Today marks a milestone in the local-search war, as Overture rolls out its highly specific and flexible Local Match service. Meant to compete with the regional targeting portion of Google Ad Words, Local match takes the concept to an unprecedented level of granularity, while broadening its market impressively. Two blockbuster features distinguish Local Match, and guarantee headlines as the business world absorbs the significance of this rollout:

1. Advertisers may determine locality in increments of one-half mile. This specificity contrasts with Google's smallest geographic increment of 20 miles (Google also allows preset city and regional targeting).

2. Advertisers do not need a landing page; Overture's creates a landing page with essential advertiser information such as name, address, phone number, description, and a Yahoo! map of the business location.

This is powerful, groundbreaking stuff. In one swoop, Overture widens the market historically by eliminating one basic barrier to entry: ownership of a Web site. And the very small geographic radius turns Overture into what Geoff Stevens, general manager of Overture, calls "a Sunday circular."

CBS Marketwatch notes the difficulty in penetrating a new marketplace that lacks presence on the Internet, and probably lacks much awareness of search advertising and PPC concepts. Stevens says Overture will utilize direct-mail marketing. More importantly, Local Match presents a wide-open opportunity for local SEM specialists to approach small businesses in the community. Just as Local Match deepens and granularizes search advertising, it does the same to third-party SEM.