Local Online Advertising Research

People are Searching for Local Businesses Online

There are a number of studies and research that have been done that show that a growing number of shoppers are looking to the internet before they go to the store. As more and more people get on the internet, the amount of searching will only increase as will the overall footprint of locally focused internet searching.

In a March 2007, a report titled, Will Local Search Be Googled?, Forrester “estimates that almost $400 billion of store sales — or 16% of total retail sales — are directly influenced by the Web as consumers research products online and purchase them offline.” Their study was primarily focused on consumers who purchase products at retail locations versus online and does not take into account the number or searches or purchases made at service based companies.

Customers are Looking for Your Business Information

People that are searching for local goods and services online are looking for several key pieces of information about local businesses. Information that is important to shoppers include; location, driving directions, coupons, hours of operation, payment methods.

Are people searching for local businesses on the internet?
44% of the US online population, according to Nielsen Netratings, visit map sites, search engines and internet yellow page type sites when looking for local business information. And 1/3 of those people are searching for local businesses at least once a month.

Millions of People are Doing Online Searches

Google, Yahoo!, Windows Live/MSN, and AOL are used by 96% of the US online population at least once a month, according to Nielsen NetRatings. To give you some examples of the quantity of searching happening on the internet look at Neilsen numbers from November 2007:

Google 4,253,794,000 searches representing 57.7% of all searching
Yahoo! Search 1,317,919,000 searches representing 17.9% of all searching
MSN/Live Search 880,550,000 searches representing 12.0% of all searching
AOL Search 332,385,000 searches representing 4.5% of all searching
Ask.com Search 195,848,000 searches representing 2.7% of all searching

Online Search Landscape

96% of the online population use Google, Yahoo, MSN or AOL

44% use map sites, search engines and yellow page sites when looking for local business information

Forrester estimates that almost $400 billion of store sales — or 16% of total retail sales — are directly influenced by the Web as consumers research products online and purchase them offline

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