Some xamples:
From CMRs we get direct data regarding a franchise. Starbucks – 24 hours, drive-through, etc
From credit companies we get company credit ratings, estimated floor space, estimated revenue, # of employees, etc
From restaurant databases we get links to menus, multiple categories, payment forms, etc.

The challenge is presenting this data in a way that scales to all businesses. We are working on adding extraneous data to the public system (and thus purchased data).

Like what kind of extraneous data are we talking?

As for the data: it isn’t cheap. We didn’t just buy data – we’ve bought over a dozen databases with full redistribution permissions. It is a big investment

We have a lot of extraneous data that we do not plan on sharing right now.

Indeed!

Actually, it’s really interesting how many local search sites there are and the many many subtle differences we have.

– ask

Haha – no, one of my colleagues have a google alert on “local search” or something like that.

Btw, I noticed that on source.ibegin.com you have a search for the whole country now – neat (although it was crazy slow for the tests I did).

It’s interesting that you got a deal buying the data that’ll let you resell it relatively cheaply as you do. Cool! Are you planning to add “richer” data or will you stick to just name, addresses, phone numbers and a basic category?

– ask

The data is not crawled. It is bought from various data sources.

Over at YellowBot we’re going the opposite way, starting with the whole country. To us it seems like a better approach.

Also: How will _reselling_ crawled(?) data work legally? (If they are crawling…) I know Google got sued by one of the data providers (and came to an agreement) for crawling and just showing that kind of data.

– ask

iBegin Source is run separately – the data from that site will allow us to push for quicker expansion (other data providers have some hard terms and are very intrusive).

Do the editors have to be from the city though to be able to do their job?

The reason we are only in four cities is due to manpower – each city has a hired editor in charge of the city. We are taking a slow and methodical expansion approach to each city.