Local Search Blog

Online marketing can be the key to offline sales and small business success. Leading search engine industry journal, SearchEngineLand ran a “Small is Beautiful” column by Matt McGee this week detailing the lessons that small business owners have learned taking their advertising and marketing campaigns online. Key amongst their findings from the anecdotal evidence of small business owners who have made a concerted and successful effort to market their businesses over the Internet were:

The Internet can be your business’ primary source for generating new customers and leads.

A consistent effort must be made to keep abreast of the latest trends and techniques in online marketing.

Local search matters, so market to the audience where you do business.

The visual impact of your web page is crucial.

The more you can differentiate your products and services from your competitors to carve out a niche market, the more you will stand out.

“Listening to the experiences of others can be a great learning tool,” McGee notes, “especially when those small business owners have gone down paths you’ve been hesitant to try, or maybe didn’t even know existed.”

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.

Google has announced a further enhancement of its local search capabilities by extending its successful GOOG-411 service into Canada. Google’s move highlights the importance of having an optimized local business profile that is capable of being found online when potential customers are looking for local products and services online – whether that search is from a laptop, from a “smart” mobile phone with abilities to conduct internet searches, or now from any phone thanks to improvements to Google’s 411 service.

Through an amalgamation of sophisticated voice-recognition software, traditional business listings and Google’s core internet search business, users of GOOG-411 dial the service’s number (1-800-GOOG-411) and answer the search questions that Google’s computer poses.

GOOG-411 is “Much like a movie theatre search service,” the Canada’s Globe and Mail reports. “It asks for the user’s city and province, then what they are searching for. A request for “pizza” made from the Globe and Mail newsroom in downtown Toronto yielded eight responses, and the service listed the choices and offered addresses for each.”

Google provides phone numbers for local business carrying the products and services the searcher is looking for, sends a text message with the information or, if desired, will sends a local Google Map listing the products, location, numbers and other information directly to the service user’s cell phone screen.

Canadian users of the new-generation “smart phones” will likely take to this new service in droves as it is rolled out beyond the United States for the first time. Local business owners will want to ensure that their web pages are registered with Google for the new service, and will show up when tech-savvy customers type in local search and, now, mobile search terms that describe their products.

Having a small business web page with an optimized local business profile that is capable of supporting a company’s online marketing efforts should be a top priority for small businesses in North American markets. Forecasts released by PricewaterhouseCoopers with respect to the growth of online marketing and internet advertising in Canada call for continuing rapid growth over the next five years.

“PricewaterhouseCoopers’ latest Global Entertainment Media Outlook suggests online advertising is already enjoying unparalleled growth in this country, soaring 33.2 per cent to $1.3 billion last year,” reports the Toronto Star The PwC report suggests that Internet advertising will become “a $3.4 billion (U.S.) industry over the next five years as more consumers migrate to their computers and mobile devices to access multimedia content.”

Jerry Brown, director of PWC’s Canadian entertainment and media advisory practice notes that “Keyword search, classified advertising and online video advertising - full-motion video ads shown on the Internet - will be the fastest-growing components” in the surging e-commerce sector, while in Canada’s e-mobile marketplace, “wireless network upgrades will similarly drive mobile advertising.”
As traditional TV, radio and print advertising media continue to lose market share to the Internet, small businesses dependent on advertising - particularly small businesses which target younger growth demographics - will need to ensure that they have a digital footprint which is capable of effective online marketing. An effective small business web page should contain an optimized local business profile which permits effective keyword search, local search and particularly mobile search so that products and services can be marketed to the host of Internet capable smart phones that are set to flood and transform the Canadian marketplace.

“Local search” - the term internet marketers and search engine insiders use for when you and I punch in search queries like “Italian restaurant Toronto” or “Boston aluminum siding” - is, with mobile search from cell phones and handhelds, the growing focus in online marketing and internet advertising.

Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering -Search Quality, is the man encharged with honing the algorithm formula behind Google’s ever expanding capacity to bring information to the screens of desktops, laptops and - increasingly - mobile phones and handheld devices like the SmartPhone and BlackBerry. In a recent interview with C/NetNews.com’s Stephen Shankland, the Google VP pointed to the growing prominence and importance of “local search”, both to consumers and to Google. Noting, first and foremost that Google’s aim is to provide “universal search” (that is, to provide whatever information, from whatever source on the planet it is that people are searching for), the formerly sequestered chief arbiter of Google’s search algorithm, highlighted the growing importance of “local search” to consumers and, therfore, to Google, hands down the world’s largest and most frequently used search engine.

“We want to get everything into Google search,” Google’s search guru conceded in one of his rare public interviews. “Having said that, there are specific searches–the kind of operations you want to do in the results. For example when you do local search, geography matters, where it is on the map matters, and you want to see the results on a map. Or when you do product search, price matters. If you have cases of searches where some things matter more and you want to allow people to operate on those or navigate those parameters, then we’ll give you more tools to do that.”

Google is once again leading the pack, proactively responding to how users do search. Recent numbers from pollster Nielson/NetSurvey show that 86% of internet users will make use of local search terms, and 90% of the transactions that are initiated via local search are completed off-line - i.e., at a local business.

As local search and, increasingly, mobile search come of age, the growing usage of local search as a portal into the products and services consumers are looking for in their neighbourhood highlight the importance for small businesses and large chains alike to have an optimized local business profile web page or web site domain that search engines can find and which will funnel increasing web traffic their way. Local search is already the means by which online marketers are converting web traffic into foot traffic - and given the comments of Google’s search guru, it looks like local search is here to stay as the emerging way we find products and services in this evermore digital world.

Local search is fast becoming the emerging trend in online marketing and advertising, if not advertising and marketing in general - online or offline. The emergence of local search as the the next marketing wave underscores the importance for businesses large and small to have a “digital footprint” - be it a simple web page or a sophisticated and extensive web domain - in order to bring their ’storefront’ to consumers tapping into the internet’s potential or to bring consumers from the internet to their ‘bricks and mortar’ storefront.

Nielson/NetSurvey survey results (in conjunction with WebVisible) show that 86% of internet users search for local products and services online - up from 70% of internet users in 2007. Moreover, it is not the case that internet users are using the internet’s local search capabilities to access products and service online. The Nielson results show that 90% of the transactions that are initiated through online searches for local goods and services are completed offline. In other words, local businesses are drawing customers and clients from the internet to their ‘bricks ‘n mortar’ tores and offices. Consumers who are increasingly comfortable with the evermore user-friendly Web 2.0 internet experience are “Windows Shopping” rather than window-shopping.

As local search challenges and surpasses traditional advertising and marketing media such as television, radio, newspapers, and even traditional local search print ginat Yellow Pages™, in importanceis for driving customers to local businesses, large chains and national advertisers are jumping on the local search bandwagon. “In 2008,” according to marketing powerhous Marchex.com, “local ad campaigns (by national advertisers) will employ tactics and encourage consumers to complete their purchases at local services or retail outlets.”

As local small businesses that have relied on street visibility and foot traffic to sustain and grow their customer base are faced with online marketing competition from national advertisers, their ability to compete successfully in their own local market will hinge on their ability to develop an online presence with the same visibility as their local storefront. Setting up a web page for online marketing that is optimized for local search es that search engines like Google or Yahoo! will be able to find and pass on to users looking for local products and services is the first step from small local businesses that wish to remain competitive in this increasingly sophisticated digital marketing era.

Mobile media analysis mogul, M:Metrics, released a summary of their study on how and where smartphone users in the United States and United Kingdom are spending their time online. The results should be thought-provoking for small businesses which are increasingly relying on the local search capabilities of potential customers to find their ‘bricks-and-mortar” storefronts online before they visit these businesses’ actual locations.

The M:Metrics press release shows that smartphone users in the U.S. (and this study did not include users of either of the most popular iPhone or BlackBerry devices) spend over four and a half hours per month online from their moblies: and their most frequent and popular destination was Craigslist, where they speculate mobile search of classified ads, such as for yard sales and local happenings, is the driver for mobile users.

“Among smartphone users in the United States, mobile browsing has increased 89% year over year, and pageviews have increased 127 percent,” M:Metrics’ senior analyst Mark Donovan observes. The increasing popularity of U.S. online search, which is higher than in the U.K. and where local search and commerce seem to be the more dominant focus, is attributable, according to M:Metrics, to “the relative popularity of flat-rate data plans in the U.S., where 10.9 percent of users have an unlimited data plan versus only 2.3 percent in Britain.”

Revieiwng M:Metrics numbers, Web journalist, Stephen Lawson, writing in Macworld notes, “Mobile surfers in the U.S. spend more time on classified-ad site Craigslist than on any other website, and they spent nearly twice as much time browsing as their British counterparts.” It is likely, one would assume that ecommerce will play an ever-bigger part of moblile search as technology and familiarity expand.

As small business and growing businesses increasingly embrace the potentials of local search and mobile search to grow their revenue streams - ensuring their sites can be found and read online - the increasing familiarity of the consuming public in North American and in Europe with mobile search technology will undoubtedly push these numbers higher and higher. Expect the huge year-over-year growth rates to continue and accelerate.

There are ever greater opportunities for businesses of all sizes to reap the benefits of emerging local search and mobile search technologies. In an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, yesterday - an interview credited with bumping Google’s share price 4.7% - Google CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt, called the emerging capability for consumers to conduct local searches using mobile phone technologies (cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerries etc.) “a tremendous opportunity” for growth.

Google’s research indicates that over the next three or four years, another billion mobile phones will be added worldwide. Eventually, there will be “five or so billion mobile phones in a world of six billion or so,” Dr. Schmidt predicts. Integrating local search and mobile search capabilities will be a key for driving these customers to local businesses.

Schmidt, not surprisingly, travels with the requisite array of laptop, cell phone PDA etc. He notes there has been “a huge increase in maps, Google Maps”, particularly, he says, has been “hugely successful”. Internet mapping, especially Google and Yahoo! maps, is the key ingredient in optimizing both a business’ local search and mobile search capabilities. “When I want to go to the equivalent of Starbucks,” Schmidt says, “I just type ‘Starbucks‘, it says its over there. For me, that’s jusut a huge - a huge improvement. And that service is available almost everywhere in the world.” (As an avid caffeine addict, I can only add my, “Me too!”)

As technical innovations improve local and mobile online searching - and Dr, Schmidt intimates there is a pipeline of innovations at Google awaiting rollout - it seems clear that optimizing your company’s website for local and mobile search - whether you are a turnkey operation, a small business, or a medium-sized growth business - is an imperative. It may seem daunting, especially for the small entrepeneur, but the investment of time, money and effort will be a necessary investment for your company’s success.

Working with a search engine optimization company that specializes in local search and has experience working with a range of clients from small, owner-operated companies to large firms, may be the best way to ensure your company’s footprint is out there and can be found with ease by your potential customers. You do not want to miss the “tremendous opportunity” that industry leaders, like Dr. Schmidt, have so clearly identified.

Okay, it’s not quantum computing….yet. However, a study released this week by Yahoo! Research in conjunction with researchers at Cornell University highlights the increasingly refined local search capability and capacity that search engines are developing.

Using a model based on probability theory to track the most frequent queries from Yahoo!’s logs, the research team led by digital search pioneer, Lars Backstrom from Cornell, found that the ‘probabilistic’ methodology they utilized (please forgive my tantalizing allusion to quantum theory, I couldn’t resist) significantly outperformed the simpler geometric techniques currently utilized by Google, Yahoo!, MSN et al. Using probability theory, the research team was able to pinpoint the natural geographic “hot spot” for any particular search query, as well as its ‘dispersion’ - how quickly the relevancy of a particular search term falls off as you move away from the geographic locale naturally associated with the search term. (The researchers used the names of baseball teams as an illustrative search term. The search term “Yankees” quite naturally had a wider geographic dispersion than the term Royals did, reflecting the national following of the New York team as opposed to the more localized following of the Kansas City ballclub.)

Even more interestingly, the authors of the study were able to track and predict how the natural epicentre, or “hot spot” of a search term as well as its dispersion can change over time. (The illustration they used was queries about “Hurricane Dean” as that storm blew in from the Carribean. Search intensity and dispersion increased and widened in real time, dispersion spreading widely just before the hurricane made landfall. In contrast, queries about the “Grand Canyon” - a national monument carved by time, but relatively unaffected by its passing - pretty much reflected the population distribution of the U.S. as a whole.)

As search engines begin to adopt this next generation of local search methodology it will “affect both search-based marketing and advertising efforts by region,” and will “also be useful as a component for search engine rankings themselves.” The methodology outlined in the study appears to be eminently applicable to everything from marketing political candidates (ugh…enough!) to focusing one’s online marketing efforts geographically and in real-time to changes in cuisine tastes, music preference, and even consumer responses to changing weather patterns.

The focus that search engines and leading academic researchers are putting on local search capabilities underscores how important a segment of online advertising and marketing local search has become - an importance that will only increasingly rise over time. The good news is that thanks to Yahoo! Research and Cornell we will soon have the ability to track that rise in importance in real time, as well as its dispersion across North America and the world!

In the 1700’s signs with the letters “T.I.P” began to appear on signs in English pubs. Standing for the phrase, “To Insure Promptness”, the practice of giving gratuities for prompt, efficient service, or ‘tipping’ began. Flash forward: What are the best ‘TIP’s for medium-sized or small businesses ‘to insure people’, or even better ‘purchasers’, entering local search terms on Google or Yahoo! will visit your website and ultimately buy your products or services?

1. Make sure your website’s main page (your “landing” or “splash” page) is optimized so the “spiders”, “robots” or “web crawlers” – programs from the search engines that visit individual websites – are able to visit your site and know what it is about. (Focusing on what keywords describe your business is essential.)
2. Make sure the search engine spiders can navigate your site once they are there. (Having a site directory on your landing page will ensure searchability, not just for the web crawlers but for your potential customers as well, ensuring they can easily find what they need on your site.)
3. Make sure you regularly add new pages and content to your website. ‘Spiders’ prefer to eat the new ‘flies’ they catch in their webs rather than flies that have been stuck there, drying out for weeks or months. (Remember: ‘Content is King.’)
4. Make sure you content is useful and interesting for your ultimate reader – the potential customer who visits your site. Optimize your site all you like to obtain top rankings on Google, but you’ve wasted your time if the person who reaches your site finds nothing interesting or relevant on it. (Another site where the reader can look for more relevant content is just one click away!)
5. Make sure the ideas and content on your website are spread over a range of different pages. Try to restrict yourself to one idea, one product per page. (Each time you put new content or pages on your website, you are training the search engine spider to revisit your site more often – hopefully increasing your search engine page ranking each time with fresh, relevant content.)

Working with a knowledgable and experienced SEO company (search-engine optimization) that specializes in local search capabilities for small business or mid-size companies, and/or attending a search optimization seminar, may prove invaluable in building and improving your local search capabilities driving more traffic and potential customers to your website.

Kudos (and thanks) to John Alexander of Search Engines Workshops for the detailed insight and knowledge he shared with the author and others in the recent Toronto-area SEO training seminar held in conjunction with Barry Byers and Greg Mate Search Engine Academy.