Monday, 5 October 2009

Why Brownbook.net is the most remarkable local search business directory on the net

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In addition to offering many cool features that really help increase the online visibility of small to medium-sized businesses - all for free - Brownbook.net also has a lot of internet "firsts" to its name
  • Brownbook is actually a global business directory because it allows businesses in 240 countries to be added – but it is also a local directory at the same time. I don’t know of any other ‘local’ directory that is also fully global (other than Google’s).
  • It offers a great deal all for free – in fact, it offers much more than some other directories that charge a fee for extra functionality.
  • Brownbook is the first business directory to allow widgets in listings (e.g. Google Street View or Twitter feed).
  • It was the first to allow you to use any unit within your listing as a widget in itself for use on other sites such as your blog (called Bidgets in Brownbook-speak).
  • It was the first to enable the addition of Google Street View in a business listing.
  • It's the first to provide QR codes as standard within each business listing.
  • It's the first to provide page view stats for every listing.
  • It was the first to provide these all these additional contact fields: IM, Twitter, VoIP and Blog.
  • and it was the first to include a new B2B endorsement feature where companies within the directory can endorse others and so generate more links to their listing. Here's an example of a business listing in Brownbook with 100+ endorsements: http://www.brownbook.net/business/31008591/worldwideprnet
Further reading:

The Guardian: Brownbook finds success with 'freemium' model
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/aug/20/startups-advertising

1 comment:

  1. Our firm just claimed our listing on BrownBook last week and we love it! Such an innovative service, love the twitter feature too. We're working on creating some educational accounting/tax videos to help people reduce their tax liability and are looking forward to being able to link them directly through brownbook. Beautiful!

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