Oodle Helps Buyers Search Local Ads

TWO TRENDS — ONLINE SHOPPING and local search — come together in Oodle.com, which aggregates local classified ad listings across a number of categories and makes them available to online shoppers in a specific area.

The engine launched beta sites for three metro areas in late March and now operates in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

CEO Craig Donato, a veteran of Web portal Excite, said the inspiration grew out of his own efforts to furnish a mountain cabin using classified ads and the realization of how fragmented that effort became.

“I was struck with how most of the things happening with classifieds were seller-focused, in terms of making them fancier, cheaper or easier to buy,” he said. “As a buyer, I had problems that weren't being addressed. I wanted to see everything that was out there in my area and to find what I was looking for quickly.”

Oodle.com gets its listings from a combination of sources: local papers, both major metro and suburban; existing vertical ad sites such as Monster.com for jobs and Cars.com; and Craigslist, the popular online listing service for everything from roommates to romance. The search engine also gets a data feed from eBay and a dozen other sources. If local classified providers allow their content to be indexed by search engine, Oodle gets it that way; otherwise, it's done by submission. Oodle does not accept ads on its own.

“There are plenty of people out there representing sellers,” Donato said. “Our niche in the vertical search ecology is to deliver qualified prospects. For all the e-commerce players out there, an engine like Shopping.com helps buyers by providing a consolidated view of the market, then delivers the right buyers to the right marketplace. It's not a retailer; it provides a service for retailers. We're doing exactly that with classifieds. We don't sell ads; we expose a market.”

Adding value like that is one way many vertical search engines can become more than mere aggregators of Web listings found elsewhere. For example, in addition to searching local jobs, Oodle also indexes local volunteer opportunities — something that can be difficult to find in a single place on the Web.