Wellesley, MA (May 9, 2000) - You can practically hear the cheers from businesses up and down Main Street in MetroWest. The Internet hasn't killed local commerce, thanks to placelinks.com, an online portal that turns web traffic into store traffic by helping online shoppers find brands, products and services. Local merchants today previewed placelinks.com at the MetroWest Business Expo (Booth # 208), held at the Framingham Tara Hotel, and were among the first to sign-up for a free business listing on the site.

PlaceLinks provides merchants an easy, cost-effective way of reaching online consumers with targeted advertising and promotions. Designed to be self-service, placelinks.com enables merchants to take control of their online advertising by allowing them to manage the content of their listings and promotions, change them as often as they like and gain important feedback about their customers. Companies can post a listing in their business category as complete as the yellow pages, but with the added flexibility of advertising the products, brands, services and activities their business offers. When an online shopper located in Natick, for example, searches placelinks.com for any number of different products and services in their local area - whether by brand, business category, or even store name, businesses with a listing on the PlaceLinks site comes up immediately on their screen.

"We're bringing the Internet revolution to Main Street by creating a fast, easy and cost-effective way for local merchants to bring local buyers into their stores," said Christopher Sole, founder and chief executive officer, PlaceLinks, Inc. "Consumers are online and want to shop locally for goods and services. PlaceLinks is the best way for local businesses to reach them."

In addition to advertising their company's products, brands and services, PlaceLinks merchants can create a variety of promotions that can be placed anywhere on the PlaceLinks web site, for any period of time. PlaceLinks promotions can feature a new item or service that's on sale, a store coupon or other time-limited promotion. Displayed on the company's detailed listing page, promotions are searchable by key words and categories and attach to the main business listing when published on other parts of the PlaceLinks site. Merchants can view or change active promotions, create new promotions and re-use past promotions at any time by accessing the PlaceLinks site. Through the company's partnership with RealNames, merchants can create a link from their PlaceLinks listing to a brand manufacturer's web site or other industry group, adding credibility to their business and providing a value-added service for their customers.

Placelinks.com also tracks the effectiveness of merchant advertising by providing concrete data on how many people saw a particular listing or promotion, what keywords they searched, and other placelinks.com locations they visited. Merchants can use this information to improve the types of promotions they create and better target them to online consumers. For example, if a video store owner in Framingham discovers that people who found his PlaceLinks listing were also viewing local pizza shops, he might create an online promotion that appeared every time someone in Framingham or a surrounding town searched for pizza.

The company plans additional enhancements to placelinks.com in the near future. Through a partnership with Val-Pak, shoppers can view and print a local merchant's Val-Pak discount coupon on the PlaceLinks' site. In addition, PlaceLinks is planning to introduce a local shopper opt-in email service that matches consumers' buying interests with suppliers' offers. Consumers can choose to receive emails based on their brand, product, service or store shopping preferences.

Merchants can confirm their free PlaceLinks listing, by visiting www.placelinks.com or by calling 1-877-235-1313.