Local search tools for lawyers and professional services businesses

Tom Mighell reports this morning that local search (the ability to search for things in a specific locality) is very hot, and this past week both Google and Yahoo! made announcements about their respective local search tools:

• Google has officially merged Google Maps and Google Local into….Google Local. Now if you try to type http://maps.google.com, you’ll be taken to the Google Local page (although the address will stay the same). Not my favorite choice of layout (I use the maps much more often than the local), but I’ll get used to it.
• Yahoo! is choosing to add services to its local product, purchasing Upcoming.org the social event calendar site. They hope to improve upon their existing social events platform with this product.

For lawyers and professional services businesses, local search is going to become a very big deal. Internet users will become attuned to using local search for finding businesses. When they find the businesses by city, zip code or address, the local search engines will then have links to Web and blog sites produced by the firm. Say goodbye to yellow pages as we know them.