Currently viewing the tag: "local search"
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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- Image by niallkennedy via Flickr
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.
Yesterday I was showing a copywriter friend about Google Local so she could write about it for us here at Kutenda (Did you know that our Online Marketing Suite will be a big help for companies marketing locally? Yup). I did a typical search that an average consumer might do. I searched for “pizza” here in Broomfield, Colorado, where our offices are.
Here’s what came up in the map results:
#1 result in Google Local - a local pizza joint
Look, the top result is a single-shop, local owned pizza place (they really do have good pizza, too). In the local results, its beating out Dominos, Papa Johns and BlackJack and other big wig pizza-pumping machines.
Local search continues to grow in importance, which just means to you – local or regional business owner – that you have better ways to harness your Internet marketing efforts more effectively. That you do have the opportunity to beat out that 900-lb gorilla in your business area, if you have the right tools to make it happen.
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