CitySquares started in 2005 with only seven neighborhoods on the site. We wanted to provide a useful and relevant hyper-local resource for local residents and for the small businesses. Those seven neighborhoods in Somerville and Cambridge Massachusetts (Davis Square, Porter Square, Harvard Square, Kendall Square, Union Square, Central Square and Inman Square) are now the corner stones of CitySquares. We then progressed into numerous other neighborhoods in Brookline and Boston. The reason we progressed successfully was because we were proving value to consumers and helping small businesses get online. It’s that simple. SMBs were realizing they needed to make a move from print to online advertising and get more for their ad dollars. They may not understand everything about the Internet, and may not know what “SEO” means or “conversion” but they know that consumers are online, and that’s where they also need to be. CitySquares was growing and but vision was barely being realized.

Well, it’s three years later and this past July we expanded the site to cover to all of New England and metro NY. We are one of the top 2500 sites in the nation according to Quantcast and have hundreds of paying customers. Going national seems like the next logical step doesn’t it? What are we waiting for? Grow, grow, grow! It all sounds logical and simple but in fact it’s far from it. What makes CitySquares unique is the value we provide customers. We have cultivated the site around the local communities and earnestly want to see small businesses succeed and grow. So the question wasn’t why don’t we expand, but how do we expand and preserve the essence of who we are? It’s a tough question to answer, one that we’ve been working on for some time. We don’t want to devolve into a just a national directory where the small business is buried under the national players or where the consumer’s opinion takes priority over SMBs. We care about small businesses, they’re our priority. But we also care about real-world community, offline life.

The fact is, we’ve only begun to achieve our vision. There’s so much more for us to accomplish. Our aim is to not be just a business directory or city guide, but to be the ultimate resource for local communities. Whether a county in Montana, a borough in NY, a village in Vermont, or a neighborhood in Seattle, we want to get all the information about that community, that locale, online. Get the geopolitical information online, municipal information, local government, post office, libraries, public schools, trash and recycling collection schedules, historical facts, playgrounds, parking lots, public transportation, local school lunch menus, athletic program information, July 4th fireworks locations, and so much more. CitySquares’ vision is, and has always been, to be “Your Neighborhood, Online.” Not easy, but necessary. And it will happen.

So here we are, starting our national expansion. And why? It’s simple -  there is a need. The need for the local tractor equipment company in French Lick, Indiana to be found when someone searches for local tractor equipment in French Lick, Indiana and not find John Deere in Indianapolis, Indiana. It’s about getting these small businesses online, and allowing them to be discovered by local, qualified consumers. Period. But that’s just the beginning. The rest and the best is yet to come. It may not sound or look like much right now, but as we chug along in the next couple months, the next year, and beyond, you’ll see this ultimate vision become reality.

This week CitySquares launched an additional 1.7 million businesses to fulfill the rest of New York and New Jersey as well as the entire state of Pennsylvania. We will quickly be rolling out other states to complete the national expansion. It is an exciting time for us and it’s equally exciting to see so many small businesses, mom-and-pops, across this great nation actually get online – many of them for their first time ever! This is one small step for CitySquares, one giant leap for your communities. You just wait and see.

– Co-founders, Bob Leland and Ben Saren

Bob Leland is Co-Founder and VP Product at CitySquares. Email this author | See all posts by Bob Leland

Tags | expansion, local business, Local Search, new jersey, new york, pennsylvania, small business, vision