AskCity Gives You the Business

What sets AskCity apart from other local search? For one thing, it offers four different kinds of search: Businesses, Events, Movies, and Maps & Directions. You don't really need to know any more than that to be off and running. Just go to the Ask.com home page and click AskCity in the toolbox.

But for those of you who'd like a bit more detail, we'll break it down for you. For this post, let's take a quick look at Business Search:

Business Search in a New York Minute

AskCity Business Search lets you find businesses and services in your city, or anywhere across the country, including customer reviews, driving directions and more. Use it to find the best deli in town, the most reliable plumber for your house, or the nearest post office to work.

All you need to put in is the name or the type of business you're looking for, and the approximate location--address, street name, city, neighborhood or just zip code.

For instance:

A San Francisco Sample

Type the search term "Restaurants" in the top search box and "San Francisco, CA" in the second search box. You'll see your results not only as text in the center column of your screen, but as placement markers on the map to your right.

Each result comes fully loaded with a series of tools that allow you to pin the result on the map, plot directions to or from it, send it to a friend via Email, and much more.

Click on a result and you'll notice that your full list of results collapses into a bar called Results, and is replaced by a new panel of information titled "Details."

And by "Details," we mean business listings and ratings from Citysearch, the ability to make reservations via OpenTable, customer reviews from around the Web, and much more.

Thick Chicago-style Content

In fact, depending on what sort of business you search on, your details might include a healthy portion of the following:
  - Business listings and ratings from Citysearch
  - Event information and ticket purchasing from Ticketmaster and TicketWeb
  - Detailed information about local service providers from ServiceMagic
  - Movie reviews and content from Tribune and movie ticket purchases from Fandango
  - User reviews from Yelp!, Tripadvisor and 20 other top sites
  - Even campground reservations from ReserveAmerica

All without a separate page loading. You get sharp local search, detailed results, and the option to take the next step, all without leaving AskCity.

Next time we'll take a look at AskCity Events Search. Or you could just go to the Ask.com home page and…well, you get the idea.

--The AskCity Team