OMAHA, NE and Los Altos, CA September 30, 2008 – infoGROUP (NASDAQ: IUSA), the leading provider of proprietary business and consumer databases, local business listings for directories, Points of Interest (POI) for navigation systems, sales leads, direct marketing, email marketing and global information, today announced a partnership with MerchantCircle, the largest online network of local business owners in the nation, to distribute MerchantCircle’s local business information across the internet.
MerchantCircle’s Local Directory Submission (LDS) service provides local merchants the opportunity to add and update their business information across all major search engines, mobile devices and navigation systems. infoUSA will standardize and verify local business information for accuracy, then incorporate that information into the most current installment of the infoUSA database. As a result, this data will be distributed to key infoUSA partners. The leading 5 search engines in the U.S. rely on infoUSA's data to power their local search and directory offerings and 90% of vehicles with navigation systems on the road today use infoUSA Point of Interest (POI) data.
Jim DeRouchey, President, infoUSA License Division stated, “Partnering with MerchantCircle provides local businesses the opportunity for one-stop distribution of their locations to the marketplace. Local businesses are the most challenging businesses to find and verify. With infoUSA and MerchantCircle’s collaboration, regardless of the size, these businesses are incorporated in the infoUSA database and distributed broadly. The partnership emphasizes infoUSA’s commitment to providing the highest quality data for our partners in the local search, navigation and mobile space.”
“Our 615,000 local business members rely on MerchantCircle to attract customers online,” says Darren Waddell, Vice President of Marketing. “Partnering with infoUSA ensures that our members will be accurately represented when consumers look for local businesses across all major search engines and new channels like in-car navigation and mobile search.”
infoUSA remains a leading provider of proprietary business databases to the local search and navigation industries. For more information, please contact Jim DeRouchey, President, infoUSA License Division, at 402-537-7915 or jim.derouchey@infousa.com.