Local Search Revisited

From Local Search Revisited by Eric Holter

By Eric Holter

This week I'm heading to St. Louis to speak at a conference for one of our clients. Pet Sitters International is an association for educating promoting, and supporting pet sitters. I'll be talking about how small local service providers, like pet sitters, can effectively market themselves online. Over two years ago I wrote a newsletter called "Let Your Fingers Do The Clicking." I discussed the rise of local search and how it would disrupt traditional local Yellow Pages advertising. Consider it disrupted. The marketing landscape for a small local business, such as pet sitters, restaurants, doctors, and designers has changed.

So what steps should a local business take to recoup losses from Yellow Pages abandonment? And how can they take advantage of the many opportunities this disruption has created?

Step one: read on.

In March of 2005 I wrote about local search in response to the (then) new, updates to Google Maps. It was amazing to see how a search for "pizza" on a scrollable Google map would display balloons representing all the pizzerias on the map. It seems so basic now--how quickly we become accustomed to technical wonders!

My forecast, then, was for radical disruption of the Yellow Pages industry. So how has it played out? In 2006 the YP industry measured a significant decrease in the use of printed Yellow Pages. The numbers for 2007 are looking far more dim--possible drops of 30% in just one year. Of course the online Yellow Pages have picked up some of this online traffic. But the online Yellow Pages shares this traffic with Google, and Yahoo! as well as a growing list of new local-oriented social media sites and mashups.

Bottom line: for the local business or service provider, the days when a Yellow Pages ad was all that was needed are over. Since people are using printed Yellow Pages less often, Yellow Pages ads are worth less. My trip to St. Louis is primarily intended to educate small business owners on how to make sure their businesses are found in online local search. At least then, the decrease in Yellow Pages usage will be made up for with their presence in Google and Yahoo! Being listed in at least these two places is the absolute bare minimum any and every local business needs to ensure for themselves.