By now you’ve heard about CitySearch buying InsiderPages. And you know that InsiderPages will remain a separate site, and that CitySearch will use the IP user reviews to supplement its own. I have questions about the value of the same user reviews appearing on two sites (if that’s what the plan is), but my main reaction is:

This is good for local search users and good for small business.

In my 2007 predictions, I reiterated my long-running gripe about there being too many of these sites all doing the same thing. How does something so fragmented help searchers? And how’s a small business owner supposed to keep track of all these sites? Answers: It doesn’t, and it’s impossible. So the more consolidation we get, the better.

Here are some reactions from other local search bloggers:

Andy Sack of Judy’s Book

(on IAC) “…as awesome as they’ve been at acquiring companies, they’ve (from my outside perspective) been crappy at integrating and executing these assets. So while the price may have been only 10 or 13MM dollars, I don’t see what they’re going to do with the asset(s).”

Peter Krasilovsky

“To me, it was surprising that InsiderPages ended up with CitySearch, which does well with community, instead of Yellowpages.com, SuperPages, RH Donnelley or Yellow Book. The IYP sites certainly have their strengths. But they’re very corporate. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to note that they’ll be challenged to get members of the community interested enough to write reviews for them.”

Greg Sterling

“As I told Kevin Newcomb at ClickZ this does give them more “shelf space” in local and may broaden their local usage. InsiderPages while not an extremely strong brand is nonetheless a local brand and does have a loyal following.”

Sebastian Provencher

“I’m surprised it was not acquired by a directory company as it would have been a great jumpstart for any user review strategy (becoming more and more important in any local search site).”

[tags]citysearch, insider pages, local search, user reviews[/tags]