Skype have announced a partnership with Thomson Directories to boost its toolbar with new local search features. Skype’s web toolbar will now let users search for any business using the optimized Thomson Local search engine.
Thomson Directories are widely acknowledged as the market leader in local search, so it made perfect sense for Skype to work with them, said Skype’s VP of Business Development, James Bilefield.
The results of the search will display three sponsored listings at the top of the page and a list of businesses down the left hand side which are then geographically displayed on a map. These business listings have been optimized for one-click calling, which means that any phone numbers shown on the results page can be called using Skype, by clicking on the Skype button.
In addition to being able to place SkypeOut calls directly from the Thomson search result page, the toolbars also let users call any phone number on any web page.