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Local.com Corp. [LOCM] hopes to double its revenues this year, said president and chief operating officer Bruce Crair (pictured) at a search engine optimization conference in New York on Monday. That would lift the the ailing local search network's sales to roughly $43 million, compared with $21.5 million in 2007 and $14.2 million in the previous year. "We are really growing fast," he said.

That would be a real accomplishment for ailing the local advertising search company. Local.com has struggled since search engine company Interchange Corp. bought its technology and domain name in 2005 for roughly $700,000. Interchange, which adopted Local.com as its name, that year also bought Sweden's Inspire Infrastructure 2i AB for up to $22.5 million in cash in a gamble that local search was going to explode.

Part of Local.com's problem is that major search engines already offer local search services, although some startups in the sector, such as EveryScape Inc., continue to draw funding. Meanwhile, Local.com has a potential problem in that more than 48% of its revenue comes from Yahoo! Inc., the company's chief advertising partner. Still, it's worth watching whether  Local.com can pull off what would be an impressive turnaround. - Alain Sherter and Maria Woehr

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