Why Choose Canpages as a Search Engine
Mike Agerbo: Well as we get more connected with our digital world, it's becoming easier to find things. And one way to do that is using Canpages. We got Olivier Vincent from Canpages to see. Thanks for coming on the show.
Olivier Vincent: Thank you Mike.
Mike Agerbo: I want to talk about what you guys offer for businesses and how it's relevant today in I guess all the different types of portals in search engines. A lot of folks still Google to find things. How would that be different from what you guys are offering as a service?
Olivier Vincent: There are a number of options today to find local data but what we realize is that many of them are pretty confusing to use specially if you go to Google and ask for a French Restaurant in Yaletown, Vancouver, chances are you're going to get 500 listings.
What you see is that we’re putting a lot of mapping around the application. We like search experience to be very immersive so that you see what you're looking for. So you find your listings on the left with a lot of information. And there is a link between the listing and the little icons so you know what you're looking for. If you wonder what that restaurant around here the little window will now turn to give you the details of it.
And then for every listing, we really populate them with Rich Medias so we've run a lot of success with the videos where business is count in 30 seconds to talk to you about that business. So I'm going to mute that for now but very easy way in the case of the restaurant show me the place, show me what you want—
Mike Agerbo: Well that’s nice because you’ll never know what the restaurants look like until you get there so this is nice to be actually able to see what the atmosphere is like and how it looks.
Olivier Vincent: Absolutely. And it works out for beauty salon, it works well for a hobby store, it works well for a lot of businesses and then we have a lot of functions here where for example in the case of a restaurant, we put a lot of menu which is very nice to be able to look for.
We've got a function that is very popular right now where you can text to your cell phone to somebody the information in the listing. So instead of trying to scribble it on a piece of paper or instead of trying to print that page, what you're pretty much doing is—herewe go, it; just arrived—is—
Mike Agerbo: That was pretty fast.
Olivier Vincent: That was pretty fast.
Mike Agerbo: Yeah.
Olivier Vincent: In every font that will do SMS or that even whatever wired platform will be able to execute on that.
It always takes one or two seconds but I can actually move them up and you will see that as I'm moving it, the database is recalculating what you're looking for. So I move from downtown to Kinsalano and I see the information here.
Mike Agerbo: And how extensive is the business listings? Have you got a lot of restaurants?
Olivier Vincent: For Vancouver we've got a total of I think on the first screen about 2500 restaurants in Vancouver.
Mike Agerbo: Okay.
Olivier Vincent: Everybody is in there. The people that I want to supply users with more information’s videos, photos and menus will come on the top.
Well, I can zoom in a particular neighborhood into the city. So if I want to not zoom in to Yale town because that’s where we’d like to go tonight, now I receive all the maps as we know dated I mean the Yale town and I can look out all this couple restaurants.
Mike Agerbo: Easier than Google.
Olivier Vincent: I think it is.
Mike Agerbo: To find the stuff.
Olivier Vincent: It is the dinning we claim between the map and listing is something that is—nobody is doing that yet.
Mike Agerbo: So let's talk about the street view.
Olivier Vincent: So we've got every six meters a little dot here. There is a panoramic photo that has been taken in the city and I can view just start to zoom around.
Mike Agerbo: Wow.
Olivier Vincent: And if I want to keep moving, I can just—I'm clicking the little arrows here and I'm moving. It takes a fraction of a second for the photo to move forward and I'm moving up and down the streets of Vancouver.
Mike Agerbo: So men will never get lost again.
Olivier Vincent: You see where it is. You see at that corner and you’re driving at directly. So it's very convenient, plus it's got a sexy dimension to it. It's really—to replace this style that you wouldn’t see otherwise.
Mike Agerbo: How extensive is it?
Olivier Vincent: Today we've got the older Vancouver core and the road to Whistler because when we link that to the Olympics obviously. But we’re going to have in of course on the coming month a number of other City’s in Canada as well.
Mike Agerbo: And for businesses again the advantage is they can take advantage of all the video, the menus and all those types of things.
Olivier Vincent: Now, the rule here is that we will never give to users an advertiser that doesn’t correspond to what they're looking for. So if I'm looking for French restaurant in Yaletown, that’s what I'm going to give you whether we've got advertisers or not. But whenever there is an advertiser, they are going to come on the top. And this people here who are part of the businesses— I'm going to be seeing every month by more than three and a half million Canadians. So there is a lot of value for them obviously to be portrayed.
Mike Agerbo: Very good. And so, for consumers to go there, go to Canpages.CA.
Olivier Vincent: Canpages.CA.
Mike Agerbo: Well thank you very much.
Olivier Vincent: Thank you Mike.
Mike Agerbo: Olivier Vincent from Canpages talking about the search service and also the new street view. You got to check it out.
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