What’s the Hype on Web Local Search?

• by Dan Bailey

I’ve caught a lot of buzz lately about search engines and local search marketing advances, such as the following e-newsletter: http://www.prominentplacement.com/newsletter_january10.html. The technology enablers for local search have really been growth in GPS and mobile. And the marketing benefits look great – especially for local brick-and-mortar retail. For example, mash-ups with phone book information and maps give great, direct and valuable information in local search results.

But it goes beyond content communication. Search analytics reveal valuable information to marketers such as popularity of search terms, enabling (per Google’s given example) restaurants to customize menus based on popular consumer searches for specific dish names (www.Google.com/LocalBusinessCenter).

Personally, I can’t wait for all of this functionality to be integrated in social networking software search engines. Here’s to the future.

– Jake Aull
www.zenofbrand.com