What is it going to take to get this forum moving? This is embarrassing.

I think it will take local search itself to move from being a neat idea on paper to being a useful and economical source of sales to local businesses. It could do with sucking less from the user perspective too.

this is one of the most explosive portions of the Internet search sector. it represents 20% of search query activity.

for many, talking about, helping to define, and take advantage of markets before they become passe is welcomed, especially considering the growth and level of discourse in traditional SEM.

this is SEW right?

didn't we just do three panels last week on local search?

we seem to me doing ok on WMW.

i would to see SEW forum discourse on local develop.

not a strange proposition.

>this is one of the most explosive portions of the Internet search sector

Are you saying that people have an urge to source their products/services locally more than they used to?

I think there are a series of carts and horses that need to be arranged before "local search" can move off the great idea whiteboard. Myself I can't really see that happening anytime soon, I think the log jam is at the local businesses end which results in a poor user experience, a sort of vicious circle.

Been doing a bit of local search myself the last few days, on the suck-o-meter scale it scored a 10, the old paper Yellow Pages worked far, far better. Bear in mind that I'm in the UK, local is a relative thing, but trust me it stinks over here.

Fundementally I don't think there is any money [profit] in it with the exception of press puff pieces designed to drive up stock prices.

You're scaring me!

>>products/services locally more than they used to?

No.

The same. And that's what drives our economy.

No Money?

NFFC - it is good to talk with you again.

If I could only list the 18 billion reasons....

this is one of the most explosive portions of the Internet search sector. it represents 20% of search query activity.
I'd argue that there's nothing exploding in local search in terms of queries. I think you've long had a chunk of local queries as part of search. The explosion is in new ways that search engines are trying to route those queries to local search engines.

Yesterday's upgrade of Yahoo Local is a great example. They're expending a huge amount of effort into Yahoo Local, and more and more people do seem to be making use of it. There are some NetRatings stats I'm going to blog shortly.

A smart marketer who deals with a local audience needs to be watching those locals, making sure the businesses listed within them are user ranked well and so on. That's groundwork for success down the line, when everyone else gets it.

can ask what Local search is?

I mean, how is it differentiated from regular, no upsizing search?

I think the traditional SERP is aweful for the sort of local search most users want, and the "go somewhere new" is worse. I am lazy, why do I need to go somewhere new, and why do I need to enter two searches? What is wrong with one box and the SE does the work for me? Enter Keywords, press enter. That is what I am used to, and that is what I expect. Pizza bondi, why do I need to put in Pizza, find mouse, click new box, bondi, enter? That is just annoying.

Danny, can we get those "invisible tabs" you keep talking about into play? Then Local will really take off!

The explosion is in new ways that search engines are trying to route those queries to local search engines.
I'm not sure if it is a chicken or egg scenario, but the other side of this explosion is the movement of advertising dollars by the 10 - 20 million SME's (in US) from offline mediums to online mediums. The number of advertisers currently in print yellow page books dwarfs the current number of advertisers using PPC/CPM advertisement. The writing is already on the wall and shift of dollars is happening (early stages still). IMO it is the pending massive shift ad dollars that everything to do with this explosion of local "hype" and the rush by the SEs and other properties to bolster their local utility. They are in a mad rush for user market share knowing that the local advertisers will follow.

can ask what Local search is?
In its most general sense, local search is defined by the desire to find products, services, information, etc within a specific geographic location. The vast majority of local search transactions and business occur offline. (your example of pizza). It's more or less the same utility that defines a print yellow pages book. The only expansion I would add is the integration of community-based information and social networking capabilities.


Why what is the big deal one may ask? Despite the riches that the internet has given many, the vast majority of business is conducted at a local level and this isn't going to change anytime soon. So whether you think local search is a bunch of hooey or you believe, the fact is that local search encapsulates a large part the world economy. We are just seeing the beginning stages (which isn’t always the prettiest) of its integration into the Internet and connected technologies.

Danny, can we get those "invisible tabs" you keep talking about into play? Then Local will really take off!

http://www.google.com/search?q=san%20francisco%20lawyer

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=san+francisco+lawyer

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=san+francisco+lawyer

Look at the top of all of those pages. Local listings are integrated and come before the "regular" results. I'm confident we'll simply see this expand over time, where you end up with all local results and an option to see web results if you want them.

exactly.

thanks danny.

and there is more. y! local cats indexed and rank as authorities on explicit local queries on G serps.

which is what you are saying here:

>>The explosion is in new ways that search engines are trying to route those queries to local search engines.

I call this the segmentation and integration of local search. local is seperated as it requires different display environment, algo's, and content aggregation and indexing models. These differentials will increase with social networking requirements. But segmentation doesn't negate integration. Right now we are seeing a significant push towards integration of segmented local search utilities into the areas that currently house local query volume ~the single search box. deeper integration is right around the corner.

good stuff here.

Look at the top of all of those pages. Local listings are integrated and come before the "regular" results. I'm confident we'll simply see this expand over time, where you end up with all local results and an option to see web results if you want them.

But segmentation doesn't negate integration. Right now we are seeing a significant push towards integration of segmented local search utilities into the areas that currently house local query volume ~the single search box. deeper integration is right around the corner.

For more background on how local and other verticals are being integrated into regular search, take a look at my report on this SES session...

Vertical Creep Into Regular Search Results
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7326

This is directly about the invisible tabs Danny has been talking about.

One of the fascinating things to me about verticals is that they are bringing an increasing number of ways to correlate data into the game, and many of them involve considerations about why a user is searching. The unit of optimization is no longer the page. Conceivably, many results won't involve web pages at all. Local results involve place, time, and people, eg. Data is pulled from a great many areas.

The number of advertisers currently in print yellow page books dwarfs the current number of advertisers using PPC/CPM advertisement. The writing is already on the wall and shift of dollars is happening (early stages still).

One of the reasons that engines may like the vertical model, beyond great utility, is that vertical results are likely to be more difficult or impossible to optimize for, and advertising becomes more necessary.

Any thoughts about the size of the local classified advertising marketing, btw?

many of them involve considerations about why a user is searching. The unit of optimization is no longer the page. Conceivably, many results won't involve web pages at all. Local results involve place, time, and people, eg. Data is pulled from a great many areas.
For a search utility, there is no higher goal than clearly addressing a user's intent. I completely agree with the morph of the single search box and SERP result into a directional venue for the segmented areas of vertical search. It's natural and it's already upon us in limited fashion.


One of the reasons that engines may like the vertical model, beyond great utility, is that vertical results are likely to be more difficult or impossible to optimize for, and advertising becomes more necessary.Oh I don't know about that. The optimization will no doubt become trickier, but where there is a will, there's a way. If anything, I think optimization will be wherein it’s necessary to choose a vertical search utility you wish to optimize for and focus your efforts around the utilities ranking factors. It's likely that what one vertical search utility (e.g. local) versus another vertical search utility (e.g. shopping) will consider relevant will be difficult to produce on the same page or through offsite factors. In addition, modifying code very likely may have little to do with optimization tactics. :)


Any thoughts about the size of the local classified advertising marketing, btw?IMO it’s huge. Classified ad revenue is a significant percentage of print paper’s revenue. Look at the fear of God that Craigslist has put in the large media companies. The growth of CL has been fantastic (see the clickz stats on it). It remains to be seen how the market will monetize classifieds online. It's tough to compete with FREE from CL. I suspect monetization will take for form of category level charging as CL is doing for some categories - who knows, maybe even bid driven. There is too much volume in the offline world for this not to play a large role in local search online. That said, I look forward to classified ad marketing integration into the local search properties like Y. It can't be far away - especially with the community-driven direction Yahoo is moving.

Question: do the SEs ever geotarget this information, i.e. just use IP related info to show local results (long way from the USA here, so can't check)? If they did that, it would be even better, especailly on the regular SERPs.

[quote]One of the reasons that engines may like the vertical model, beyond great utility, is that vertical results are likely to be more difficult or impossible Most programmes use a fixed pay model not a PPC model, e.g. http://edit.yp.yahoo.com/learnmore is that correct?

In many ways, that can work better than PPC. PPC is fixed by the number of clicks available and ammount bid. 10,000 advertisers spend a varying amount, and have fixed expectations on what that will return.

10,000 advertisers paying $25-60 a month is guaranteed money. Couple that with no expectation of results (i.e. people don't expect 1000 clicks for their $25) and you are onto a bit of a winner.

The other interesting notion is that, with phone numbers and details listed, there is a benefit to being listed without generating traffic. It is quite conceivable that people will ring straight from the SERP. That has gotta help the bottom line of this sort of programme, as the harder results are to quantify, the les chance there is that people will drop the programme as a failure.

Virtual Yellow Pages are very much like their their offline breathren in tnat respect; must have advertising that is list and hope. I wonder if it will ever be a must have the way the real yellow pages are...

Question: do the SEs ever geotarget this information, i.e. just use IP related info to show local results (long way from the USA here, so can't check)? If they did that, it would be even better, especailly on the regular SERPs.

It would be an improvement if a search engine could get a better grasp on where the goods or services were located from a site, and were better able to return regular results based upon those locations.

I don't know how well this might work if implemented, and I can see some potential flaws, but it's an interesting approach:

Assigning geographic location identifiers to web pages (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220050182770%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20050182770&RS=DN/20050182770)

It's still not going to help the restaurant owners in my area who display their address in image text on their web sites.

Re optimizing vertical search...

...The optimization will no doubt become trickier, but where there is a will, there's a way. If anything, I think optimization will be wherein it’s necessary to choose a vertical search utility you wish to optimize for and focus your efforts around the utilities ranking factors. It's likely that what one vertical search utility (e.g. local) versus another vertical search utility (e.g. shopping) will consider relevant will be difficult to produce on the same page or through offsite factors....

I agree to some extent, but not completely. Ultimately, I feel that there are going to be data sorts that are going to be useful to visitors but might defy likely vertical search profiles.

A restaurant near a an event venue, eg, might want to appear on the same page as the events calendar sorted by date, eg. Or a lawyer or a contractor serving a whole metropolitan area might want to appear, say, on all the local zip code searches, and that might end up being hard to do with current distance-based algos.

As you say, though, when there's a will... I've recently noticed in Yahoo that there are some user reviews for movie theatres that are in fact restaurant recommendations, praising the location of the theatre because it's near the restaurant. ;)

For me, the tricky part right now, in both local and shopping, is to be able to tell clients how much optimizing effort will be cost effective. I'm convinced that it's well worth the effort to be ahead of the curve on this one and to look at vertical optimization as a long term investment.

Thanks for the overview of classified. Classified and the convergence/ competition among local search, newspapers, Craig's List, local blogs, local wikis, etc, is a whole other long discussion.

I've been working to optimize a local site/business for the last two years (within the US) with reasonable success. Clearly over these two years there is a growing variety of ways in which users can access local information.

Currently, and for the last 1 1/2 years we have had very high rankings for both local (state and city) and national rankings.

Some observations:

A slight increase in access to the site from users visiting via local search. Still that is a tiny percentage from visitors punching in the City or state and service while using regular search. (We monitor this daily).

Early this year (Super Bowl update) Google changed its algo to enhance higher natural rankings for any site that reasonably includes local language (address and some content that describe the service).

This had a remarkable effect with vaulting some sites to high rankings for searches with local terms while others without a significant content description of their locale have been left in the dust. Boy is that an easy thing to fix for those in the know.

My experience with yellow pages sales personnel was pretty poor. We have wide yellow pages print exposure and limited yellow pages web exposure. The sales people are not yet really conversant in selling web advertising. That will probably change over time. To date the yellow pages access to our site is relatively tiny compared to natural search with local descriptions.

Optimizing for local terms is dramatically easier than optimizing for national terms. Advertising agencies and SEO's that can strategically focus on local firms can obtain quick results relative to the effort for world wide web presense. The key as has been mentioned in other threads is how to do this effectively and efficiently. Ultimately it will require an effective sales effort. Yellow Pages has a large sales force...and a large captured market...I think the key for them is to mobilize this force into an effective web sales force. Local newspaper advertising departments are another logical area for this.

I've got to cut this short to get back to running the business but the arena for growth in local discussion is huge, relatively untouched, and is open to many methods. Currently we are working with other locally focused web sites/businesses with similarly focused audiences to try and broaden our exposure. Right now we feel like we are walking in new territory via the web though there are models for this throughout the business world (cross promotions).

Look forward to more discussion on this.

Dave

My site has top page and in a number of cases #1 rankings for a variety of important industry phrases on a web(national and international) basis.

Fantastic post, Dave. Thank you for sharing your perspective.

I think one of the most important things in local search is to identify what it is that people are actually searching for online. I have several clients for whom I am doing local seo/ppc, and they are doing great. A caterer who had to hire another person to deal with his new customers from the internet. A futon retailer who is kept afloat these days by new customers via his site. I have a hardwood flooring client who is also doing well. And I am helping them the usual way -- by optimizing their site for local search. In contrast to what Chicago said in an article recently, these clients are not being blown away in the SERPs by directories -- they are doing fine holding their own. I encourage my clients to put effort into good content, try to add content over time, use the right geo-keywords, do some high quality recip linking, do directory submissions, etc. Works well for my guys.

It is important that the product or service being sold is really one that people are using the internet to search for. Seems obvious, but I think it is sometimes overlooked. Products that do well in the print YP seem to do well on the web -- there is lots of crossover. But think of all the categories that don't do well in print YP -- there are lots. Case in point -- bakeries. I don't see any ads in my local print YP for bakers (just line listings). Why? Because people don't look in the YP for a bakery -- they usually know where it is. Often, these categories don't work that well on the web either, at least right now. Because people aren't searching for them. It would be good to see some up to date stats on what local products/services are really being searched for on the web.

When I talk to a prospect about local SEO, there are two things I want to know first. One, what is the product or service? Is it likely that people are searching for it? If so, I ask question number two: what's the price point of the product? Since it's often a long way from initial search results to conversion, it is important, IMO, to have a high enough price point to make the effort worthwhile. In my experience, those are the two most important factors in successful local SEO for local businesses. A "searchable" product and a high enough price point to give a positive ROI. And that's why clients like a caterer, a futon retailer, and a flooring guy are doing well on the web in local search.

wb

Nice insights. My business historically did reasonable well off the YP(we've tracked sources of business from ads for years) The YP were not the largest source of leads or business but one with a very high conversion rate. We used display ads in the largest yellow page editions geared toward the largest population areas. Price points definately allow for both YP display ads and for working to optimize the site locally.

BTW YP contacts are way down. We roughly have the same coverage as pre-web. Don't even aggressively track the percentage of conversions. Web traffic has more than compensated for that and losses from other local media.

Dave

BTW YP contacts are way down. We roughly have the same coverage as pre-web. Don't even aggressively track the percentage of conversions. Web traffic has more than compensated for that and losses from other local media.

I hear exactly the same thing from my clients. The caterer, for example, has almost totally eliminated his print YP budget, which used to be 12k per year. He is doing better from his website than he ever did from print YP, he tells me. The futon retailer says the same thing. He said he gets no customers calling from the print YP anymore. By contrast, his website is, in his words, keeping him afloat. But as I said, these guys both have nice sites, they take them seriously, and they put money into internet marketing. That's how they make it work. It's not just a page of business contact data lost in some directory somewhere. Sometimes I think we forget that making sales is still the art of persuasion, and good advertising, not just figuring out some way to "scale" and get a phone number in front of a prospect.

In the discussions of local search, a lot of people seem to feel that businesses hardly even need to have a website to succeed on the web! Just a page will do! Well, I don't believe that's how it works. If you read something like Eisenberg's "Call to Action," you realize how important the website itself is. The whole field of usability and conversion is starting to finally get the attention it deserves. Verizon Superpages may be pushing listings that are nothing more than a few lines of business data, but I don't think that will work for a huge number of businesses. Consumers are more savvy than ever -- if they are coming to the web, they want some information -- that's the point of it. If they just wanted a phone number, they could go to the phone book. It would be quicker.

I haven't done this yet but I met with a local liquer store owner. He went from a couple of hundred thousand/year in newspaper advertising to an email campaign. He slowly builds the lists, abides by ways to opt out of the lists, and regularly updates information.

His site is not well optimized and not easy to find on the web. Regardless he cut out a huge expense in advertising and is doing slightly more volume.

Lots of ways to optimize locally. What I realize is that with bright screens top ranked PPC is somewhat indistinguishable from organic listings in G and Y and will have a better "snippet" description than what you might get from Google and Yahoo. I'm working on that currently.

Dave

...This had a remarkable effect with vaulting some sites to high rankings for searches with local terms while others without a significant content description of their locale have been left in the dust. Boy is that an easy thing to fix for those in the know.

earlpearl - From your comments, I haven't been able to tell how much of the traffic you're seeing is from the "regular" organic serps, and how much is from the local "vertical" results (which show up at the top of the page or under the Local tabs on Google and Yahoo).

I'm guessing that, if you have a site that's well optimized onpage for local, the Local vertical traffic isn't yet equalling traffic from the regular organic results, but that there will be a shift. I'm looking for ammunition to convince clients that offsite local (and other vertical) optimization is worth the effort now.

Robert:

A quick response to your questions:

I looked at traffic from today back to 5/1/05 (an arbitrary choice).

The results off of visits from SE's;

Google (US) 100 times the volume from google local(highest volume of any local methodology)
Yahoo (US) 53 times the traffic over google local
MSN 15 times the traffic over google local;

Our SE traffic.

Our business ranks organically high for industry phrases (industry phrase without a geo description)

Off our search traffic; of the top 10 search phrases 9 are industry (non geo) descriptions of our service and total 71 times the local google usage.

More relevantly; I totalled traffic for industry phrases w/a geo description; ie Illinois blue widgets, blue Widgets Chicago, IN blue Widgets, etc..

I only went through our 40 highest search phrases. 16 phrases had geo descriptions totalling 12 times the volume of search from google local. We have geo descriptions w/2 states, one city, and town locations w/our industry service and have 100's of different variations on the geo industry search...all organic. I suspect if I dug deep the total of organic geo searches would be 30 to 40 times the volume for google local.

While we rank high for industry phrases; conversions come dramatically from geo related industry phrases.

The national industry phrases are a little misleading but the results to date suggest that organic rankings are dramatically more important than any usage of local search or advertising tools such as yellow pages.

If anything I currently see that PPC with the organic descriptions are dramatically more important than use of organic search or the vertical tabs you referenced.

earlpearl - Thanks for great information. From the figures in Greg Jarboe's SES presentation, I've been assuming that Local vertical traffic would be less than 1%. From your figures, you appear to be doing better than the numbers in the Hitwise test which Jarboe cites... but you're roughly in the same ballpark.

Google (US) 100 times the volume from google local(highest volume of any local methodology)

From Greg Jarboe's SES presentation...
Hitwise custom report for SEO-PR, July 23, 2005

In June, Google sent 7% of visitors to its image, news & other verticals

But, in the top 20 verticals shown in Jarboe's chart, I don't see Google Local mentioned. Google Maps, perhaps the closest thing to Local in the top 20 verticals shown, amounted to .26% of visitor traffic. Google Local isn't on this top 20 list.

Yahoo Search sent 8% of visitors to its image, local & other verticals

Yahoo! Get Local amount to .93% of visitor traffic.

I note that while Yahoo Local offers a higher percentage of Yahoo traffic that Google Local offers of Google traffic, that doesn't necessarily contradict what you say, that Google Local is the "highest volume of any local methodology" in absolute numbers.

Assuming that the invisible tabs will someday click in, this picture is liable to change dramatically. Again, it's clear that the engines are moving in this direction, with a lot of development effort put into local. Based on current numbers though, what kind of arguments can I make to clients (and I'm throwing other verticals besides Local into this discussion, even though it's not strictly on topic), that the Local vertical is worth optimizing for?

For geo-targeted businesses, I've always optimized onsite for local targets... sometimes even for neighborhoods within a city or metro area.

Today's SE traffic
1 visit from Yahoo Local
Many SE visits including 28 with variations on our service/description and a relevant geo description.

The 28 visits were each with a different phrase.

Dave

earlpearl,

when you say google local / yahoo local traffic, what are you referring to?

are you talking about business search look-ups?
clicks to your profile?
clicks to your website?

visits to the site.

right. we have to understand that when talking local, local business listing views in and of themselves are actionable, they contain phone numbers, address, email, et al. clicks into the profile views themselves go even further into actionable value. neither will render in your web sites log files. what more is that these business listings and profiles are found on the very serps that you are getting your 28 users from, part of the traditional therefore is being redirected.

do you have a yahoo/ google /super local profile filed out? do you have the enhanced product? are you attempting to improve your local profile rank?

Thanks Chicago. I hadn't really looked at this in depth till today. We are an old business and were entered in all 3 local versions at all 3 major engines from the beginning. We haven't updated or interacted w/the engines w/regarad to local. All I've done was review traffic off our logs.

Obviously local is both complementary and competitive with our actual site. Our first preference is to get them to our site. Other information is helpful...but not necessarily our first choice. Local allows for PPC and different editorializing

I suspect in time the engines will charge for these listings. I'd bet they'd be charging now if traffic was significant. I'd do a lot to get a hold of actual traffic #'s onto the local information sites.

Its a lot to digest. Ultimately there will be competitive packages w/G, Y, and MSN local, the Yellow Pages and other sources all looking for your local advertising dollar.

On top of that there are industry directories/advertising sources that aggressively optimize for local versions of search phrases and look to pick up business. We are in some of those. Traffic to our site from those sources is miniscule relative to search engine and direct traffic.

All of these developments and the evolution of local search will play out over time. Much to comtemplate. (By the way I was reviewing this as I was going over some local print media bills - great more ways to bill us for advertising.)

Dave



I'm

...we have to understand that when talking local, local business listing views in and of themselves are actionable, they contain phone numbers, address, email, et al. clicks into the profile views themselves go even further into actionable value. neither will render in your web sites log files. what more is that these business listings and profiles are found on the very serps that you are getting your 28 users from, part of the traditional therefore is being redirected.

A recent example of my own use of local... I used Google Local to help find a motel for friends visiting the Bay Area. Information was so complete that we ended up never actually looking at the motel website. Google Local indexes multiple reviews, even Yahoo user reviews... provides location, parking information, transportation, etc, much better than most individual websites do. Yahoo Local does a great job too.

While local search hasn't replaced the printed Yellow Pages for me for a lot of business queries, it's clearly there for some... and the depth of data is almost fractal-like in the way it just keeps going.

Even with the most careful tracking setups, though, I'm not sure that there would be a way of determining how someone found you via local, and that's part of my question. How do you quantify this enough to convince a client?

To add a PS to this... with the motel example, the motel received a substantial booking and did not have a clue how we'd found them. I probably could not repeat the discovery path myself. I'm guessing that the value of local depends a lot on the kind of business it is.

After looking harder at Local in G and Y it is clear to me that ultimately they are tools to compete against the yellow pages.

I did searches for local hotels and other services through local. How interesting. Lots of great information about the sites/businesses/services without taking you directly to the site.

Ultimately that means that these will become competitors with the sites themselves and will open the door for the engines to charge for local listings a la PPC and/or monthly/annual/rates as with other advertising.

Certainly the engines could do this now. Google local adwords allows you to advertise into a geo area. Y has enormous local information.

The engines could easily move a search w/a local geo phrase into its listings of services for that region.

I suspect that traffic on local is so small at this time that the time isn't right. At the same time the engines earn money from searches with geo phrases in PPC. I counted A LOT of ads in google for the search phrase hotels arlington.

Time will tell with all these developments. As a business owner I don't look forward to what I imagine will be lots more claims on my advertising dollars.

Dave

After looking harder at Local in G and Y it is clear to me that ultimately they are tools to compete against the yellow pages.

Not to mention the local classifieds, local review sites, and some of the community bulletin board type sites now growing online.

Question for me is when will they reach critical mass, and will they compete successfully with homegrown products. Craig's List, eg, has a grass roots authenticity that's hard to fake. Quality, mass of content, and functionality will be needed to pull in users.

Maybe all these competing nodes will find their own constituencies, with perhaps some overlap. I'm already seeing areas staked out. I'd go to Craig's List, eg, if I were looking for an apartment to rent but wouldn't even think about it to look for a hotel... and I still use my printed yellow pages to find lots of specialty stores that are missing in local online info.

As for reviews... most Yahoo local reviews, eg, are distinctly lacking in authority, so -- among the more discriminating -- the demographics of local portals might run quite contrary to the demographics of, say, local printed weeklies or eventual online editions.

But Google and Yahoo Local are far ahead of sites like Superpages, which IMO is amazingly lame and doesn't really seem to be trying very hard.

I'm starting to enjoy this extended thread, which is stretching out over a number of weeks and seems to be a good general "sound off" thread about how well (or badly) local search is working.

At the start of September (3 weeks ago) I signed up my own business with Ingenio's Pay Per Call service. My listing is running in the New York Metro area (surely the largest in the US). I was allowed to select 5 categories for my listing, and I chose:

General Web Design
Internet Advertising Mediums
Law Firm website design
Financial Services website design
Search Engine Optimization

According to Ingenio's pitch, they will help me "reach millions of people searching online," at "AOL Search" and "other leading sites."

The way it works, I bid on the price I am willing to pay to receive a phone call from a prospect (it is a trackable calling system). The top 5 bids at the time of sign up ranged from approx $7 to $14 per click.

Not being so confident of my ability to sell over the phone (plus being in sticker shock at the prices) I bid $2.25 per call.

Apparently, it was not enough. To date, I have received 0 calls. Not a one. Problem is, I had to plunk down a $100 account opener, so now I have to spend it unless I want to totally waste my money.

I'm heading over to their site now, and I will raise my bid to $5, and give it a week or two. I'll keep track and post my results here as they come in!

Wiltonbiz

Wiltonbiz,

We should take some of your ideas, earl's, and robert's and turn them into new threads ~ especially your PPCall comments.

In that regard, remember that AOL which is 90+% of all Ingenio distribution, only shows one listing per category on their SERP. The keywords there are *category* and *one*. It is highly restrictive distribution, especially for local SMEs. They will map unstructured keyword queries to structured categories. Additional problems arise by national category bidders outbidding local category bidders, and according being served in the one prime position.

Ingenio is working to loosen this up, but AOL has the final call. This is an early stage revenue mazimizing strategy in light of low advertiser adoption to prove viability. After, categories will be expanding, and eventually bidding will be on keywords and more ads will be served per SERP.

The jury is definately still out though. For some cats (service based) it is going well - for others, not so well. The key to remember here is that serps are generally research based not need (call) based. Conversely, superpages users are generally more needs/directional based and are more predisposed to the call as opposed to the buying research found on SEs.

As mentioned in a different thread we are conducting an experiment w/ another local site wherein we are currently linked to one another from the first pages. The 2 sites have some overlapping levels of interest which should be appealing to visitors.

One aspect of this is that I get to see there logs of traffic.

The other site is thoroughly local providing a rating/evaluation service for certain local businesses. I access a report that shows the source of the latest 100 visits.

Their primarly source of traffic are searches off of google. Some of that may be (and I don't check this) that there information shows/ranks better on google than MSN or Y...or it more likely is simply representative of users choices of SE's.

Of the last 100 visits to the site 73 were from google of which 69 were off straight searches for the business and 4 were via google local.

This was the first time I've counted the traffic in this way but after 2 weeks of reviewing this I'd say that is fairly representative of the difference between searchers using standard google search and turning to google local.

Dave

earpearl - Great information. Thanks. While this is going to vary from site to site and business to business, I think it would be extremely helpful to track this monthly and to get a longterm view.

Yeah: I've been quite busy...too busy to be interactive here and other forums. I've been following this other site...and of course I've got my statistics.

I'm going to keep tracking this as long as possible.

Currently users don't seem to be moving off of standard search into any of the advanced niche areas such as local or froogle to any great degree.

First entity that gets this movement on a large scale wins a big prize...and lots of $. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'll continue to post updates over time.

Dave

Currently users don't seem to be moving off of standard search into any of the advanced niche areas such as local or froogle to any great degree.

First entity that gets this movement on a large scale wins a big prize...and lots of $. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'll continue to post updates over time.

Keep in mind that the total "vertical" traffic cited in the SES "Vertical Creep" session (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=7326) thread I mentioned earlier was only about 7-8% per major engine, but a lot of that was for images, news, Hotmail, whatever... with Google having "only fractional percentages for local and Froogle. Yahoo had a higher percentage for shopping and local."

So, the figures that you're citing are outperforming the averages in the study reported.

Also, these vertical results are very highly placed, in the "sweet spot" on the page, and, for shopping, at any rate, convert very well. They're currently an easy way to rank for competitive terms.

They also reach searchers who may in fact never click on a link. All the info needed to drive many local purchases may be contained in the local listing or related information.

Also, and most important for me, there are strong indications that the engines are pushing in the direction of developing these "invisible tabs" and making them more important over time. Danny very clearly predicted, and he's been right so far, that many marketers are liable to be surprised when the engines "flip the switch" and the verticals assume much greater prominence for certain kinds of searches.

Finally read your entry on vertical creep. Very enlightening. I subscribe to some of enquiro's info and have received information on this elsewhere. We are redesigning our site to be better attuned to "eyeball movement"

This is powerful information. The engines are evolving and gaining knowledge how to put this to their best advantage. The rest of us need to stay abreast. As a business person I need to follow this closely vis a vis conversions and my advertising dollars.

Any one example like the stats I published earlier are too skimpy to apply any but anecdotal value to them. While I perceived the 4 uses of local as miniscule it is higher than the percentages you cited. I suspect use of local will grow. Hopefully its slow for a while.

"Pulling the plug" will mean dramatically reversing current SE income from PPC into a new format. That will be a big step. I don't like this stuff...but it is better to be knowledgeable and prepared then to be caught off guard.

Dave

Just got out of a meeting w/a sales rep for a local radio station. Besides radio she was trying to sell us on having a presence on their web site and their radio stations web search engines w/high advertising placement w/in the radio stations "search" engine.

Its the washington dc region. Large, expensive media, not as expensive as some metro areas but more expensive than most.

Interesting stuff. They are selling 3 top positions in their search...with about 40 categories. That is 120 potential advertisers. Total potential income is $13,500/category or potential income of $540,000/year...if they don't discount.

The effort is new and some categories are partially sold...some fully sold...some not yet sold.

As Wiltonbiz commented...local firms will spend on local net presence...the categories might well be picked out from display advertisers in the YP, from heavy newspaper and radio/local tv advertisers etc.

I have to imagine that this was a small part of some of these advertisers local web advertising budgets.

I also can't imagine it would be too successful vis a vis other uses of the money.

I know what I spend for some local ppc presence...and it ranges from less than $1 to slightly more than $1/click.

Give me a break...$400/month for a #1 presense on a radio stations internal search engine for either hitting my category or my precise name or about 400 clicks on google ppc...or more than 400 clicks on Y or MSN...or getting much more visibility on the se's for searches for my service, DC, maryland or virginia.

On the other hand there is much to be made in local search for local advertisers.

By the way they also sold streaming ads, and banners of all sizes on the radio web site and its local sister stations.

Lots of money to be made by sharp seo/marketers....and lots of damn advertising options to pull your money from the perspective of the local business owner.

Dave

Update on the experiment: just looked at the latest 100 visits to the "partner site". 95 visits from SE's. One via Google local; 3 visits from my site, 2 visit from a different themed link.

Dave

Our clients are seeing lots more local solicitations like the radio station deal - many of these publishers seem to be selling more smoke & mirrors than hard traffic. Many seem to be reluctant to provide hard stats. Business owners are often confused, though, as they don't really know how to ask the hard questions. We tell our clients to check with us before signing a web advertising deal. There are some cost-effective buys out there, but you have to be careful.

Our clients are seeing lots more local solicitations like the radio station deal - many of these publishers seem to be selling more smoke & mirrors than hard traffic. Many seem to be reluctant to provide hard stats. Business owners are often confused, though, as they don't really know how to ask the hard questions. We tell our clients to check with us before signing a web advertising deal. There are some cost-effective buys out there, but you have to be careful.

Thanks, rogerd. I've been interacting w/someone on another forum who does extensive business in Essentially local SEO (its more extensively large area regional.

We both see good activity to our web sites from other local "related" sites. A lot of that is experimentation. I'm going to invite him to participate here.

The one plus on the radio site is that they are aggressively selling it on the radio itself...so it helps promote the engine/advertising media. Still I don't think it is too effective.

The nice thing about the radio station is I can check the local advertisers and find out if this source is working for them.

Dave

Just reviewed 19 months of data. Google local versus using search; Google local is less than 1% of google searches. (that doesn't include G.ca, G images, G uk, etc. (all of which hit my site more than Google local)

Dave