The Local Search Revolution has Arrived!

...optimize your online LOCAL presence now - before the learning curve turns expensive.

- By Esoos Bobnar
Courtesy of SearchEngineNews.com | April 2005

While searching the web these days, it's hard not to notice all those little Local tabs sprouting up in the vicinity of the search field on virtually every major search engine. Within the past year, the race has been to integrate a plethora of advanced features into local search capabilities.

Already we're seeing features like customer reviews and ratings, storefront and product photos, detailed maps with directions, hours of operation, forms of accepted payment, integration with cell phones, and much more is promised to follow. Picture a million paper phone books combined – on steroids and capable of providing instant results for an information-hungry and time-challenged customer base. The potential for local search is really quite staggering!

So what exactly is local search, and how can you best position your business to take advantage of it?

In a nutshell, local search is essentially the Internet's version of the phone book. The difference being that this "phone book" is much faster and far more responsive. For example, suppose I'm in Boston staying at the Harbor View Hotel and in need of a haircut? No problem. I Just enter haircut followed by the zip code of the hotel where I'm staying – 02114 – and I instantly find Richard's Haircutting for Men a scant 0.4 miles east and with directions.

All that took about 30 seconds from concept to completion leaving me with a feeling of satisfaction that no regular phone book could ever provide. I'm now addicted to local search after only a single dose! Throw away the phone book, never mind the concierge.

Now, if that little demo hasn't yet convinced you, chew on this recent finding...

70 percent of U.S. households now use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services... Findings also suggest the Internet is poised to surpass newspapers as a local shopping information resource. Source: The Kelsey Group

Simply put, local search – including local search on mobile devices – is about to dominate the world of brick-n-mortar marketing. Ready or not, here it comes! ...we suggest you get ready now, before it starts costing you a fortune to negotiate the learning curve. Oh, and get used to the fact that the big yellow phone book is well on its way to becoming nothing more than a cheesy doorstop.

Get on the bus...

Considering the speed at which search - especially local search - is evolving, you really are running out of time to get your business listed and your listing optimized if you haven't done so already. Not because you won't be able to in the future, but because you won't be able to do it cheaply!

Right now the learning curve costs are affordable. Sooner or later (and probably sooner than you'll like) , the listing prices will increase. That means that the expenses involved in testing to see which local search services are worth the money for you is likely to become prohibitive for businesses that lack a big marketing budget and expertise in the field of web-metrics.

Every brick-n-mortar retail or service business will need to have an online local search presence - similar to the way a Phone Book listing has been essential in the past. We suspect that last call for cheap local online listings may be quickly approaching. You'll most certainly want to get on the bus before it leaves the station - and well before the masses toss out their cheesy doorstops in favor of the feature-rich instant gratification already being more efficiently delivered by local search.

Wanna buy a doorstop?
 

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This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.