Saying It Social

Is your business easy to find for local and mobile searchers?

First an anecdote, then the facts. The other evening I was driving through Baltimore City and decided I’d like to try an Italian deli for dinner. I promptly pulled out my smart phone, went to Google and typed merely “Italian deli” – not having to add a geographic modifier because the GPS on my phone was enabled and would automatically pull local business listings based on my current location.

Because it was late, I was only interested in the results that returned with a phone number so that I could call and make sure the establishment was still open. The results I am referring to are the the Google Places (formarly Google Local Business Center) listings, free listings that business owners can set up that put your business on Google Maps and in the top, yes top, of search results.

The results of my search were few and although I was certain there were many more options in the area, I had to go with the one touch convenience factor of simply clicking on the phone number within the results to place my call. One could argue that I was only cheating myself by not looking further than the Google Places listings, but I would argue that if a business isn’t going to make it easy for me to connect to them, no matter how fantastic their product or service, I’m just as turned off as if their products and services were miserable.

You might be thinking that this is just me and nobody else searches like this – well the statistics will tell you otherwise. According to Google’s Stats & Facts, there are over 50 million Places pages, so chances are very good that if you don’t have a listing, your competition does. And just who is seeing these listings? That would be the 20% of internet users whose searches are related to location and according to comScore, in March Google had 14.3 billion search queries – 20% of that would represent roughly 2.8 billion local queries. With mobile internet use on the rise these numbers are only going to soar.

Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley expects mobile internet use to surpass desktop internet use within the next five years. Setting up and claiming your free business listings should be your first move to cater to these users and make sure that your business is there to be found when people are seeking out the products and services which you offer.

While the statistics presented above were just for Google, the major search engines all have their own local listings in some form so it is extremely important to get listed on their platforms as well. A very important item to note is that continue reading…

September 8, 2010 - Posted by AK Stout | Uncategorized | google business listings, google local, google places, local search, mobile search