Local search leading to action, comScore study reports
The three biggest search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search, together accounted for over 71 percent of the local searches performed in the US in the month of July 2006, reported leading web measurement company comScore Media. The study also revealed that almost 63% of the US Internet population (or about 109 million users) performed a local search during the month, a whopping 43% increase year-on-year.
The latest data from comScore points to the considerable momentum that local search has currently gained. Even more important perhaps is the implications these results have for marketers, who have to take cognizance of the growing number of people looking to local search results from the mainstream search engines to fulfill their needs for products or services.
Strong relationship between local advertising and paid search
One of the interesting results from the comScore report is that about 41% of those performing a local search were actually looking for something in their own home area, as opposed to searching for businesses in areas they intended to visit (which is what one would have intuitively thought so). Well, these people were looking to find common services such as a car rental, lawyer or a dry cleaner; a significant portion of the people who were searching for services in their own area searched for entertainment outlets, restaurants and the like.
More importantly, the study points out that people who performed a local search actually ended up taking some action. For example, comScore says that during the second quarter 47% of local searchers visited a local merchant based on their search while another 41% made offline contact. Also, a high proportion of searches actually tried to find out businesses in an area by name – imagine the lost opportunity when your business is not found when a local searcher does not find your company during a search.
The implications of this are huge for both traditional brick and mortar companies who haven’t adopted online marketing with much fervor as well as online marketers who have already adopted search engine marketing, but haven’t leveraged the power of local search.
There is a clear benefit for brick and mortar companies to have some kind of active online presence and ensuring that they do get found in the local search results. These days, even having a website is not necessary to have some visibility online, though we’d strongly recommend that be the bare minimum. The benefits of having a website, irrespective of whether you are looking to attract customers from within a narrow precinct or from a wider geographic spread, are enormous.
Even the companies that do businesses online stand to gain a lot with listing locally, for it tends to build customer confidence about a business. Knowing that an online store has a physical presence in the same vicinity as that of the searcher will undoubtedly be more reassuring than dealing with an online business far away.
Targeting paid search efforts to local markets
Even while companies think on a much global scale, it is imperative that some of the marketing is very local and extremely targeted.
There are a couple of simple things that businesses can do to leverage the burgeoning trend of local search and the high “conversions” (ie. user action) that this channel seems to generate.
For one, take advantage of the local listing opportunities offered by many of the top search engines and other niche websites/ portals. Many of these involve an offline process as well such as verification of the physical address that is being provided when creating the listing (which will boost the credibility of the information provided with local search).
Secondly, those companies that are already exploring paid search marketing should take advantage of the targeting options provided by the search engines. For instance, Google Adwords allows for geographic targeting by city, state and country; there is more than enough reason to believe that this targeting option could be narrowed further in the near future.
Thirdly, take advantage of the online classifieds sites (Craigslist, for example)—they are an extremely powerful channel for not only attracting traffic directly but also increasingly visibility in local search. The online classifieds industry is growing at a rapid clip and is a separate topic for discussion by itself.
Keeping track of these avenues, understanding their limitations and potential is a specialized activity in itself—something a professional search marketing company is best equipped to do. As a marketer, the question you will have to ask yourself is whether you are capitalizing on these opportunities. If you are not, then you are certainly missing out—can businesses afford to miss out on golden opportunities?
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