The Urban Mapping GeoMods Solution can Help Search Marketers Substantially Increase the Effectiveness of Locally Targeted Online Advertising

SAN FRANCISCO (April 17, 2008) -- Urban Mapping, Inc., the leading provider of location-rich content for interactive applications, today announced general availability of GeoMods, a geotargeting technology platform and publisher solution focused on local search. Leveraging Urban Mapping’s expertise in geodata collection, GeoMods leverages search queries to deliver more geographically-relevant results for users. As a result, search marketers, publishers and advertisers can utilize the Urban Mapping GeoMods platform to dramatically increase the effectiveness of online advertising through paid search and search engine optimization (SEO).

“This geotargeting platform is a radical departure from traditional IP-based geotargeting,” said Ian White, Urban Mapping CEO. “It has been proven again and again that traditional geotargeting does not provide a high degree of confidence for local search, where granularity is of paramount importance—blocks, not ZIP codes or metropolitan areas matter.”

Based on an analysis of search log data, Urban Mapping estimates that approximately .05% of total search queries use ZIP code-based searches. Approximately 2% of all search queries use a neighborhood term and about 5% of all queries use a city or state name. The effort invested in searching by postal codes, however, seems misguided, relative to the forty-fold greater likelihood of searching by neighborhood name.

“It’s clear there’s tremendous opportunity in local search since 7% of total searches is a sizable number, yet few have made an effort to exploit it,” White said. “Local means aggregating massive amounts of geographic data and reaping the benefits of the long tail.”

Urban Mapping’s GeoMods platform utilizes standard web protocols and serves geographic terms relevant to a specified area. A separate module provides a custom service area based on a variety of demographic, spatial and business factors. GeoMods also leverages the installed user base of its neighborhoods boundary database, providing many of the same geographic keywords that power search portals, Internet yellow pages and mapping platforms.

Designed with existing campaign management tools in mind, queries can be made in a variety of methods—point-radius, address, custom area and other geographic parameters—all via the GeoMods API. Organizations can leverage Urban Mapping’s geospatial capabilities without having to develop them internally, quickly deploying enhanced geotargeting capabilities.
Urban Mapping’s GeoMods services includes US, Canadian and European coverage.

Urban Mapping is the leading provider of neighborhood data. Customers include SuperPages.com, YellowPages.com, MapQuest, Microsoft’s Live Search, Ask.com and other leading portals. By leveraging its installed base of users for the company’s neighborhood boundary database product, Urban Mapping is able to support advertisers and publishers for best-practices in local search optimization.

ABOUT URBAN MAPPING, INC.

Urban Mapping's location-rich Urbanware products enhance the value of local content for interactive platforms and optimized local search. The company's flagship product, Urbanware(TM) Neighborhoods, is a database of informal space and is used by all major portals, map platforms and Internet yellow page publishers, including Microsoft's Virtual Earth, Idearc's SuperPages.com, MapQuest and AT&T's YellowPages.com. Urban Mapping also offers a database of mass transit systems and a novel geotargeting solution
focused on the needs of local search. For more information about Urban Mapping, visit www.urbanmapping.com or call 415.946.8170.

Urban Mapping and Urbanware are trademarks of Urban Mapping, Inc.