Continuing Local Efforts, Yahoo More Deeply Integrates OpenTable Reservations Into Search

Yahoo has begun integrating OpenTable reservations more deeply into its local search results, in a move that looks very much like its recent one with Yelp.

But, unlike Yelp, it is not due to a content licensing deal, said sources inside Yahoo, but part of a recent local redesign and an element of an even larger effort by CEO Marissa Mayer to turbocharge its search efforts.

An OpenTable spokesperson said that the company has long been one of the providers of restaurant information on Yahoo, but that there had been no special work on OpenTable’s part in the integration. In addition, Microsoft’s Bing has been doing such integration for a while.

But, as you can see from this screenshot I took today, Yahoo has given OpenTable a nice ride, with restaurant reservations integrated into rich data results on the right side of the search page. When you click the link, it brings you directly to the specific reservation query in OpenTable.

OpenTable results are also linked to on Google, although this is clearly a more handsome design.

Both OpenTable and Yelp are the big dogs of local data aggregation, with close ties to local merchants and a large market, though quite dispersed. Yet another is YP.com and also Foursquare. I wrote recently of the focus of Mayer on the local arena, which could be a lucrative one for Yahoo, although Google is certainly the dominant player here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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