Information about internet local search

Google still # 1 for Search but Microsoft/Yahoo building presence

There was a nice article in Advertising Age this week discussing ” The State of Search Marketing“.  The article continues to remind businesses that are looking to Search to build their business they need to optimize their presence beyond Google.

Microsoft announced a deal with Yahoo in which Bing would power the portal’s search for the next decade. Consumers could still perform searches at yahoo.com, but Microsoft would provide the results and the automated buying platform for advertisers. Yahoo would provide the worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

The move, meant to challenge the industry giant by consolidating about 26% of search share to Google’s 65%, is currently in regulatory review and is expected to be implemented next year.

Click here for the article

Not Consulting this week, Working in Retail – Local Search Works

One of my personal passions is riding bicycles. For the past year or so, I have been working weekends at a local bike shop. As a marketer, I started helping them promote their shop and in doing so I developed a lot of my knowledge of using Local Search for retail businesses.

It is clear that my efforts have been helping the bike shop, but the great thing is this week I have been filling in for a friend and client at his Upholstery Shop, while he takes a long deserved vacation. It has been fun being dropped into a new business, but the real gratification is that I am seeing people calling and coming into the upholstery shop who found the business searching on the internet.

Dave doing the real work of Retail?

My clients tell me every day that new customers are finding them through our joint efforts on the internet, but I am always one person removed from the activity. Taking over the upholstery shop for a few days is validating the variety of people that use Search as their main way of finding businesses and services.

TMP Study Reveals Local Search Changing – More People Searching for Product on Internet

Internet Search continues to explode as total number of Searches increases 31% between June 2008 and June 2009 (21.9 billion total searches in June 2009). The main findings of the TMP Directional Marketing survey are:

• Print media continues to decline in a growing digital marketplace, as consumers reference local business information through alternative methods.
• Google has developed applications that have overtaken online business directories in both IYP/local and local portal searches.
• Mobile search continues to experience growth, as more consumers have access to mobile devices with Internet browsers and applications.

This excerpt says it all

Other Key Study Findings
The closer, the better: Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents in 2009 stated that they expect their search results to reveal businesses within 15 miles of their homes or places of work. This statistic is significantly higher compared to 2008 (59 percent) and 2007 (52 percent), proving that consumers expect more relevance in their business searches.

Click here for the article

Augmented reality will be using Local Search

Today there was a nice article about people using smart phones and integrating local content with the GPS abilities of cell phones. Start looking for “Augmented Reality” as a new buzz phrase.

My key point is that all these applications are going to use content that is already developed by Google Local Business or similar content from Yahoo, MSN, etc….

In the article they highlight an application from Layar :

One company working to make this happen is Amsterdam-based Layar, which recently released an augmented-reality browser by the same name for Android phones. Layar lets you search for things on Google but delivers the results based on your location, which it determines from the GPS readout. So you can search for, say, a bike shop or a pet store close to where you happen to be.

As you can see above Layar is using data sets like Google Local Search for their application

Love them or hate them Yelp (Review Service) is going all out for the iPhone crowd:

For a year, Yelp, a Web site with business reviews written by customers, had an iPhone app that used the device’s GPS and wireless Internet connectivity to deliver local search results. But when the iPhone got a compass, bloggers wondered whether Yelp would go further and make its app overlay information onto a real-time view of the world. After noticing the speculation, Yelp quietly created such an app this summer, spokesman Vince Sollitto said.

The augmented-reality program, known as Monocle, was built for Yelp by an industrious intern and originally hidden in Yelp’s app. (It was activated if you shook the iPhone three times.) Monocle is a formal feature that combines the iPhone’s camera view with tiny tags indicating the names, distances and user ratings of proximate bars, restaurants and more. Poke a floating tag on the screen with your finger and up pops detailed information about the business.

All business need to get their best reputation they can out on services like Yelp ASAP.

Click here for the article in the San Diego Union-Tribune

Stop Others from Editing your Business on Google

Yesterday Google announced a new service called Place Pages.  This is an evolution of Google’s efforts for creating Business Listing for all businesses with a physical address.

One of the changes is that unlike the local business listing where information is collected by Google’s search engine, anyone can edit the info until the business owner takes ownership of the business listing.  So if you have already taken ownership, no worries, but if you have not people are going to start providing their slant on your business.  How about changing the website, address or catagory of business.  It is a little scary.

Example of edit info on Googles Place Pages

Beware of Yellow Pages USA – No substitue for Local Business Listings

Yesterday I got an spam email from a rather official looking Yellow Page entity with the Title ” Validate your Internet Listing”.  They made their Ad and Invoice look as much like major Yellow Pages but with a little investigation I do not believe that they are part of any of the major Yellow Page distributors.  I could be wrong, but this is just the secondary reason for this post.

The main reason is that they want $399.00 to be listing in their Electronic Yellow Pages.  At best this is a poor verison of what you can get on any of the major search engines for free.  So be wary of anything like this..  And believe me when I say that spending $400 with them will not ” Validate your Internet Listing”.

Here is the Email and PDF I recieved:

Invoice for YellowGoesGreen

Dear Customer:

Please verify your ACTUAL LISTING by printing and completing the attached form.

FAX THE COMPLETED FORM TO: XXXXXX

Please make payment by check or credit card as listed on the form.

Return the stub and payment to the following address:

Yellow Goes Green!! (save a tree).

We have taken the phone book out of the desk drawer and placed it on the desktop! We offer a dynamic and interactive product that can be quickly and easily accessed by you and your customers.

We have eliminated what advertisers do not like about the printed Yellow Pages books, and we are far less expensive. Because we do not bear the expense of ink, paper, binding, and distribution, we can pass the savings on to you!

Small Businesses continue to shift their advertising to the Internet

As you know, I am a huge advocate of internet marking and as of August, Kelsey Group and Constat say that Small Business (SBMs) use more online advertising than traditional media advertising. Their report “Local Commerce Monitor Wave XIII,” states 77 percent of U.S. SMBs are using online for advertising.

2007 to 2009 Advertising Focus / Online vs Traditional

The Local Commerce Monitor study also revealed a decrease in overall ad spending by SMBs, owing to unfavorable economic conditions and the long-term substitution of traditional media with lower-cost digital/online media. SMBs decreased spending on advertising and promotion by 23.5 percent, from $2,734 annually (reported in August 2008) to $2,092 annually (reported in August 2009). In spite of the overall decrease in spending on advertising and promotion over the past 12 months, on average, SMBs increased spending on Web sites and profile pages by 26.8 percent, from $608 in 2008 to $769 in 2009.

With Guerrilla Marketing and a focus on online advertising you can reduce your spending and get more new customers.

Restaurants bringing New Customer from the Freeway

I continue to find new value in Google’s Local Business Listing.  I work with several restaurants and it is clear that restaurants are on the forefront of leveraging Web 2.0 technologies.  The most recent data point is that two  restaurants (Miles away from freeway off ramps) I support are finding drivers with web based GPS systems (ex. iphones) directing them off the freeway and bringing them to restaurants which they would never have found driving alone the freeway.

For example small applications (Networking 2.0) for iphones translate Google Business Listing & Google Maps and translate that information on the fly to direct a user to the top BBQ listing along a freeway and then the user is directed to their restaurant choice.

Where to Eat? Finding restaurants using GPS

There are two take home messages from an application like this. First you need to continually work on being on the top 10 box of Google maps.  In this example the iphone application starts with a list of the top ten BBQ restaurants that the odds are great that the user will select from.  The second point is that the Top 10 lists are not perfect as the #8 choice is not even a restaurant.  This shows that developing this information is still in its infancy and you, as a smart restaurateur, can quickly get on this list, as it may not be very competitive.

The other finer point is that as a restaurateur, if you really want to work on this aspect of your advertising you need to make sure that you are categorizing your business around the list of options in the GPS software.  In this application the list looks like this:

Restaurant Categories

I have not researched if most of the applications use the same catagories, but I would bet that the developers of these applications are not trying to change the world on the data side, but like most databased applications are looking to use standard data-sets, that Google and other large search engines supply.

Google Still King – Market Share Continues to Grow

Even with the announced merger of Yahoo and Microsoft in Internet Searching, Google continues to grow in share. Google is still the place to focus the development of your Internet presence.

Google is still in a very commanding position with a 65% market share worldwide (higher in the UK where it stands above 90%). And it’s this dominance of the market that makes Microsoft and Yahoo’s partnership such good news. A stronger player in the search market that offers credible competition to Google can potentially work for advertisers.

Online has traditionally been an area that has seen great competition and this competition have driven technological innovation that has benefited everyone.

Microsoft has invested billions in search technology and is counting on Bing, unveiled last month, to seriously challenge Google. Bing has driven mostly positive responses from those who have used it but this deal with Yahoo will allow them to show it to a much wider audience. Google won’t sit idle and allow its market share to be eaten away.

It has already announced measures to upgrade its own search engine with ‘Google Caffeine’. While this could also be a PR exercise to counter the buzz around the Microsoft/Yahoos partnership, Google Caffeine is seeking to improve search results in terms of size of index, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and relevancy of search results. Google is also going after Microsoft’s traditional business with news of developing a free operating system for inexpensive PCs as a challenge for Microsoft Windows.

This increased competition in the online world will lead to better services for consumers, advertisers and publishers. While the actual partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo is still a few years away, the threat has already caused Google to up its game.

At the same time, if Bing is to catch Google, both Microsoft and Yahoo will be forced to be extremely innovative with their products to eat into the Google lead.

Read more here

Microsoft agrees – Local Search is King

Microsoft continues to lag behind Google and Yahoo in the Search Market. Their newest product Bing was launched last week. Like Google and Yahoo, Bing emphasis the local content of its search ability

Satya Nadella, SVP of Microsoft’s Online Services Division, gave the morning keynote at the Microsoft Bing Summit in Carlsbad, CA last week. It was an introduction to Bing. The main reason I am highlighting this discussion is that Nadella explains that people engage in long search sessions when making purchase decisions. Almost 50% of time spent searching is spent during sessions longer than 30 minutes.
The slide shows 66% of people are using search more frequently as a decision-making tool; and in their strategic verticals:

• 75% product purchases
• 62% Local activity
• 45% Flight or hotel
• 43% Healthcare

It just keeps getting better for local business on the internet