Before calling a prospect that I never spoke with before, I look up to see where this person is located geographically. Normally, the leads I get are from the United States, so I look up the area code of the phone number to find out what time zone they are in. I do this ever now and then, but this time I tried to go with the invisible tabs approach.

I knew Yahoo! improved this just recently, so I did a search on the area code 507 at Yahoo!.

Now that was easy, I gave the prospect a call. Unfortunately, they are closed on Mondays. :)

So then I travelled over to Google to see what they are in the form of zip code look up. Keep in mind, I am just searching on 507 with no special prefix or special tab.

Not as pretty, but Google also gave me the information I was looking for without jumping through hoops.

Ok, now for my buddy Ask Jeeves. I thought it was a no brainer. Ask Jeeves is the leader in this type of stuff. Conducting a search at Ask on 507 did not, I repeat, did not, give me the information I wanted right on the search page. What happened to Ask Jeeves Search Smarter motto?

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