Internet giant Yahoo has purchased Zofari, a start-up based in San Francisco, California that developed a local-search application to boost its local-recommendation capabilities.

Zofari offers recommendations for local places such as cafes and bars, a service similar to Pandora's, the free music streaming service that makes a unique playlist depending on the listener's preference.

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Zofari chooses the venues by scanning places its subscribers have liked to generate additional options, and by picking data from other local-search services such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

The newly acquired company said it was inspired by Pandora and Netflix, the media-streaming service, to produce a similar app for local venues, according to CNET.

"Inspired by what Pandora has done for music and Netflix has done for movies, we built (what we think) is a beautiful and powerful recommendation app that allows users to discover new places based on the restaurants, bars and cafes they know and love," the company wrote on its website.

The acquisition is only one of more than 40 companies purchased since Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, came into power over two years ago. The additions to Yahoo come with the Internet corporation's goal of building its mobile search offerings.

The acquisition comes in the wake of Yahoo's display advertisement sales, an important financial measure, which fell by seven percent in the last financial quarter.

"We're thrilled to welcome the team to Yahoo, where they will join our growing Search organization and continue to build amazing discovery experiences," a Yahoo spokesperson said.

The Internet giant has also been focusing on reviving its dying local-search business. Yahoo publicized its partnership with the "online urban guide" and business review site, Yelp, to display its content such as reviews and ratings, on Yahoo's search result pages.

As of the moment, Zofari will resume its service on the iOS, Android and Internet browsers 

TagsFoursquare, Yahoo, Pandora, netflix, Acquisition, Purchase