Palo Alto, July 19: Switchboard Inc. on Friday said it signed a one-year deal to use Google Inc.'s Web advertising services to deliver content-targeted ads to users of Switchboard's online yellow pages. "We believe search and Internet yellow pages are converging," said Mark Canon, Switchboard's vice president of business development, who struck the deal with privately held Google, which also runs the nation's most popular search engine.
Westboro, Massachusetts-based Switchboard has an online directory of nearly 1 million merchants in the 200 largest urban areas in the United States. It also licenses its directory technology to such users as AOL and newspaper publisher Knight Ridder Inc.

Canon said Switchboard helps its users search for merchants based on various criteria. For example, they could search for a Chinese restaurant that delivers, is within 10 miles of their home and open 24 hours. Using Google's services would allow Switchboard to serve up highly targeted ads to users, he said.
Google is one of the leading providers of lucrative pay-for-performance" advertising services that respond to key-word Web searches with text ads that appear under headings like "sponsored links." Silicon Valley-based Google recently expanded into contextual-based services that serve up ads based on key words in its partners' Web content pages. Bureau Report