Pinbud – An Interesting New Service
I got a comment from Lucien at Pinbud.com. He pointed out a spelling error in one of my posts. Spelling mistakes happen, even when you are using a spell checker. In this case the mistake was in the title, which I hadn’t run through the spell checker.
I hadn’t heard of PinBud before – so I checked out the site. It is a search engine for finding trades people within your geographic area. And, it is REALLY good.
The site has a little ‘Beta’ logo – so I guess it is still in beta. But, it is a great idea and it gave some interesting results. The interface is fairly intuitive. Major categories are in tabs, each tab has a drop down menu that lets you select the most common sub-categories. Enter your location either zip code, postal code or city and get a listing of local trades people. You can increase the search radius for finding a company or display the list in a number of different formats.
Not all cities are listed. But, surprisingly there were some good results for my little town of Comox on Vancouver Island.
For me, however, the big surprise was it was using the Bing search engine. I haven’t checked Bing for local search for a while. But, after seeing it on the PinBud site – I went and tried a search for “plumber comox bc” on Bing. Surprisingly, I got a local listing. And, while it has a long way to go before it looks as clean as Google’s – it was there. ( The Pinbud listing looked better. )
However, the question remains, how does a local Canadian business get listed in the Bing local search? You can’t do it from the “Bing Local Listing Center”, it only accepts US businesses. It is possible that, like Yahoo, it is getting its listing from Yellow Pages. But wouldn’t it be nice if they let businesses everywhere list for free.
So, a big thumbs up for Pinbud and Bing – you have disappointed me yet again.
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great review of Pinbud.com n Bing.com … thank you.
Michael, thank you very much for your kind words about PinBud.
Regarding PinBud – indeed we are still in beta. But PinBud is not just a “search engine”, or a “local search engine”, like Yellow Pages, the core function of PinBud being the mass-emailing service. People search for service providers, select the most interesting companies, then send them a request for a service or for a quote. Not one by one, but to all at once. Then they can organize answers online or simply choose the best provider after discussions on the phone or by email – it’s up to them to choose how they want to be contacted back.
Lucian – Thanks for the clarification. There were a lot of features I didn’t explore.
The more I hear about your service the better it looks.