Broadband Consumers Make Local Search a Reality

In a telephone-based survey of 1,000 consumers in 2003 to determine their attitudes and behavior regarding local media it was found that traditional yellow pages, white pages and newspapers were the dominant sources of local information.

The Internet was then in fourth position. A follow-up survey with 500 consumers earlier this year found that, remarkably, the Internet had moved into a tie for first position.

Most of the Internet’s growth as a local shopping resource has taken place via major search engines and exclusively from broadband users. This suggests that small businesses ultimately will have no choice but to find ways to get in front of consumers who are using the Internet to find local information.  

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OTHER NEWS AT A GLANCE

The future of search looks bright
Google's dominant position in the land of search remains unchallenged despite innovations from competitors such as MSN, Yahoo and AskJeeves.

Yahoo threatens Google with Mindset search
A tool that allows Web users to prioritise search results by source could help Yahoo to take a larger slice of the search engine market.

UK Search Engine Marketing Industry Valued At Almost £600m in 2005
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Click fraud now mainstream
India has spawned an innovative business called ad clicking fraud in which thousands of Indians are paid to click on a website's Google ads in order to increase the website owner's revenue from Google for each click.

KNOWLEDGE BASE ARTICLES

Cracking the Google Code
Google's sweeping changes confirm the search giant has launched an all out assault against artificial link inflation and declared war against search engine spam in a continuing effort to provide the best search service in the world... and if you thought you cracked the Google Code and had Google all figured out - guess again.

The Law of Unintended Consequence
For ad-driven, content-based sites, a content management system change alone can cut search engine referrals nearly in half within three-months of implementation.