Many of you may only be familiar with local search to the extent that it is that little collection of search results in Google that show up before the rest of the natural listings.  What you may not be aware of is that nearly 40% of all searches are made with local intent.  Essentially this means that people are looking for products or services online with the intent to go offline to complete the purchase.  Research has shown that people who are completing local searches are not just browsing for options, but in fact are deep into decision making close to making their purchase.  Whether your business relies on locals or out-of-towners searching for you, it is becoming increasingly important to list your site in local search.  As you might expect, because local search has a different intent than typical search, it is presented in a different manner that is more helpful to the user (most engines will supply a phone number and address on the most basic level). 

Here is one thing you may want to consider when thinking about the notion of local search….currently… it is much less competitive than traditional online search.  Local search is growing fast as more and more local businesses are seeing the benefit, but there is still time to get in on the action and give your marketing efforts a boost.  Also note that with local search you do not need to have a website to participate.  While it will always be helpful to have a website to refer searchers to for additional information, profiles provided within local search can give visitors a substantial amount of information including location, contact information, and reviews.  In fact, some business profiles (Google Maps in particular) will allow you to add a video to your profile which is a perfect marketing opportunity.  Think of these business profiles as introductions that can be great supplements to a website.

As time has gone on, we as a people have learned how to use search engines more efficiently to get the most relevant results as quickly as possible.  Specifically, searchers have begun to use geographic qualifiers such as cities and zip codes to refine their results.  As local search has begun to grow so has the number of sites that provide this service; to name a few great local search mediums….Google Maps, Yahoo Local, MSN Live Local, Yahoo YellowPages, Superpages, and AskCity.  To answer the all important question…the majority of them are all FREE.

There are several ways searchers can go about local search that you should be aware of. 

Searchers can use typical search engines such as Google and Yahoo with the addition to geographic qualifiers such as using a city or zip code. 

Searches can be made within the local search section of popular engines such as Google Maps, Windows Live Local, and Ask!City.

Searches can be made using an online YellowPages sites such as Superpages.

Searchers can use websites that provide information on local businesses such as a local newspaper site or a chamber of commerce.

Searchers can also use vertical directories or search engines which are sites that focus on a particular good or service.  Hotels.com is a great example of a vertical search engine.

It is essential to formulate some sort of strategy before just jumping in and registering on every single site as it can be very time consuming.  It will be a much better use of your time to do some quick searching on some of the sites you consider to be more important and see what competition ranks within the existing local search results.  Ensure that you create detailed business profiles for each site and then monitor the progress you make with whichever analytics tools you use.  I hope you find this useful and there will be more to come…

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