RED HERRING | VC Money Finds Local Search

"Insider Pages, a search engine that helps users track down local information such as the location of the nearest hairstylists, say, and get reviews on how talented they are with the scissors, said Monday it raised $8.5 million in venture funding, in yet another sign �local� is the catchword in search.

The funding was a coup for the Pasadena, California-based company that got its start two years ago after a husband and wife looked for contractors in the yellow pages and concluded it was hard to figure out whether the businesses they found were any good.

The news was just one of several announcements that game out of a Kelsey Group conference in San Jose, California focusing on local search. Local businesses, made up of small -and mid-sized companies, make up the last frontier in search, with everybody from the tiny startups to the search giants targeting this still relatively untapped space (see The Power of Mom and Pop).

Insider Pages� funding was led by Sequoia Capital and Softbank. Idealab, the founding investor, also participated. "