Who owns the address and phone number data associated with a local business?  On one level, the information is in the public domain.  I can walk into any merchant in the world, ask for their address and phone number, and likely get a response.  The closest thing to the owner of this information, the local merchant itself, almost certainly would prefer that its accurate and up to date address and phone number be disseminated freely.

But the question of address and contact information ownership gets a little bit trickier when you start talking about curated databases of millions of local businesses.  This data tends to go “stale” quickly – businesses close, move, change names, and open every day.  I’ve heard estimates that up to 40% of all listings go stale each quarter.

Historically, it’s been a costly operation to keep this data up to date. The top tier providers, companies like InfoUSA and Acxiom, employ huge call centers that are focused on verifying local business information.  These companies charge top dollar for access to this curated information.

But the economics are starting to change.  As local merchants increasingly turn to the Internet to drive more business, they now have access to publishing tools that allow them to keep their business information up to date themselves, perhaps eliminating the need for giant call centers run by third parties.

Companies like Google, Yelp, Yahoo, GetListed.org, and Merchant Circle all help local merchants keep their data updated.  My company, RateItAll, has seen a dramatic uptick of local businesses adding and claiming their listings in recent months.  Another candidate to set local business data free would be the US Government.  And how about a scenario in which the legacy yellow pages providers suddenly become relevant again by powering the emerging class of geo services and apps?  This would seem like a better long term strategy than leaving tons of paper in the lobbies of apartment buildings.

(As an aside, just last week, I thought that CitySearch might be taking the plunge and shaking up the industry with the announcement of their CityGrid API.  But when you read the fine print, one of the restrictions is no caching.)

There’s nothing to prevent any of these organizations from exposing the data that was collected via their services to third party developers with no restrictions other than attribution.  And whoever does it first will have a huge advantage in becoming the de facto provider of local business data.  Being able to tell local businesses, “Fix it once, and it gets fixed on thousands of domains,” is a powerful pitch.

And once any one company owns that core data relationship with the local merchant, there are any number of services that can be sold via that channel.   The same dashboard that lets a merchant edit their contact info might also provide tools for web hosting, advertising, coupons, etc.

So let’s do this Google.  Let’s shake things up Yelp.  Where are you RH Donnelly / DexOne.  Who is going to take the plunge?

I’ll finish with the full text of a post that I wrote in June of last year on Sexy Widget entitled “When Will Google Expose Local Business Data to Developers:“

It seems like a lot of companies are working on location based applications in an effort to serve the growing number of people accessing the Internet from a mobile device.  One of the more common application types is to detect the location of the user, and display local businesses near them – apps like Yelp, GoodRec, UrbanSpoon, and as of today, Google all do a pretty good job of this.  Other apps like Foursquare and Brightkite attempt to do slightly different things based on local business data, and there are countless other web applications built on top of local business data.

The common denominator needed to build these sorts of applications is access to up to date and accurate local business information – business name, street address, phone number, city and state, zip code.

As of today, there are two ways to get this sort of data in large quantities; 1) scrape it from other services; 2) license it from companies like Acxiom and InfoUSA.

Local business data is notoriously difficult to keep up to date.  I’ve heard estimates that up to 40% of all local business data goes stale per quarter.  With a centralized approach, such as the call centers operated by Acxiom and InfoUSA, it is a costly (and lucrative) proposition to keep this data fresh.

To me, the sale of local business data seems like an industry in grave danger of getting wiped out.

Yesterday, Google announced a new local business dashboard, designed to incentivize local businesses to claim their listing on Google.  Claiming a business means being responsible for keeping its data updated, thus eliminating the need for centralized data providers.

Would it shock anyone if Google were to expose this local business information in exchange for attribution, much like they did with the Google Maps API?  Not only would a local business data API represent another snippet of code to suck analytics data back from countless websites, but Google’s mobile platform, Android, would stand to benefit from increased numbers of location based applications.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Google wiped out an industry overnight – just ask those that competed with Urchin, now Google Analytics.