This week Insider Pages was acquired by the Citysearch division of IAC. Hitwise data shows that the market share of US visits to Insider Pages was up 34% in the past 6 months (August 2006 vs. February 2007). The market share of visits to Yelp, another user-generated local review site, was up by an impressive 91% in the same period. Judy’s Book did not show an increase, although traffic jumped in September and October 2006 when it received a substantial increase in traffic from Local.com, suggesting a content deal that was turned off. Yelp did a good job and has seen its market share almost double. Yelp's traffic indicates that the social networking/local search combo is an effective means of engaging users around local content. The demographic and lifestyle differences between Yelp's user base and that of other local search sites are quite interesting, and merit another post.
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