MerchantCircle Aggregates Local Search Listings for Small Businesses

I've commented before about the expansion of local search, other convergent tools for local search, and even a directory of local search directories. All in support of small businesses who are recognizing that being found on the web is now far more important than being found in the paper yellow pages.

Now, thanks to the AlwaysOn.com Media 100 "special awards for market disruption," I've discovered a wonderful service, MerchantCircle.com that gives small business owners a convenient way to access (or add) local search listings on most of the important local search directories (only Google seems to be missing) including Yahoo Local, City Search, YellowPages.com, Verizon Superpages, Yelp.com, Insiderpages.com and more.

The result is the ability to manage your business' "web identity" and online "reputation." So, if you have a business that has local, face-to-face community contact (in other words if your business does not exist entirely on the web), then MerchantCircle is definitely worth checking out. You can monitor and update most of your localized listings and also network with other local businesses in a very state-of-the-Web 2.0-art environment.