by Stephen Shankland
October 9, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

MapQuest will begin showing business reviews from start-up Yelp on Thursday, part of a plan to expand from just a mapping site into a go-to hub of local information.

Through the deal with Yelp, MapQuest will get better locally specific content, and Yelp will get more Web site traffic from beyond tech-savvy places such as Silicon Valley that currently are familiar with the site, said Christian Dwyer, MapQuest's senior vice president and general manager.

In addition, the AOL site will add sports information to its MapQuest local site, said Mark Law, MapQuest's vice president of product development. The expansion fleshes out MapQuest's vision to reproduce what people can find in their Sunday newspaper, but in a dynamic online format. MapQuest also is seeking to plug into the booming mobile mapping business.

It's released BlackBerry-specific applications so far, and a version of its site tuned for the Safari Web browser on Apple's iPhone is due to be launched "in the next few days," Dwyer said. The efforts come as AOL seeks to improve its financial condition so Time Warner will get a better deal selling the asset--perhaps to Yahoo.