Guest Post: Local search comes of age

Local search is becoming a major focus for the search engine companies. The space is now gearing up because the visual presentation of mapping tools has become the defacto standard for ease of use in finding local resources -- much better than scrolling down lists. In fact, Google Local was once a separate product, but http://local.google.com/ now redirects to Google Maps.

A typical Google search will return results with no weighting to locality. Up to now, online advertisers wishing to reach a local audience relied on search marketing tools like Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing by purchasing sets of keywords that define the city or neighborhood targeting their farming area. "Adwords-buying" consulting companies like Reach Local exist to create lead generation campaigns to effect localized results. Marchex, a company that is pioneering local search by saturating the country with 100,000+ local Web sites, just released a white paper explaining the challenges of  local search, a good primer. It summarizes the search engines' local search problem:

Search alone limits users to asking what they know to ask. However, the deeper the refinement features become, the more they may help educate the consumers’ decision process by walking them through questions they may not have known to ask up front —for example, I need: A doctor in New York who…practices on the Upper East Side and…specializes in Podiatry and…works with my insurance provider... etc.

The search engines realized the inadequacy of their search capabilities locally and Google and Yahoo have been developing their local search products as separate destinations. Yahoo! Local's upgraded site has been receiving rave reviews, principally because its portal construct provides easy to use categorical local searches for restaurants, shops and plumbers. Google Maps is still just a search engine and requires the user to add the category name to the search, such as "Financial District restaurants". To Google's credit, users can construct their own personal Google MyMaps.

Since local search is still in its infancy and its search criteria are different than the standard search engine, there's an opportunity for pioneering real estate professional to create an online presence for their local market (mainly because no one else knows they can do this). At Transparent today, I explain two simple methods to get noticed by Google and Yahoo! Local search engines.

--Pat Kitano, Transparent Real Estate

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