ShopLocal Powering Ask.com's Deal$ Newest Area – Local Only Beta

Within the Deal$ area of the search engine Ask.com, a new beta area called ‘Local Only’ is appearing that is currently nearly exclusively powered by the localized what’s on sale content that  ShopLocal houses in it’s many SmartCircular sites.

Lots of SmartCircular retailer clients are showing up within the search results of this Ask.com beta area like Office Depot, Best Buy, Kmart and Target to name a few.  Luckily this local content is not siloed, as it is woven back into the overall Deal$ result set, as I am guessing not many users make it into this specific beta area.  One of the coolest things that Ask.com is doing in this beta site is calculating the percentage savings from the original price to the sale price.

Example results page for "Digital Cameras" within the Local Only Beta area of Ask.com's Deal$ part of their search index.

However the only current down side to the Ask.com beta implementation is that the landing page URLs are 100% generic and are not product or deal specific, which leaves plenty to be desired on the user landing page experience.  So a user that is looking a specific digital camera within the beta area of Ask.com that clicks off is routed to the main “home” landing page. It also appears that the store filter doesn’t account for all retailers that are included within the results set.