Kicking off the festivities, Frazier Miller, Yahoo! Local’s General Manager, will focus on Yahoo!’s vision for weaving local information into users’ primary Web starting points in his keynote address on Thursday at 9:15 a.m.

Following, Michael Bayle, Yahoo! Connected Life’s General Manager of Global Monetization, will participate in the “Mobile Advertising Opportunities & Tactics” panel on Friday at 9 a.m.

And to give you a better sense of what you can expect from Frazier, the Yahoo! Search Blog team asked him some questions to give you a sneak peek.

Yahoo! Search Blog team

Yahoo! Search Blog (YSB): Can you give us a sneak peek into what you plan to talk about at the show?

Frazier Miller (FM): For the last several years, we’ve spoken about how expansive the local search market opportunity is, so I’m going to lay out how much progress we’ve made in fully realizing the market potential and where the industry is at large. I’ll walk through which usage cases have caught fire with people, how we’re doing in terms of monetizing on PC and mobile devices, and — probably most interesting — what it’s going to take to get to the next level.

YSB: What are you most focused on for Yahoo! Local today?

FM: Over the last 12 months, we’ve focused heavily on making the site more social in eliciting user feedback and comments. We’ve introduced features that allow users to connect with each other by making comments on ratings/reviews and added the ability to subscribe to favorite reviewers. Also, earlier this month, we announced updates to Upcoming that include a new interface and greatly increased number of hyper-local events on the site to make it easier for new users to find things to do while maintaining the community aspects that regular users know and love.

YSB: What kind of innovation do you see happening in local search today? What are some of your favorite up-and-coming sites?

FM: I’m trying to be “greener” these days, so some of the sites that have really caught my eye fall into that category. Walkscore.com is a cool site that analyzes how well your community is laid-out for walking, rather than driving. Greenopia is one that rates businesses and services based on their environmental responsibility.

There’s a ton happening in the Mobile space too. Fire eagle is a project sponsored by Yahoo!, which enables users to register their location and share it with a number of other apps and services. There’s going to be a lot happening on this front in the coming months.

YSB: What about the local search market do you think offers solid potential?

FM: I can’t overstate the upcoming importance and growth of local search enough. For example, by 2010, mobile phones are expected to outpace PCs by three times and local info is the most sought after on mobile devices. We have a perfect storm brewing between user demand, advertising desire for targeting and mobile evolution that’s going to make this an incredibly rich arena for the next few years.

The new interface makes it easier for new users to find things to do, but still lets existing users tap into the Upcoming community you’re used to. So you can continue to connect with friends and find out what’s going on nearby.

We’re also increasing the number and types of hyper-local events available so you can find smaller-scale, more local events even closer to home. We’ve added events like farmers’ markets, craft fairs and street festivals to the tens of thousands already available. Our events cover more than 8,000 cities worldwide and they’re still integrated into other Yahoo! sites like Local, My Yahoo!, Travel Guides, and Music.

So if you’re still looking to make plans for the Fourth of July, give it a try on Upcoming by typing in ‘fireworks’ and ‘San Francisco Bay Area’ on the site. You’ll be one step closer to eating good local barbeque and wearing outlandish America-flag-printed apparel on Friday. Or, for a Yahoo! Search shortcut to other events over the long weekend, try ‘Chicago festivals.’

Vince Maniago & the Upcoming Team

Not too much will change for you. You’ll continue to get updates from Yahoo! Search with sprinkles of local search announcements.

Welcome aboard Yahoo! Local!

Yahoo! Search Blog team

So, let’s say you want to find some great Mexican food in the San Francisco area. You start by searching ‘Mexican Restaurant, San Francisco‘ and a laundry list of Mexican restaurants pops up. But, perhaps you love the vibe along the water and want to find a restaurant in that specific area. To take your search a layer deeper and save you time, hit the ‘Expand Map’ in the map window and a circle will now appear. You can then shrink, expand or move the circle around to concentrate on a particular area on the map. Without havng to run your search agan, the map will automatically re-populate based on your modifications.

Give it a test drive and let the team know what you think here.

Yahoo! Search Blog team

Going wide, we’ve made big improvements in our wall-to-wall coverage of the United States, improving our back-drop data for a number of complete states, including California, Oregon, New York, the Carolina’s, and numerous other states in the west and midwest. State-wide, you’ll see an improvement in freshness, color and clarity. Here’s an example up at McCloud, CA, which is a beautiful part of California near Mt. Shasta.

Going deep, and I think more importantly, we’ve enabled up to 2 extra zoom levels of aerial photography and satellite imagery for the Satellite button for hundreds of cities around the US. Not only can you see more detail, but in many places the imagery has gotten a welcomed refresh as well. To see what I mean, check this out new view of Denver City Hall.

I’ve always believed that satellite and aerial imagery adds an important context to understanding our maps and driving directions, and with this update, I hope you’ll agree with me that this feature is even more useful.

Cheers,

Michael Lawless, Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

Some of the improvements you might notice as you test-drive our updated Yahoo! Maps include:

• New Neighborhood Data at lower zoom levels with:
• > 300 cities with new neighborhood data added throughout North America, from Palo Alto, to Chicago, to Toronto, etc.
• > 12,000 new neighborhoods added, from “Lower East Side” (New York, Milwaukee, Bridgeport) to “Lower Collegetown” (Ithaca)
• Expanded Worldwide Coverage with much improved coverage, especially throughout Eastern Europe
• New POI information – highlighting Schools, Rest areas, Ski Resorts, etc.
  Additional shaded relief levels worldwide
• City label density increased for better usability
• Style improvements such as Hybrid Road and Label colors adjusted for better legibility
• Lighter map tiles – with an average of 30-60% reduction in size

Stay tuned for continued updates and improvements throughout 2008. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Cheers!

Gus Maldonado – Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Geo/Maps

Highly compact at only 30kb, this component won’t weigh your widget down, and those of you who know AS3 know that a native component handles raster graphics and overlays with ease, greatly improving performance. The new api supports complex custom markers, local search, geocoding, and of course maps, satellite and hybrid out of the box.

Take a look at the YDN release informationwhere there’s more info, examples,and a couple of screencasts, and for you developers looking for the Flash edge, you’re welcome.

Michael Lawless
Sr. Product Manager – Yahoo! Maps

Now following your favorite freeway on Yahoo! Maps is as easy as drag & drop. Once you get your directions to your destination, if you don’t quite like what you see, you can pick up your route and drop it somewhere else, and we’ll drive you through the area you select in the most efficient manner. If that’s still not quite right, you can tug on the route again until it’s perfect. Of course you can undo your through-points whenever you like, or go back to your original route. We’ll even tell you the difference in mileage and estimated time between your personalized route and our fastest route. This would be great for long trips where you want to see some interesting detours or scenic routes.

In addition to our personalized routes, we’ve made a few other changes. Searching for businesses on a map just got more informative. Inside the business popups on the map there are now photos and user review quotes, and we’ve also re-formatted the list view to make it easier to understand your results. Yahoo! Maps is now a bit faster, and we’ve fixed a couple of our favorite pet-peeves, like being able to save as many addresses as you’d like.

We hope you like the new functionality.

Happy drag & dropping,

Michael Lawless – Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Maps

Although Yahoo! Shortcuts will provide Flickr photos for your top terms, financial charts for companies such as Yahoo! Inc., and help you find out more about that HP Pavilion dv9500t you’ve been looking at, we’re especially partial to the Yahoo! Maps shortcut.

For example, if I were to put 701 First Ave, Sunnyvale, CA in the body of my post (as I just did), the plugin will auto-detect that there is mapping context, and give me the option of having an appropriate link. Inside the shortcut (rollover the address above to see it) you can expand to a popup which has links to see a full sized map, get driving directions, and search for nearby businesses.

There’s additionaldiscussionon Yahoo! Search Blog, and in Yodel Anecdotal, so follow the links to read more.

Michael Lawless – Sr. Product Manager Yahoo! Maps, and ylocalblog caretaker.

In an effort to keep you better connected to new reviews from the people and places you prefer, Yahoo! Local now offers RSS feeds on key areas of the site so you can receive updates as they become available (Hint: look for the radiating RSS symbol ).

From our city guide pages, you can choose to “Add RSS” for recent reviews and stay abreast of users’ varied experiences with local businesses. If you encounter a great review from a particular user, click on a picture or name in order to view that user’s profile page and add an RSS feed to get his or her future reviews. Finally, you can establish an RSS feed to get notified when Yahoo! Local users comment on your reviews. Just navigate to your MyLocal profile page, scroll to the “comments on your reviews” section, and click to “Add RSS.”

Finally, a first review on a business really does get the ball rolling in providing valuable insights to other Yahoo! Local users. In an effort to encourage users to contribute that essential first review, you may have noticed the First Reviewer attributions that now appear on business details pages. It’s your key to finding out who the local experts really are, and to get credit for submitting a review that helps others make decisions.

We hope you make good use of the latest updates and as always, let us know your thoughts here.

Shawn Bolan

Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Local