Next up in my “quest to meet the most dynamic people in search” is Ali Diab. Ali doesn’t sit on the sidelines. He’s the kind of guy who likes to roll up his sleeves, figure out a problem, and dive in a make it happen. You see it in his passion for developing exceptional Search products as well as in his general zest for life.

In this two-part series we’ll find out what Ali has to say about competition in the Local Search market, his love of technology, and his passion for helping those in need.

Q: Describe to me what you do for the Local team here at Yahoo!.
A: I oversee product management for Yahoo!’s local products, which includes City Guides, Local, Maps, Yellow Pages. I also work with other groups who want to leverage or add some type of a local aspect to their products. That obviously includes heavy integration with Yahoo! Search, as well as teams like Personals, HotJobs and all sorts of other areas of the network.

Q: What made you decide to join the Yahoo! Local team?
A: After meeting the team, I was really impressed. They are not only some of the top technologists and engineers I’ve ever worked with but they also have a very strong understanding of their consumer needs. They are genuinely a good bunch of people to work with which is always a huge plus. I’d actually say, that’s one of the most important things.

Q: What would you say is the biggest challenge working on a product that has such strategic importance to the organization?
A: I think the biggest challenge for us as a team is continuing to innovate and build products that our consumers really want. The level of competition in this area is immense and comes from many different directions. So staying ahead of the competition, so-to-speak, can be challenging.

Q: Speaking of competition; what’s unique about Yahoo! Local compared to similar local offerings?
A: I think there’re a lot of things that differentiate Yahoo! Local. Of course we have the ratings and reviews which gives people an idea of what others think of the business or service before they try it themselves.

But I think one of our biggest differentiators is the depth of structured content we offer. We provide the basics like business address, phone number, website and then we take it a step further: we let businesses provide information that’s unique to them like hours of operation, payment methods, specialty, and ambiance.

Q: What if the business doesn’t have a website? Can I still find them in Yahoo! Local?
A: Yes, you’ll still find them. Most people assume that if the business doesn’t have a website then it can’t be listed, but that’s not true. If they have a physical place of business, we’ll include them in Yahoo! Local. This is important because more and more people are turning to the Internet for local information and they need to find more than just those businesses that have their own website. It also helps smaller businesses connect to a much larger audience then they could traditionally.

Related to that, we have a substantial number of businesses and services on Local and we’re continuing to grow that content. We have over 15 million listings and we’ve made it easier for people to add or update businesses. This is something that our users said they wanted when we were in beta and now we’ve added it. It essentially lets business owners either add their business or edit their existing one and it also encourages non-business owners to suggest a business listing or alert us to business changes in their community. [See Search Engine Watch article]

We also provide things like our refine and sort, which are unique to Local. These features let you define the specific type of business you’re looking for. For example, instead of just looking for any and all restaurants in San Francisco, I can specify that I want an elegant restaurant with entertainment, a great bar and within a certain price range.

Q: What do you think you uniquely bring to what you do?
A: I think I’m good at building teams and recruiting people and motivating people to perform. I believe you have to find the right people to do the job and then give them breathing room. You have to let them demonstrate that they can succeed.

Zod [Farzad Nazem] our CTO, is a really good role model in terms of how to run an organization. He’s told me many times that you need to just give people the benefit of the doubt and you need to let them do their job even if it isn’t always in the way that you think it should be. Even if you’re right, it’s kind of the nature of democracy; people have free will. You can probe and you can question, but at the end of the day, if people are in a role and you want them to be successful and the company to be successful, you have to let them do their job.

Q: At thirty, you’ve accomplished quite a lot. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from your experiences so far?
A: I guess I’ve learned through both my academic and professional experiences that you need to pace yourself. I feel like if I want to be happy long term, I really have to enjoy everything I do and that may require me to focus on doing fewer things.

I can’t say that it [pacing] has been an easy thing for me. In some ways I’ve had to rework my wiring from being always driven, always pushing, to sometimes kind of laying back a little bit and letting things happen at their own pace. And being in a type A driven industry and a type A driven company in particular, it’s sometimes hard to pace yourself because you often feel like you’re foregoing opportunities or you’re not rising a fast as your peer group or whatever, which may sometimes be the case. But I do believe ultimately-long term-if you’re going at your own pace and you’re doing the things that you really enjoy, you’ll achieve the things that you want to achieve when it’s right to achieve them. And you’ll enjoy yourself along the way which is more important.

Stay tuned for part II next week.

Yvette Irvin
Y! Profiler