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."

Patricia Hursh's Clickz Article a Must Read

Patricia Hursh writes a great article today on ClickZ titled "Four Steps Every Business Can Take to Improve Local Search Results" . The article covers the local search subject and provides some very valuable links.

Social Media, You Must Appreciate It

Rohit Bhargava provides some very useful tips for optimizing for social media (SMO).
Today Danny Sullivan co-signs on the idea of getting a MySpace profile -now- before someone claims your name or niche.
We have been taking about this for months ;-)

ChefMoz Reviews Showing On Yahoo! Local

Chef MOZ "reviews" are showing up in Yahoo! Local under Yahoo!'s own user recommendations. Insider Pages have been showing off and on for the last month or so from my vantage point.
If you own a restaurant or have clients in the industry I would submit my links!.

Honda, Others Marketing Via MySpace

Honda Motor Company has a Myspace profile and is pointing people to it using Google AdWords. ThreeMinds expands on an article from ClickZ on who else uses MySpace to get in front of those 103,000,000 warm bodies.

Hard Evidence Local Business Not "Getting" It Yet

This article by Jim Bonfield of EyeballFarm.com illustrates how local business, in this case furniture stores in Sacramento are not finding their way to the front pages of the major search engines. His supporting evidence tells us this is exactly where the furniture buyer is looking for furniture.

"- 75 percent of shoppers who researched home furnishings online said they had made a local shopping trip within the week following their online research.

- 80 percent of women cited major search sites as being nearly tied for first-place with actual local furniture store websites for their most preferred furniture-shopping destination online.

Local furniture companies are smart and many have deep marketing budgets and employ some really great marketing folks (I know a few). So why are internet users drawing a blank trying to find them? My guess is, they are just too busy being furniture store retailers and have not kept up with the way local consumers are using search engines..."

Internet Limbo Exists

...and I'm in it for now. Some call this state of limbo "Sandboxed" when referring to Google. What it means is your site or blog is not yet indexed, not found in any results pages. This blog currently lives in a naked state, unclothed, not ready to walk the red carpet. So anything I write A.T.M. is for my own amusement. Of course what I have written is intended to be read some day and this post in particular will look kind of silly, like catching someone talking to himself.
If any point is to be made of this it is the search engines must find you. Content is what they search for and eventually if you have followed the rules you get listed.

We offer local business quick ways to bypass this waiting period. We plug you into directories like Yahoo Local, Google Local/Maps, SuperPages and many others that do not require traditional spidering before indexing.
We can have your business visible to your customers on no less than a dozen local oriented websites in one business day.
Yahoo Local and Google Local/maps requires a reviewing process and it could take anywhere from a week to 4 weeks to be seen.
For now I'll keep writing here trying to feed the spiders. Our main site has found the immediate success we expect for you. Because we listed the site as a local business we gained the attention of the search engine spiders quickly.
Just type us into Yahoo and Google and see for yourself.

What Some Charge

Pricing of search marketing (and related) services is known to be secretive at best. It's actually refreshing to find a service that posts their prices for all to see in advance. The site I linked to obviously courts a different client than we do and I do believe you do get your $$$s worth if you dial them up.

Since we cater to smaller, local businesses and services our prices are far less.
A one hour phone call to us is FREE! If you like what we offer then we talk about a fee. If you decide to 'go it alone' and DIY that's OK with us. We expect if you go it alone you will use some of what you learned from us.
Our message is this; if you have a small business in a competitive sector you MUST be represented on the internet. We help you get there. Our satisfaction is when you call or email us to tell us that your campaigns are working.
When you take a business from zero to sixty in a (relative) split second it's a great feeling!

Categories: SEM Pricing

The New Alphabet Soup Of Online Marketing

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim talks about CGM, (consumer generated media) and CCC, (consumer-created content) quoting from Jupiter Research.
I like the term User Generated Content, (UGC).

Yahoo is leading the way with integrating UGC, CGM and CCC. Ignoring the issue puts your business at a disadvantage. You want to encourage positive buzz and positive recommendations. Our ground-up marketing system focuses on variations of this premise.

Categories: Consumer Generated Media, User Generated Content

Local Search Discussion from SES San Jose

Seroundtable's summary from a session at SES San Jose last month.

"So who are the local internet advertisers? Typically small and medium sized enterprises with over 10 million SMEÂ’s in the US. SMEÂ’s spend 22 billion on local advertising annually. 46% of their advertising budgets on Yellowpages / 70% are service based. Only spend about 5-6K on average per year. They are very busy and confused about how to take advantage of this opportunity. Where do I start and how do I begin?"

This is the basis of our service at Sierra Web Marketing, where do you begin? I invite everyone interested in beginning an online marketing campaign to read the articles linked above. If you want your local business advertised smartly on the web please call oemailal us and let's discuss our inexpensive solutions!

Inexpensive, Simple Website Solution

We have 'teamed' with a company that provides an inexpensive web page builder.
We are primarily a marketing service, not web designers. Many of the options we offer local business does not require a website however having a website is much better than not!

If you do decide to purchase a domain name and purchase the hosting and website package do not hesitate to ring us up or email us for assistance. As mentioned we are not designers but we can help you get a decent site into operation.

Once your site is live we'll let her rip on all the platforms we utilize!

Online Reputation Monitoring Service

Andy Beal's online reputation monitoring guide is a must read for any and all who are concerned about how their brand is being viewed.

Angie's List Gaining Speed

Angie's List is a lot like Judy's List or Yelp however Angie's List seems to take a more serious approach to the validity of the reviews submitted.
Also I'm seeing Angie's List on a sponsored listing buying spree on various sites including Topix.net and other popular local oriented platforms. I am advising clients and friends or relatives to have their preferred clients pop into Angie's List to offer a good word or two!

Naymz Is Worth A Look

I can't find a downside to Naymz. The basic profile is free and profiles are finding their way into Google's main index.
Here is my initial (free) profile.

New Local Platform, MyZip.com

MyZip.com is yet another IYP just brought to the market by the people at Marchex. MyZip is another directory that includes reviews. I cannot repeat this enough, your local business or service MUST be included in every local search database that offers reviews. Call or email us and we will explain why this is so important!