Local (Business) Search Customers Research Online, Still Buy Offline

November 2005 :: By Ricardo Harvin, US Chamber of Commerce

Each month more than one billion people use search engines to research a product or service online and to find a local business where they can walk in and make the actual purchase.

This online research followed by an in-store purchase is called “cross-channel shopping,” and it is fueling a major competition among the search engine companies to provide more relevant and current local business information through what's call Local Search.

Local Search helps cross-channel shoppers find what they are looking for by focusing searches on types of businesses-such as auto mechanic or floral-in or near a specific location, for example, a city or ZIP code, or even a particular intersection.

This means that instead of the thousands of irrelevant results that might be returned for a regular search, typically a much smaller list of local businesses is returned. Local Search results usually include maps that show business location-some even have satellite images of those locations.

By the very nature of Local Search (specific business types in a limited geographical area), these search results tend to strongly favor, and prominently feature, small businesses-something that doesn't usually happen with regular searches. To make Local Search more useful and relevant to everyone, some of the major search engines are giving business owners tools to add or update their listing (see E-Sources).

Although there's no central place that you can go to manage the information used by all of the search engines, where possible, you should take the time to make sure that you are listed and that the information is updated every couple of months.

However, event the best Local Search listing probably won't be enough to answer all of the questions that shoppers are likely to have about your business. Cross-channel shoppers, in particular, want detailed information on products, services, pricing, and availability.

If you don't have a Web site, now is the time to create one for your business that tells people who you are and what you offer. If have a Web site, your Local Search listing can link to it, thus giving you a great opportunity to make a direct sales pitch to interested and motivated shoppers.

There's a huge amount of traffic being generated by Local Search, and the search engine companies are responding by spending large amounts of money to add new products and features to increase the usage of their Local Search offerings. Local Search gives every small business the change to be listed near the top of search result pages.

Ultimately, the winners in this race will be the consumers, who have access to the tools they need to find exactly what they want, and the small business owners who understand that people, no matter if they're at work, at home, or at play, still want to shop close to where they are.