Canada’s fastest growing local search company to capture 2,300 new advertisers and 695,000 unique monthly visitors
Vancouver, British Columbia (Marketwire – June 22, 2009) – Canpages Inc., Canada’s fastest growing local search firm, announced today an agreement to acquire ZipLocal.ca., a three-year-old local online business search directory.
The acquisition, which is expected to be finalized in July 2009, will see Canpages’ advertiser base grow by more than 2,300 new customers and expand its reach to the 695,000 unique visitors(i) who conduct more than 3.2 million searches on the ZipLocal.ca website each month. Additionally, it will allow Canpages to further enhance the functionality of its online search platform, Canpages.ca, with ZipLocal’s considerable amount of user-generated content that includes reviews, ratings and business tags designed to help consumers make more informed decisions during their search.
“Canpages is already Canada’s fastest growing local search company because of our commitment to innovation and delivering the best search experience possible to consumers,” said Olivier Vincent, President and CEO of Canpages. “The acquisition of ZipLocal.ca not only takes us one step closer to becoming Canada’s market leader in local online search, it also creates new
opportunities for ZipLocal’s advertising base to tap into Canpages’ extensive print and online directory user bases.”
Since its launch in 2006, Canpages has invested a significant amount of time and resources in the development of Canpages.ca to provide a best-in-class local search experience to Canadians and deliver exceptional value to its advertisers. In addition to unique refinement options that enable users to narrow their search to specific categories, neighbourhoods, price ranges and more, Canpages is the first in Canada to offer “Street Scene” search functionality, a feature which provides high resolution, 360-degree street-level views of local business environments. It is also the first to offer Canadians voice recognition mobile applications for both the iPhone and BlackBerry, which enable users to speak their search request into their phone.
The agreement to acquire ZipLocal.ca represents the second major directory acquisition for the company in less than six months and another milestone for Canpages, which has grown its online presence at Canpages.ca from 300,000 unique visitors per month to 3.5 million and tripled its number of employees from 200 to more than 600. Additionally, in less than one year
Canpages has also expanded its reach from 2 million to 8 million homes and businesses across the country.