Analytics firm AdQuants has compiled some very interesting data on the local search market. It's based on the company's crawling of the major search engines in "250 US metros with approximately 300 local keywords spanning the spectrum of local service providers and retailers." AdQuants found that national paid search market share trends were magnified at the local level: "Of the 86,000 Local Online Advertisers identified, 83% advertised on Google, 33% advertised on Yahoo and only 8% advertised on Microsoft, significantly below Microsoft's 12% share at the national level." There's no breakdo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Features: General | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

SEMPO announced an educational partnership this morning with yellow pages publisher Yellow Book, a division of the UK based Yell.  According to the press release put out, the SEMPO Institute "will be providing distance learning education for Yellowbook’s media consultant sales team." I believe this is the first such relationship between SEMPO and an individual yellow pages publisher, although the Yellow Pages Association is a long-time member of SEMPO. The deal appears to be about helping the Yellowbook sales force improve its ability to educate and sell SEM related products to local [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEM Industry: General

So, you’ve junked your day job and made the commitment to your shiny new startup business. You’ve created your website, and what’s the first thing you do now?  Like just about every other startup business person you do the search on Google for your business name. At this point, two things might happen: You discover you "own" the first page of Google results and you feel satisfied that you’re now on the map, or Your business is nowhere to be seen, and you lapse into a state of abject depression OK, so it’s not quite as binary as that, but you get my point.  What we’r [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: SEM | How To: SEO | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Small Is Beautiful

Search marketing firm Internet Engine released findings from a new "Retail Search Presence Study," which analyzed paid search results in ten product categories over the past three holiday shopping seasons. What the study found was the following: The results show that on-line retailers have a very strong presence, representing well over 30% of the listings shown, while bricks and mortar retailers consistently have had the weakest presence of any group showing up only 12% of the time. The overwhelming majority of product purchases are made in stores. E-commerce remains a tiny fraction (<4%) [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

Many small business owners realize the need to market online to local customers, but few know where to begin. A new web site that offers a much-needed launch pad for local businesses launched this week. GetListed.org operates with a simple premise: It should be as easy as possible for small businesses to find and claim their business listings on local search engines. To that end, the process begins with only two demands of the small business owner: enter your business name and enter your zip code. With that information, the site looks for the company's business listings on four local search [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEM Tools | SEO: Local

The Google AdWords team has announced a group of new features for Local Business Ads, some of which are in place now, and others that will be coming soon. In place now are new links that will appear at the bottom of the ad's info window: Get Directions, Street View, and/or Save to My Maps. Here's a look at my wife's local business ad showing two of the new links: (We don't have Street View in our little backwater hamlet, but maybe someday.) A "Send" link will be added soon, allowing searchers to send business information to their phone or email address. If I'm reading the announc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Maps & Local | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

If you've been thinking about what's in store for 2009, join the crowd. The start of a new year always brings out the proverbial crystal ball, but perhaps this year more than most, online marketers are trying to figure out what's around the corner. To that end, here's a big list of articles and blog posts where writers have shared their forecasts, predictions, and/or resolutions for the new year. A couple are (an attempt at being) humorous, some are completely serious. Either way, this might help you focus your own thinking on what's in store for 2009. Search Marketing Find Resoluti [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Search Marketing: Mobile | SEM Industry: General | Top News

The economic Grinch is threatening to steal Christmas this year, but there are some things local businesses can do to avoid getting coal in their stockings this holiday season. Here are three tips for punching up your online local marketing presence, just in time for Black Friday and the Cyber Mondays to follow. For brick-and-mortar stores, everyone knows that the biggest holiday shopping day is typically "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving when many start their gift shopping, helping propel retailers firmly into the black. For online retailers, the greatest shopping frenzy hi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Google: Maps & Local | How To: SEO | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

B2B marketers establish conversions - or desired actions - throughout their customers' buying process. These actions may take place online, on the phone, or live at a specific location. Regardless, many occur at the local level. Local search enables marketers to capitalize on these interactions and differentiate your firm based upon one very important factor - geographic proximity. Below are four tips to help B2B marketers reach prospects at the local level. Test local PPC advertising Devising a well-laid plan for your search advertising program is a crucial step. Are you e [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: SEO | How To: SEO | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

Not long ago, Google rolled out its "Geolocation API" (via Google Gears). Initially it was intended to enable third party publishers and developers to get location for their apps on mobile devices using a combination of the phone's inherent location-awareness technologies (i.e., GPS) and Google's cell-tower database (which has been expanded now to include WiFi locations). However it also works for destkop browsers, provided that Gears is installed on the computer. Here's the Google Code Blog discussing the impact: When we originally proposed the Gears Geolocation API our goal was to make i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: General | Google: AdWords | Google: Maps & Local | Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Engines: Mobile Search Engines | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Yahoo: Display Ads | Yahoo: Search Ads

Having written about search for years, it's often easy for me to mistakenly assume that everyone gets it. Search is where the customers are. Surely every business owner, large or small, understands by now the importance of appearing before these customers in search. Surely. But as I've looked for local businesses to help with my needs after a recent move, I've had a personal reminder of just how far behind some companies remain. I spent the past 12 years living in a small English village, where there was little need to turn to search engines if I needed help with my home. Everyone in [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Features: General | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

At the start of this summer, I wrote "it seems like Local has been rumored to be "the next big thing" in Search as many times as Cubs fans have said ‘this is the year'...2008 finally could be the year where the prediction, at least for Local, comes true." Well, here we are in October. The Cubs' World Series run is over...again...but, the last four months have been an absolute whirlwind of Local-related news items and innovations in technology and interface. These advances, and plenty of others I haven't even listed here for reasons of length, have heralded Local's arrival as a critic [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Small Is Beautiful

One of the first things most local search marketers have on their to do lists is getting their listings to appear in a Google Onebox at the top of Google's search results. To be in the box, you usually need to be in Google's top local search results. And one of the major factors that influences that are "web references." Web references aren't links, but in local search results, they act similarly to how links can boost a page in "regular" search results. Here are some ways of quickly accumulating some great web references and bump your local listing towards the top in G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: SEO | Local Search | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

If you're looking for a quick improvement in your local business site's rankings and don't have a lot of time, you can't go wrong with making some simple improvements to your homepage title tag. The text within the title tags is one of the top signals used by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines to decide what keywords are relevant to a page, and it's also one of the most frequently neglected parts of a site design. If you have a good title tag, you can rank at the top of the search results for users seeking your business — and a bad title can leave you in the dark. Below are a few d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: SEO | Local Search | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

A new report from analyst firm Borrell Associates contains fairly dire revenue projections for both local newspapers and print yellow pages ($5 billion in projected print revenue losses in five years). The newspaper angle is picked up today by the Wall Street Journal and PaidContent, which both lay out some of the numbers. The report is called "Say Goodbye to Yellow Pages." Yet it's not as severe on the directory industry as that title would suggest. The report contains numerous projections of revenues and their various sources and discusses numbers of sales reps and so on. Borrell has alwa [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

One of the reasons that "local search" has struggled in some quarters has been the challenge of tracking the internet's influence on in-store or local transactions. This is a theme I heard raised by large retailers at a ShopLocal partner event a couple of weeks ago and one that came up several times in various contexts at SMX Local-Mobile. Marchex is seeking to address that challenge with the integration of the company's various advertiser-facing assets and technologies in a single toolset that offers enhanced tracking capabilities. The company is calling this a next-generation local advertis [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search Marketing: Landing Pages | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

There's a battle going on in the floral industry, and many small, independent florists are losing. Like other small businesses, they don't have the time or knowledge to keep up with the latest marketing trends and tactics. But there are other challenges, too. Way back in 1998, the FTC warned consumers about phony marketers pretending to be local florists: Petal Pushers: Is Your 'Local' Florist Really Long-Distance? That consumer alert refers to offline deception via phone directories; ten years later, the situation is just as bad online. This month's small business online marketing success s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEO: Local | Small Is Beautiful

The neglected part of the local story is about products. Often local search is discussed exclusively in terms of finding service businesses or small businesses in one's own area. But an equally important, if less obvious, part of the "local search" phenomenon is shopping in the more traditional sense. I've written previous Locals Only columns about the widespread -- indeed dominant -- consumer phenomenon of research online-buy offline. Now a new study by Krillion and the E-Tailing Group sheds more light on this complex and important trend. The expressed purpose of the study, completed in F [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Local Search | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Stats: Search Behavior

I've run across a number of local business sites which offer event calendars of some sort, and many of these companies may not be aware that they can and should add hCalendar Microformat to their pages to further optimize them for both search and user experience. I've previously recommended hCard Microformat for optimizing local business sites, and hCalendar can offer similar advantages, particularly as the evolution of blended search results continues. I've seen store locator pages which list all the events happening at all of a company's outlets, as well as smaller scope events such as [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Local Search | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing

Newspapers have watched as "their" national advertisers have gone elsewhere online to get the reach and local placements that they provided almost exclusively offline. There have been several disappointing attempts in the past to build a national network of newspaper publishers: the failed New Century Network and the existing but arguably underperforming Real Cities and the NNN. But now Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., the New York Times Co. and Tribune Co. have formed a joint venture called quadrantOne. There will be common technology, common sales, and support and dedicated premium inventory at [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Yahoo: Publisher Network