Monday, June 30, 2008

A Local Scranton Directory of Businesses and Professionals that's Actually Local: The Scranton Portal

The "Local" Scranton business directory that pops up in the search engine results when you search for a Scranton business or professional is usually put up by a big advertiser who is trying to cross promote its own paid classified listings. It's not even in the area, as a business. Whether it's a "Yellow Pages" directory, a "scraped" directory (that grabbed all its listings from the Yellow Pages) or some other generic classified site, it's usually useless. If you want to actually find out something about a local business so you can pick up the phone and call them, you're usually out of luck.

Gee, wouldn't it be great to find a local directory that's actually based here in Scranton? Even better, how about a directory that targets the specific things that people in Scranton are looking for? Say, for example, you're looking for local attractions in Scranton. You search for "Scranton Attractions" and, lo and behold, actual Scranton attractions show up in the search engines (like the Zoo at Nay Aug Park and the Houdini Museum), not just a page full of irrelevant stuff and a few lame links to yet another classified directory listing. Would that be useful?

I'm just asking...