San Francisco, Mar 10: Internet media company Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday announced the launch of SmartView, a new local Web search tool, as it continues to battle Google Inc. for dominance in the high-profile search sector. SmartView helps Yahoo Maps users find such things as restaurants, hotels, hiking trails, movie theaters, stores or automatic teller machines (ATMs) within a certain area.

For example, users looking for Chinese restaurants in downtown San Francisco can type in an area address or intersection and select for Chinese restaurants.

The SmartView technology shows the locations of all of the restaurants. When users click on the markers they get the restaurant's name, address and telephone number, as well as links to more information, Web search and driving directions.

People who want to see a movie can use the tool to get theater locations and show times or buy tickets. Yahoo, which is removing Google technology from all of its sites, has been integrating content from its properties to offer more personalized and targeted searches. Depending on the task requested by a user, SmartView may pull content from Yahoo's Yellow Pages, Movies or Travel sections, among others.

Many in the industry believe that local Web search advertising could be behind the next big online revenue boom. Yahoo, of Sunnyvale, California, is not without stiff competition.

Verizon Communications, the No. 1 U.S. telephone company, this month relaunched its online Yellow Pages site, SuperPages.com, to give advertisers the option of signing up for lucrative Web-search ad campaigns. Bureau Report