We are excited to announce our recent acquisition of Yokel.com, an online retail directory that has made local shopping simpler than ever since 2005. With just a search term and a geographic location in mind, a visitor can find which local businesses sell a particular product or brand. This is an innovative idea and will be a great asset to CitySquares, because it not only connects neighborhood customers to the businesses in their area but also to the specific products sold in each store.

This site was founded by local search veterans Scott Randall and Don Zereski who both wanted to make local shopping information more accessible online. Together, these two masterminds created the clever software behind Yokel.com, which today has over 2 million retailers on the site.

We are excited to see what the future has in store for both CitySquares and Yokel. We see many potential opportunities to combine the power of product and hyper-local search to help local merchants across the nation build a stronger and bigger customer base. Keep checking in for updates on this acquisition and the opportunities created between both local search sites.

The acquisition was made public today by Lisa van der Pool at The Boston Business Journal and was written as follows:

CitySquares expands nationally by thinking locally

Boston Business Journal – by Lisa van der Pool

Hyper-local search firm CitySquares Online Inc. has acquired Boston-based online retail directory Yokel to further its bid to become the go-to online resource for everything local — from garbage-pickup schedules to where to find the closest barbecue joint.

Boston-based CitySquares acquired Yokel’s assets, including the firm’s online directory of about 2 million retailers plus the company’s back-end technology, for an undisclosed sum in January.

“Our real vision is to provide a true resource for your neighborhood online — whether I’m looking for the snow-removal schedule or a review of local dog parks,” said Ben Saren, co-founder and CEO of CitySquares.

CitySquares launched in 2005 with the goal of offering local information comparable to what people have traditionally found in their local newspapers. Saren said that his firm’s biggest competitors are Citysearch and Yelp, both of which drive traffic through reviews of local retailers and restaurants.

CitySquares’ main revenue-generation pipeline is through advertising from small businesses, mainly small retailers and restaurants — many of which don’t have an online presence — in major cities nationwide, from Boston to Phoenix.

CitySquares offers firms a place to “live” online and reach customers. A basic business profile on City-Squares is free; firms can pay $15 per month for a “deluxe” listing or $50 per month for a premium listing. The site currently has about 2,000 small-business advertisers and about 14.5 million businesses listed on the site.

CitySquares, which currently has 13 employees in its South End office, is backed by angel investors, including Jonathan Kraft, and has received about $2 million to date. The firm, which says it will be cash-flow positive in about 90 days, has plans to hire a handful of people in the coming months.

“We really liked their story,” said Rod Van Sciver, an angel investor with eCoast Angel Network and a CitySquares board member. “We feel that the small retailer has been left out in the cold on this whole online thing. A lot of them don’t have a Web site, and if they do, their brother-in-law probably made it.”

Like many firms in 2009 CitySquares took a hit last year and laid off several sales staffers. The company’s main advertising target was small businesses, many of which were more interested in survival rather than finding new ways to market. To cope with the dramatically shifted business climate, CitySquares began marketing advertising space to larger, national advertisers.

“The most traumatic thing about (last year) was seeing small companies go out of business,” Saren said. “There were many stories of personal financial tragedy.”

For 2010, CitySquares is now focused on populating the Web site with content and adding advertisers.

“What CitySquares has is a good front-end local marketing presence,” said Scott Randall, CEO of Yokel, who is currently serving as a consultant for City-Squares. “Yokel gives them a more robust offering.”

Marissa Green is Marketing Associate at CitySquares.com, the premier hyper-local search site for small businesses nationwide. Marissa is also a full time student at Emerson College majoring in marketing communication. A native of New York City, Marissa's young career spans marketing and PR agencies in Manhattan to her position at CitySquares in Boston. Email this author | See all posts by Marissa Green

Tags | acquisition, bbj, boston business journal, lisa van der pool, local product search, Press, retail, yokel, yokel.com