52nd City

Broadcast TV and web make very strange bedfellows, typically. Google
still manages to hold remarkable sway over even highly local information.

Example: 1st Google hit for 'cherokee pawn shop st. louis' is indeed a
listing of St. Louis pawn and thrift shops hosted by
www.thecityofstlouis.com.

Askarchy.com yields nothing for 'cherokee pawn shop,' and searching just
for 'pawn shop' yields 3 businesses in ILLINOIS

Pretty lame (snicker).

Besides that, I'm curious about whether is service is truly intended to
someday become a locally-focused search engine, or just a vehicle for
advertising. No doubt the marketroids sitting on the other end of
askarchy.com are dutifully recording each query people enter, and what
IPs those queries come from, since this is essentially direct,
identifiable feedback for their TV ads.

Marketers usually salivate over this kind of consumer feedback, making
me wonder whether the main purpose of askarchy.com is just to solicit
such feedback for free from TV viewers, without really bothering to
build a usable search engine.

Well i got on there and it seemed to find my place fine, i was looking for the Computer Pro store, google didn't help me because its such a common name, but on the local search, it found it easy. So i guess it depends on what your looking for.

I also find that many localized "search engines" are products of the marketing department and are used as pluses to advertisers.

KSDK's "Ask Archy" seems like a simple lame extension of their earlier, also remarkably lame, listing of St. Louis businesses/events.

Is there some reason why KSDK's web site has countless mini-banners for each of its Featured Sections?