FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Hit US Shopping Trend Crosses the Atlantic London, United Kingdom - November 9, 2006. Americans have discovered a new way of shopping which uses the Internet to find products in local shops instead of online shops. This time-saving trend is now coming to the UK. As the UK's first local shopping search engine, AskTheLocal.com intends to mirror the growing success of American websites like ShopLocal.com, which expanded at a rate of 640% in its first year. "The need for shoppers to find products locally is, if anything, stronger in the UK than in the US due to the high-street shopping culture here," says Paula Abrahamson, 33, CEO of AskTheLocal!. "So we have brought together a strong balance of UK high-street retailers such as Marks and Spencer, John Lewis, Jessops, Monsoon, and Argos. Our goal is to have product listings from every bricks-and-mortar retailer in the UK." A local shopping search engine allows shoppers to find product information, photos and prices from multiple bricks-and-mortar retailers and then travel to the nearest shop to buy the product directly. This saves having to wait for online delivery, or travelling between different retailers haphazardly on the high-street trying to find a particular product. "Local shopping search engines take what people love about online shopping, like a wide product selection, price comparison, and convenient search, but do away with what people hate, such as the frustrating wait for online delivery, and inability to look products over before buying them," says Paula Abrahamson. "Also, we are not another yellow pages or business directory," says Paula Abrahamson. "While yellow pages find businesses, local shopping search engines find products. When you can look at the picture, price, and description of the product you want as well as where to get it, shopping becomes a lot easier." She continues, "That lump of paper may be good for plumbers and pizzas, but for shopping you might as well recycle it." Just one year after ShopLocal.com's August 2004 American launch the service reached 1.8 million visits per month. AskTheLocal! anticipates a similar take-up from UK consumers. According to the May 2006 Internet Media Retail Group (IMRG) survey of 3,900 UK Internet users, 90% researched goods online before purchasing them offline, in bricks-and-mortar shops, which is comparable to the 87% of US Internet users who did likewise according to the June 2006 survey by BIGResearch. AskTheLocal! lets users search 7.8 million products, or 88,000 unique products in 3000 shops across the UK, and continues to expand the number of retailers and products. The AskTheLocal! service will be rolled out to other news and portal sites in the UK, emulating ShopLocal.com, which is now featured on WashingtonPost.com and over 200 popular US sites. "No other provider in the UK is offering this unique information resource and local shopping search technology - and we look forward to building partnerships in this area." says Paula Abrahamson. A white paper describing how retailers can benefit from local shopping search engines can be found at: http://askthelocal.com/whitepapers/whitepaper_local_shopping_search.pdf AskTheLocal!'s local shopping search engine can be found at: http://www.askthelocal.com/ ### Contact: Peter Abrahamson, Co-founder AskTheLocal! peter@askthelocal.com tel :: 0207 735 4756 http://www.askthelocal.com