (1286) on September 10th, 2008 12:52 am

    [...] more, head over to Hyperlocal Blogger: MapQuest Wants Your Local Content. Feel free to share this with [...]

  2. Michael Dorausch on September 10th, 2008 9:36 am

    Great seeing this Matt. You make things so much easier on the rest of us by identifying this tips, putting them into action, and blogging about them.

    One more thing to place on my ToDo list. :)

  3. Nick Bastian on September 10th, 2008 11:05 am

    Matt,
    Thanks for posting this, it looks very interesting! I tried to submit without API info but it wouldn’t take. Off to get the info and give it another try! :-)

  4. MiriamEllis on September 10th, 2008 11:48 am

    Isn’t that a nice invitation! What an opportunity for hyperlocal bloggers. I really hope you’ll follow up on this regarding your experience with the real estate blogs appearing on MapQuest.

    Miriam

  5. Justin Smith | Searching Solutions on September 16th, 2008 9:47 am

    That’s a good find Matt.

    If someone could just unlock the puzzle allowing hyperlocal bloggers to get their content on sites like this, the world would be a much happier place.

  6. Josh on September 22nd, 2008 2:15 pm

    Justin,

    In our own way I think that outside.in’s GeoToolkit is a start. We are going to be doing some things that will help you get your content on to other sites as well as ours and our partners. See Matt’s nice post about our just released StoryMaps.

  7. Topix.com as a Hyperlocal Portal on October 18th, 2008 11:18 pm

    [...] impressive, but I still find the new MapQuest Local to be a more compelling local portal experience. Ironically, MapQuest is pulling its local news [...]

  8. Steve Sherron on January 1st, 2009 8:33 pm

    Thanks again Matt. I just signed up. What I found amusing is that when I went to the local page for my town, on the bottom right of the page, sat one of my videos that Truveo had pulled from youtube.

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