Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

A Look at Local Search
By Jim Hedger, StepForth Placement Inc.(c) 2005

September has graduated into October and there is simply no more
time to whine about a summer spent staring at the screen. Autumn
is upon us and the retail world is gearing up for what should be
the most wonderful time of the year. Not only is my birthday
just two days away, Christmas is coming. With the traditional
surge in consumer activity spurred by both events, I am curious
about what is happening on the local search front.

For most of the last decade, search engine marketers have been
able to tell their clients that one of the primary benefits of
search engine advertising is instant access to a worldwide
market. The Internet is the first public medium that is global
in nature, offering advertisers the ability to reach potential
customers virtually any place on Earth and many smaller
businesses that started marketing their services over search
engines found themselves able to grow into markets larger than
their general urban area.

A flaw in that strategy is that for smaller retail operations
the global nature of search engines has never been a huge
selling point. Most street-front small businesses cater to a
slightly smaller area, often a sliver-sized slice of the city or
region they are located in. Many are competing against other
businesses with similar products or services marketed to the
same pool of potential customers. Until recently, search
advertising was a less attractive option for a wide range of
street-front businesses than other traditional types of
advertising such as print, radio, local TV and the ubiquitous
Yellow Pages.

That is how the situation stood until about a year ago when
Amazon, Google and Yahoo, along with a slew of smaller search
tools introduced the concept of local search as a feature.
Making a local search tool was a fairly simple stretch for the
search engines. Proving a bit harder is getting consumers to
refer to local search when looking for products or services. In
order to get the public to adopt local search, the major engines
had to make it simple to use and more effective than general
search could be.

In some ways they are already there. There has been a lot of
buzz and hype about local search engines over the past year. The
major search engines have been rolling out technologies to
support local search and each has made some sort of arrangement
with local phone directories to absorb information contained in
the Yellow Pages.

That said it appears there is still a long way to go. Let's get
the bad stuff out of the way early. I performed one of my
less-than-scientific studies on four of the most popular local
search tools, Google-local (http://local.google.com/),
Yahoo-local (http://local.yahoo.com/), MSN-local
(http://local.msn.com/)and Amazon's A9
(http://a9.com/-/home.jsp?nc=1). To conduct the study, I used
three keyword phrases, each consisting of one, two and three
unique words (Xbox, Baking Goods, and Rocky Mountain Bicycles).

For example, a local-search for the Xbox Game System performed
on Google, Yahoo, MSN and A9 [Xbox] produced widely different
results that can be viewed by clicking on the links for each
engine. Of each engine tested, Yahoo produced the best initial
results for a person interested in popping down to the local
store to buy something, with the first four results being local
stores offering the product. Google offered a list of
newspapers, institutions and marketers writing about the Xbox
but did include two local shops. MSN didn't produce any results,
surprising for a product designed by their parent and sold in
their hometown. A9 produced a unique set of results including
images drawn from the Google image-bank but did not offer
information on where one could actually buy the product. Grace
will be given as the search consisted of only one keyword.

Another search, this time for the two-word phrase "baking goods"
produced similarly disappointing results. This time none of the
search engines were able to help me find the products I was
looking for. Not one of the four engines returned anything
even remotely useful, aside from purchased ads from the
hardware/household goods chain Canadian Tire, which (as all
Canadians know), carries an assortment baking goods. Perhaps
I wasn't being specific enough.

For a third test search, I used the name of a fairly well known
bicycle maker, Rocky Mountain Bicycles. Using the three-word
brand name I received some useful results from three of the four
local engines being tested, however the bulk of results were
still, for the most part, less than useful. This time, MSN wins
by producing the greatest number of shops in their listings
though they lose a lot of points for the stunted presentation
style. Yahoo did fairly well, offering me two credible choices
as the first results and a couple lower in the list. Google only
offered one immediate choice. As for A9, it again offered a
number of general web-drawn references, some cool images drawn
from Google and nothing in the way of a local store referral.

Ok. That experiment stunk. I was hoping to write something
highly positive about the state of local search. From a
technology standpoint, there are a number of very interesting
and intriguing things happening in the world of local search.
For instance, Google, Yahoo and MSN have all integrated
extremely cool mapping technologies in the bid to help consumers
find their way to specific stores. A9 took this a step further
in their bid to photograph every storefront in America to
provide searchers with the ultimate in visual confirmation that
this is indeed the door they want to walk through.

I was impressed by the information provided by Yahoo-local for
shops that came up in my searches. When a user clicks on a
reference provided by Yahoo local, they are brought to a page
that shows a clear address, a map, detailed information about
the business, and consumer generated product/service reviews.
Neither MSN nor Google provided results as detailed or thorough,
though that, unfortunately isn't saying very much.

The major search engines are trying to make local search
portable by serving results and self-generated maps to hand held
devices such as PDAs and Palm-pilots. Google and Yahoo are also
both rumoured to be merging local-results with product
comparison engines in their bid to help users find the best
products at the best prices. Lastly, each of the engines tested
are working to produce personalized results for each user by
asking they register in one way or another.

I was hoping to test out a number of these technologies while
researching this piece but alas, have been confounded by the
apparent inability of these engines to help me find a sufficient
number of sources in Seattle to buy stuff at. My memories of
Seattle, a city I lived in fifteen years ago, still serves me
better. I remembered a number of department stores (each of
which carry the Xbox), a few restaurant suppliers who carry
baking goods, and several sporting goods and bike shops that
carry the Rocky Mountain brand of bicycle. Most of the shops I
remember are still in business, at least according to their
websites, each of which is in the general indexes of Google,
Yahoo and MSN. As for A9, perhaps I simply don't get it.

2005 is not likely going to be the break-through year for local
search, at least not in time for the two most important retail
events in my part of the world (according to my
less-than-scientific study at any rate). My friends and family
will simply have to rely on their memories when choosing my
birthday presents and a continent full of eager Christmas
shoppers will continue to muddle through the same way we have
for the last fifty years, by clogging up the streets and
freeways in the final week before the holidays.

================================================================
Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing
expert based in Victoria BC.  Jim writes and edits full-time for
StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine
Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes
the opportunity to share his experience through interviews,
articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at
"jimhedger@stepforth.com"
================================================================

Copyright © 2005 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.