Hyper Local Business Directories

Something I feel that is missing completely from the web are what I call ‘hyper local business directories’.

The easy thing to do would be to build a directory like Yelp where you have one domain and then sections for each metro area and business category.  This shores up all of the domain authority and activity on one domain.  And to add new cities or categories, you simply add a new page and section to your site and call it whatever city and category you want… neat and clean.

But the problem I’m finding with that is you end up something like Yelp or YP.com.  A huge directory where you can, in a matter of a few clicks go from state to state, city to city, and from one business category to another.

These are not what I would consider hyper local business directories because these types of sites are more aggregators of locations and businesses, not specifically designed to add value to one metro area.

If I were to build a hyper local directory, here’s some of the things I think would make it valuable:

• List of businesses in that city (of course!)
• Question and answer section where people from that city can post questions and other people (or businesses) can answer
• Blogs – so people from that city can share their own thoughts, ideas, and commentary
• News section – so contributors from that city can share news and information
• Events – so organizations can share events that are relevant to that city

I’m probably missing some other features that would be valuable, but you get the idea.

There’s already a massive amount of resources and directories on the web for specific business sectors such as lawyers, dentists, local businesses, etc…

But I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to find the directories and resources that are built for specific metro areas.