True Local Inventory-Aware Search Will Be Powerful, But We’re Nowhere Close Today
Written by Evan SchumanMay 6th, 2010
The retail industry is well known for its contrarian tendencies. After all, "be where everyone else is not" was pretty much the original strategy of Wal-Mart when it was setting up shop in rural communities that chains of the day wouldn't go near. This concept is at the heart of the gold mine of information that today lies just out of reach, contained in the local inventories of millions of shops across the country.
The value—and extreme value it is—comes from a search engine finding products that simply cannot be found otherwise.
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
I have strong reservations about the 'individual' certification and posting of that information for merchants. Can you imagine the potential employee poaching that might occur? The implications when competitors can look up how many are certified with each of their competitors? 
-Christine
