Canpages has added a ‘street view’ search feature to its local search function. Street View allows users to not only find a listing on a map, but also to see high-resolution pictures of their search results. Users can take a virtual walk down city streets and view businesses in their natural context.
The feature will also give advertisers an innovative means of reaching the website’s 3.5 million unique monthly visitors. When a user clicks on a storefront in Street View, not only will they get the business’ local profile, they could also be directed to a video, a menu, hours of operation or URL. Canpages is currently working on embedding advertisers’ content into Street View photographs, thus showing users which businesses have more content, and allowing them to view that content.
Currently, Street View is only available for Vancouver, Whistler and Squamish, BC, but Canpages plans to roll out the feature in other Canadian cities during the coming months. The next cities to be featured will be Montreal and Toronto, with shooting starting very soon.
Meanwhile, Canpages’ new free-to-download iPhone voice recognition search app allows iPhone users to search Canpages directories verbally. Users can also use the iPhone’s GPS capability to find those listings closest to the user. The detailed results include maps, directions and website links. Canpages’ advertisers will appear first in most searches, excluding searches by proximity, which are ordered by distance.
