The best answer that I can come up with is “It Depends”. If you are Pepsi or Coke do you really need to establish a local search strategy? To me local search is useful and works best for small to medium sized businesses with one or possibly a couple of different locations. Local search can work for larger businesses as well, such as those that have branches throughout towns and cities within North America. Local search could prove beneficial for a franchise with multiple locations throughout the US or Canada… but local search is not necessarily for every business.

In the “old days” it was as almost every business had a listing in the Yellow Pages (I’m referring to the book, not yellowpages.com). Being listed in the Yellow Pages could cost a small fortune, and how great was the return? A couple of phone inquiries, a few sales perhaps? From a user’s point of view however, the Yellow Pages were extremely convenient and made it easy to find a “dentist” or “electrician” or “restaurant” in your town or city. I’m not so sure that the same can be said with Local Search. Try finding a dentist in using Google Maps or Yahoo Local. Are you satisfied with the results that you receive? It probably depends on the query that you use, but personally speaking, quite often when I use local search I find a lot of “noise” or sites that are not relevant to my needs. Maybe that’s why I don’t use local search that often. I tend to go directly to a site, or use a long-tail search phrase in hopes of returning more relevant results. If for example I am looking for “hotels in Edmonton” I’ll probably just type that query into ASK or Google and take my chances with the organic/natural search results. If I am looking for something like the “weather in Las Vegas”, I’ll simply go to ASK and type in “weather in Las Vegas.” The reason is that I know that ASK has the most relevant result for this locally-appended query. But let’s say that you moved to a new city or part of town and you are looking for a popular brand or store in your neighborhood. Are you going to use local search to find the nearest Wal-Mart or Home Depot? Probably not, you are just going to append your search with a Geo-modifier.

So do large brands need to optimize for local search? Well again it depends. People are familiar with large brands and chances are they will go directly to the site or will perform a search for that brand in a search engine…. they’re probably not going to even think about using local search. If your site is well optimized and identifies your branch locations on your contact us page, chances are you have some presence in the “organic” listings of the local search sites. If you are a well known brand and have a number of bricks and mortar locations throughout North America, you’ll want to be found when a searcher performs a local search. You simply want to be found. If you are a plumber in Detroit, you want to be found for “plumbers in Detroit”, if you’re a divorce lawyer in Beverly Hills, you want to be found for “divorce lawyers in Beverly Hills” or “divorce lawyer 90210″. The fact is local search is more for traditional bricks and mortar businesses. It does not make a lot of sense for large brands such as Pepsi or Coke to focus their efforts on local search. People are aware of those brands. In this case local search does not provide a benefit to the user or to the brand.

While you should have at least one listing in the local search results of the various search engines, a detailed local search strategy is not necessarily required for every business. It works if your customers use local search, it’s pointless if they don’t. It works if you are a small to medium sized business, it’s not as effective if you are a well established brand. Ask yourself why you should pursue local search. Is your site or business set up and optimized for local search? Does your site have what it takes to rank well in places such as Google Local/Maps or Super Pages? Is local search integral for your customers to find your site? Does your competition have a strong presence in local search? It seems like a no-brainer, but the truth is that local search is simply not for everyone.

Local search can mean different things to different advertisers. The fact of the matter is, that people who use local search tend to be further along in the buying funnel and are closer to making an actual purchase (either online or offline). Local search is simply the act of finding information for a business in a specific geographic locale. Whether a searcher is looking for a “plumber in Detroit”, “pizza parlors in Chicago”, or “hotels in Las Vegas”, local search is how they are going to find what they are looking for. Whereas most used to look in the big book of the Yellow Pages, the Internet generation is now using local search to find businesses in their community.

Let’s say that you are looking for a real estate agent. Chances are you are not going to perform a search for “real estate agents” in Google or Yahoo. (For the record, this query returns over 200 million results in Yahoo…) You are most likely going to append your search engine query with a geo-specific locator. Your query will probably look something more like “real estate agents in ” for example: “real estate agents in Seattle“. Users who are more comfortable online might actually perform their query modified with their area or zip code. As a result the results that you are served up with will be less competitive and more relevant. Ah relevancy. That is why people love local search.

Local search will always return results that are more relevant. Looking for a dentist? Of course you are going to perform a local search. Now let’s clarify something.

To perform a local search does not necessarily mean that you will be using a local search engine.

Depending on the user, many will simply use a GEO-modifier to their search query (a la “real estate agents in Seattle”). While they may be served up with local search results as part of the blended search results that the search engine displays, they did not go directly to the local search engine. Therefore, you need to be aware of the various scenarios that can happen with local search.

Scenario One: The user performs a Web search in a major search engine (Google, Yahoo, ASK etc) and appends their search with a GEO-qualifier.

Scenario Two: The user goes directly to a local search engine (Google Local, Google Maps, Yahoo Local, ASK City etc.) and performs a query specific to their local identifying a city, zip code, actual address or combination of the three.

Scenario Three: The user goes to a vertical local search engine such as Super Pages or Local.com and performs a search for a local business.

Depending on the searcher’s user experience, there are other scenarios that come in to play:

Scenario Four: The searcher previously used a local search engine and bookmarked their query.

Scenario Five: The searcher previously used search either Web search or Local Search, found the business that they were looking for and bookmarked the site. After the initial use of local search, the user now goes directly to the site for that business.

The majority of the users will make use of scenarios one, two, or three depending on their comfort level and savvy of Search. The scenarios do point out something interesting. If a user has a successful Local Search experience initially, the need for Local Search is complete as they may not have need for Local Search (for that specific query) because chances are they may have bookmarked the destination site that satisfied their needs. This might be worth doing some research to determine how users interact with Local Search. A future research project and post perhaps? The fact of the matter is, while Local Search is becoming increasing popular for advertisers, Local Search may not work for everybody.

So now that we have discussed what Local Search is, our next piece will be on Defining Your Place in Local Markets through Local Search.

I need to thank Darby for taking some time out of his busy schedule to talk with me. The full copy of the intereview is over on my blog at LocalBizBits.com.

I spent a few minutes looking over the notes and articles I have collected over the year and am amazing how things have changed so much. Some sites/services have appeared while others have faded away. The overall message I take away from things, is that local search as a marketing technique is here to stay and will continue to grow rapidaly over the next few years.

One of the best definitions of local search came from Greg Sterling “Local search is a process where users seek information online, the ultimate intention of which is an offline transaction at a service or business level.”

Because of this, small businesses need to step up to the plate and begin to embrace local search marketing. So many small businesses are “afraid” or “unsure” of online marketing, they shouldn’t, but I do understand there can be alot of confusion about Internet marketing in general. I am hoping via this blog and others, information on local search will get out there and clear up some of the confusion.

I wanted to add to that list:

Promote Your Business Locally by Stacey Williams
Brian Wool’s column on local search at Clickz
Local Only Column at Search Engine Land
Locally Type by Frank Fuchs
Local Point -from Marchex

How Much Is ‘Local Search’ Really Worth? nice article on financial forecasts

Local Search Engines

• Google Maps: http://local.google.com/
• Yahoo! Local: http://local.yahoo.com/
• ASK City: http://city.ask.com/city
• AOL Local Search: http://local.aol.com/aol/localhome
• Live Local: http://local.live.com/
• Local.com: http://www.local.com/
• Super Pages: http://www.superpages.com/
• Yellow Pages: http://www.yellowpages.com/
• Dex Online: http://www.dexonline.com/
• Local Launch: http://www.locallaunch.com/
• Switch Board: http://www.switchboard.com/
• 411.com: http://www.411.com/
• True Local: http://www.truelocal.com/
• City Search: http://www.citysearch.com/
• White Pages: http://www.whitepages.com/
• Zvents: http://www.zvents.com/

Local Search Optimization

• Search Engine Journal: 5 Quick Ways To Optimize For Local Search
• Natural Search Blog: Extreme Local Search Optimization Tactics
• iMedia Connection: 10 Winning Ways to Optimize Local Search
• SE Round Table: Local Search Marketing Tactics
• Small Business SEM: 10 Likely Elements of Google’s Local Search Algorithm
• SearchEngineWatch: 8 Ways to Improve Your Local Search Results
• The Karcher Group: Optimizing Local Search
• Improve the Web: Optimize your site for local search engine traffic
• Local SEO Guide: http://www.localseoguide.com/
• WebProNews: SES: Six Tips For Local Search Marketing
• Single Grain: Optimizing for Local Search
• ClickZ: A New Form of Local Search Optimization, Part 1
• SE Journal: Local Search Optimization Think Globally, Act Locally
• Search Engine Land: Using Images For Local SEO
• Search Engine Guide: “Local Search Engine Optimization” Yesterday and Today
• Search Engine Lane: Advanced Local Search Optimization Tips
• Info Mean: Local Search Optimization - A Guide to Getting Started
• Search Anyway: Using Yellow Pages for Local Search SEO
• SEO Design Solutions: Local Search Engine Optimization Tips to Improve Organic Rankings
• Local Internet Marketing - Local Search
• Wolf Howl: Local Search Tips, Tricks & Secrets
• Search Engine Guide: Boost Your Local Search Presence
• Bruce Clay: Search Engine Relationship Chart - Local Edition
• Sugar Rae: Before You Launch that Local Small Business Website
• Peter Krasilovsky: Local Onliner
• Larry Sullivan: Local Internet Search Marketing for Small Business

Have a resource that should be added? Leave a comment and I will review it