The Internet's great promise was to bring the world's treasures easily and quickly to your fingertips. Until now, when you need a local product or service - details on a local restaurant, finding a dry cleaner, a nail salon, or time schedule for the local movie theatre - the Internet has not been efficient for finding this local commercial information. Your most efficient answer has been the yellow pages, the telephone, or the local newspaper.
That is starting to change. Yahoo!, Google, AOL, and MSN are all pumping big dollars into local search capability for a good reason - revenue. The next generation of search engines will be focused on making it easier for you to find things in your local neighborhood, and with many companies pushing toward wireless uses, local search is going to be a significant revenue source for some of these companies. Internet ads have recovered from the dot-com crash of 2000 - spending on ads online grew by twenty percent in 2003 to $7.2 billion. About a third of that money comes from keyword searching, where you put in a keyword and sponsored-ads related to your regular search results appear on the page.
At the summit, Yahoo! and AOL officials said that about five percent of all searches through the main search bar included explicit local terms such as a city, area, or neighborhood. In addition, the officials said that between fifteen and thirty percent of all searches wanted a local result, but did not include a local search term. For example, they suggested that a search for "auto repair" probably wanted local auto repair shops instead of the sites on the history of auto repair. With more than ten million small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S., the local advertising market is waiting to be tapped into. What makes this market so valuable is that it delivers something unique to the web - what sales people call qualified leads - people looking specifically for what you are selling.
All of this localizing of the Internet is not new. For years, a few companies - Citysearch and online phone directories like Verizon's Superpages - have been targeting people in specific places. Two years ago, a company named Lasoo came online with a mapping software to help you find local information. Interestingly, Lasoo was swallowed up by Overture, part of Yahoo! One of the big challenges has been figuring out where exactly the Internet user is. Comscore Networks, an Internet market research firm, reveals that only about seven percent of searches conducted on search engines in the U.S. include a localizing specific search modifier - like a Zip Code, area code, or city name.
Now all the major search companies going after this market are targeting that local market by asking the physical location of their customers. Yahoo! unveiled a new service in 2004 called SmartView that displays restaurants, businesses and ATM machines when you enter an address in Yahoo! Maps. Figuring that since as many as 80-90% of local businesses do not have a web presence, Yahoo! can help everyone by integrating local yellow page ads into its search results.
While in beta form, Google now has what it calls Google Local, which allows you to do a crawler-based search and retrieve results that match your subject and anything deemed relevant to the particular local area that you specify. Historically, Google has long allowed banner ads to be targeted on a country-specific basis. Google more recently launched a new regional targeting program, allowing advertisers to have their Adwords appear in front of those searching from specific local areas in the United States.
AOL has created an "In Your Area" tab and began aggregating and integrating structured local content from its Yellow Pages, Digital City and Moviefone properties under that tab and into search results. For years, Citysbest has provided localized content to AOL users. Now, AOL has merged that content with Yellow Pages into an easy to use listing. AOL has also introduced "SmartBox," offering suggestions via a drop-down menu from the search field, in order to "dis-ambiguate" local searches and drive users directly to specific content areas such as Yellow Pages.
Not to be left out of their already-strong revenue base, some of the telephone companies have started partnering with search provider to offer pay-per-click advertising to their local Yellow pages advertisers. Bell South and Verizon, for example, have paired up with search tools LookSmart, FindWhat and others. Also, using keyword advertising, a few companies have begun using keyword searching as the primary navigation tool in their online yellow pages. It is designed to bridge the gap between keyword search and category-based directory search. Phone book companies Verizon Superpages, Smartpages and online yellow pages Switchboard all are able to provide strong local results.
Citysearch is already a working example of a true hybrid model. It pulls together an easy search, reliable structured data from the Yellow Pages and adds reviews and its own content - including reader feedback. Citysearch focuses on local area attractions, events listings, restaurants, shopping etc, but also offers all kinds of local business information. Through a partnership with Evite (an online invitation company), you can send invitations to any specific place online.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Greg Walder at 08282010
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