Local Data From comScore!

comScore releases results of their analysis of the size and growth of the U.S. local search market.

According to the study, 63 percent of U.S. Internet users (or approximately 109 million people) performed a local search online in July, a 43-percent increase versus July of 2005. Google Sites (30 percent) and Yahoo! Sites (29 percent) garnered the largest share of local searches in July. Microsoft Sites captured 12 percent of local searches, followed by the Time Warner Network with 7 percent.


Share of Local Searches by Site
July 2006
Total U.S. Home, Work and University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch

Total Local Searches
Total Internet Population 100%
Google Sites 29.8%
Yahoo! Sites 29.2%
Microsoft Sites 12.3%
Time Warner Network 7.1%
Verizon Communications 6.6%
YellowPages.com 3.9%
Ask Network 2.7%
Local.com 1.9%
InfoSpace Network 1.9%
DexOnline.com 1.4%
All Other 3.2%

Local Fragmentation

Peter Krasilovski posts on the Kelsey Group Blog how Yellow Pages are viewing classifieds as the "final piece of the "local advertising hub".


"The “inevitable” convergence of classifieds and Yellow Pages was explored at Kelsey's Directory Driven Commerce conference in Los Angeles Sept. 19-20. I gave a 10 minute primer on the state of the industry, and was joined on the panel by execs from Oodle, YPG of Canada and AdMission (formerly iPIX)."

He posts his 10 points on the subject and #2 says it all for me..

"2. Local fragmentation is getting so intense that Borrell Associates recently determined that major market newspapers like The Philadelphia Inquirer may only count on winning 15 percent of local usage. "

Exactly, and that is the basis of our business operation. The local business is no longer served by a listing in the local newspaper or print yellow pages. The local business person must be represented in ALL the platforms available. How do you get into these platforms? What platforms are available. Visit our main website for a very comprehensive list.

ChowHound

Every day it seems I find a another cool website. Today I bumped into Chowhound.com while surfing through local listings for restaurants on MyFoxLa.com. I've never heard of ChowHound and on first look it reminded me of Yelp but with less community. It does have community but it seems more hidden than Yelp.
The coolest feature is the real time scrolling posts of "ChowHounds?" You can watch reviews, comments and posts on a roll as they are posted.
The aggregated info is decent if you are in a large market. Small and medium markets are less represented as you would expect.
I consider this venue another piece of the marketing pie, another way to get a restaurant business noticed. I have no idea where ChowHound's reviews are picked up but a search on Google shoots back over 750,000 results on the term ChowHound.com.

Search Marketing Industry Summary

An valuable summary offering brilliant charts and fact based insights from Marketing Sherpa.
Interesting finding is the number of agencies who turn down smaller, less lucrative accounts. The reason is understandable as it seems a logical progression in a fast growing industry.
This reality opens the door wide open for a business like ours that lives to serve the small business person!
:-)

Media Life Magazine on Local Advertising

Media Life Magazine offers insight from the Borrell study of last week that claimed local search will jump over 31% in 2007 to over 7 billion in spending.

Perhaps the most relevant point in a very relevant article is this quote;

In the first 10 years of the web, national businesses have already tested the waters and jumped in, they’re already there. If you’re national and you haven’t been using the internet, you’re just not going to be in the game anymore.

The same will apply to the local business person in the next couple of years.

Google Sees Local, Wants To Lead, Believe It!

ZDNet profiles Google's recently announced intention to lead in local search.

Google states;

"As people do more local search on Google, we provide greater opportunity for local advertisers. In that area we think the market is widely under penetrated, it sounds surprising to a lot of us, but even in the United States, arguably the most developed market in the world for ecommerce less than 50% of businesses even have a Web site, or let alone advertisers, so we think there is tremendous opportunity to bring those people online and bring them into our advertising product...."

"....We don’t release specific numbers, local advertising is part of our revenue certainly but we think it is a much smaller part than we think it could be in the future."