About a month ago, my wife and I welcomed our fourth child into the world and the team at Kutenda presented us with a gift certificate to a restaurant near my house. Needless to say, our hands were full, so ordering in seemed like the perfect option.

It was a surprise to me when I did a Google search and couldn’t find a web site for the place. This was a bit frustrating, as it’s tough to order for delivery when you don’t know what is on the menu. Fortunately, the place was only a 6-minute drive, so I went there to find out.

I entered the restaurant and asked for a takeout menu. The hostess said their takeout menus were located in the Yellow Pages. Wow.

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As mentioned here last week, marketing a small or medium sized business through the local search results is an effective and smart way to generate new leads and sales to your business.  As a local business owner getting your web site into the local business results on Google, also know as the 10-pack, can bring substantial new business for no direct cost.

In the past, once you had set up your local search listing on Google there was not a whole lot of visibility into how exactly those local search listings were benefiting you, other than corollary data in Google Analytics and the perceived increase in web based inquiries coming via phone calls, emails, or inquiry for submissions.

About two months ago, Google opened up Local Business Center reports, which give local business owners a detailed look into what is going on with their local search listings. These listings not only show small businesses marketers what they have done well, but also can show areas for improvement in their local business listing.

Let’s take a look at what’s included in the Google Local Business Center reports.
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Recommended reading: Greg Sterling provides an excellent overview of the “local search ecosystem” and how it has failed small businesses.

Writing for Local Search News, Sterling describes this ecosystem as “an awkward set of alliances between traditional (mostly yellow pages) publishers, local search marketing (SEM) vendors and search engines, among a few others.”

This unholy alliance appears to be breaking down, and its demise may be a good thing for small and mid-sized businesses.

The current model, Sterling explains, was developed to reduce complexity and make SEM easier to sell to small businesses.

But here’s the rub: simplifying SEM often makes it less effective – leading to bad experiences and a high degree of “churn” in the market, with SMBs bailing after dismal results. Sterling reports that local SEM churn rates are between 50% and 100% each year.

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Here’s why small businesses care about local search:

Because it’s is a way for them to cheaply connect with the best kind of prospects: the kind already looking for their products or services.

These prospects aren’t passive tire-kickers. According to a 2008 study by comScore, 82 percent of local internet searches result in some kind of action—whether it’s a click, call, in-store visit or actual purchase.

What’s defines a ‘local search’?
Scenario one: A consumer adds a geographic modifier to their search engine query (e.g., Denver pet stores). Local pet stores are displayed prominently.

Scenario two: The search engine notices the consumer’s IP address and displays local results, geographic modifier or not. For example, when I Google ‘pet stores’ or ‘Denver pet stores,’ I get similar results.

Google killed the phonebook star
Google, Yahoo, MSN (now Bing) and a handful of smaller search engines have gradually turned the phone book, once a valuable place to find information, into a glorified door jam.

The phone book isn’t dead yet. But web-enabled smart phones will probably steal the last bit of oxygen available.

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