The Power Of Being Found For Local Online Searches

A few years ago, at the 2007 Strategic Advertising Summit, Microsoft mogul, Bill Gates, predicted yellow pages usage would drop to near zero by the year 2012 for people under the age of 50. Gates’ prediction seems to be coming true as the yellow pages are beginning to see double digit declines in advertising sales, as their former users are now turning to a faster, friendlier and easier way to find local businesses—the Internet.

And while the Internet is the bane of the yellow pages’ demise, with a 72.11% market-strangling hold on Internet searches, it is Google that is leading the way.

Simply put, Google has become the new “yellow pages.” When you compare their market-dominating 72.11% of all Internet searches to their nearest competitor, Yahoo, with an unremarkable 14.57% of Internet searches, the case is made that every local business should concentrate all their Internet marketing efforts on Google and Google alone

Let’s face it. If your business does not show up on Google, you are basically invisible to the world. And, if your business can’t be found on the first two pages of Google, you (almost) don’t exist because 83% of Google searches do not make it past the bottom of Google’s second page.

Take a look at these stats:

• 73% of all online activity is related to local content (Google).

• 66% of Americans use the Internet to find local businesses (Comscore).

• 54% of Americans have replaced their phone books (yellow pages) with Internet searches (Comscore).

• 82% of local searchers follow up with their search by phone call and/or walk-in (TMP / Comscore).

• 43% of search engine users are seeking a local merchant with the intent of buying in their local area.

• 97% of Internet users in the U.S. gather shopping information online, and of those consumers 51% explicitly characterize their behavior as “Shop Online, Purchase Offline” (NPD Group)

• For every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, another five or six are going to offline purchases that are influenced by online research (MIT Technology Review).

Local search can best be described as any online search that takes the place of a traditional search involving the local phonebook’s yellow pages. Local search is often categorized as a search being made with the intention on finding something (business, product, service) in a specific geographic. More specifically, local search can be identified by searching online for a transaction that will occur offline in one’s local area.

Google Places is a revolutionary and totally free service that can literally catapult a small, local business from obscurity to insane profitability almost overnight. By taking advantage of a Google Places listing, you can highlight your business’ products and services and place your information in front of thousands of local customers who are searching for your particular type of business in your particular local area via Google.com.

Not only will a listing on Google Places make your business stand out among dozens (sometimes hundreds) of local competitors, you will also get to tell potential customers a little bit about your business.

The bottom line is this – the easier it is for people to find you, the better. The best way to get found online is on the first page of the Google Search results. And the easiest way of getting on the first page of Google, is to claim and setup your Google Places Business Listing.

By: pierrebk4

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Loren Squires is a small business marketing consultant specializing in email marketing in Colorado. More information and a free report may be found at www.HKEmailMarketingSolutions.com