Local Search and Its Growing Importance For Small Business

The case for the growing importance of local search to small business was nicely made by Brian Wool at The ClickZ Network (www.clickz.com). Characterizing local search as the get-no-respect, “Rodney Dangerfield of Online Marketing,” Mr. Wool notes that Internet pundits have long been calling for the demise of traditional media like local newspapers and the Yellow Pages™ who draw much of their ad revenue from local advertising.

“There’s certainly been no cliff,” he writes, referring to the presumed fate and destination of traditional print that seems headed for a fall as consumers adopt online search to find local products and services, “just steady growth online and constant decline in many traditional advertising media.” The most recent numbers from JupiterResearch, a leading technology research consulting firm, forecast that online advertising revenues will grow 20% in 2008, while traditional media advertising will falter along at 4%.

These trends show that advertisers are recognizing the growing importance of local search to consumers who are more and more using the Internet, and mobile search from Internet-capable mobile phones, to ferret out local products online.

Contrasting the quality of free local search results that consumers are getting on search engines like Yahoo! and Yellowpages.com with pay-per-call search results from traditional directory service assistance calls - and, particularly, the quality of search results he found using Google Maps on his iPhone - Mr. Wool makes a convincing case that these trends will only continue and deepen. His analysis makes it clear that local small businesses will have to come to grips with the necessity of establishing an online marketing profile and a searchable web page that their potential local customers can find online - and, perhaps more importantly, find from their iPhone.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Local Search, Online Video Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.