If there was ever any doubt it has now been washed away with current statistics showing that consumers prefer search engines as their number one tool to find a business. Local search is the obvious winner when it comes to finding a business in the local area.

These statistics show that online searches outnumber print Yellow Pages for the first time. The difference is only marginal with print directories falling from 33% to 30% and search engines growing from 30% to 31%. Their is an obvious need to use both at present – and yes I do mean BOTH. Too many businesses are relying on the print pages alone, or leaving the print media and concentrating on the search engines.

Either way, you are losing up 30% of all searches. Online yellow pages also grew from 17% in 2007 to 19% in 2008. Those three areas make up 80% of all business searches. If your local business is starting to stagnate then you should be looking at these as possible advertising routes rather than traditional print media (3% search) or any other avenues. Even social networks show only a 1% search factor.

Local search will continue to grow, due in part to the ease of searching. Most browsers now have a search function that is easy to access and even easier to use. If you have ever used the online yellow pages then you understand. The results returned are often no where near the requested search terms or location.

Search engines are becoming smarter and specific searches often return fairly accurate results. Are you on local search? If not, why not? You are missing a lot business!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 2:02 am and is filed under Local Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.