While Google still is the dominating search engine, local search is growing by leaps and bounds. 40% of all searches have a local intent – that is a number all businesse should sit up an notice!

Americans conducted 15.4 billion searches in March, with Google Sites accounting for 65.1% search market share, followed by Yahoo Sites at 16.9%, and Microsoft Sites at 11.7%. The Ask Network captured 3.8% of the search market, followed by AOL with 2.5%.

So where does this leave Local Search? As a searcher’s location becomes a standard bit of metadata to be factored into the PPC bid process, geotargeting is likely to become the norm. On the other end of the geotargeting search equation, we see that landing pages are somewhat neglected. Survey results showed that few marketers were taking advantage of geolocation-specific messaging once the searcher clicked through. For retailers, in particular, this is a huge missed opportunity.

Social sites can also help marketers find consumers that purchase wine, clothing and cars. “People who have expressed intent are accessible here,” he says.

Video also presents another opportunity. More than 174 million U.S. Internet users watched online video in February, according to comScore Video Metrix. Video viewers on Hulu watched content on average 2.4 hours per viewer.

Written by Kevin Conway.

OK, I finally said it publicly, Social Media for business is Crap! .

Maybe because my feeling for the hyped-up benefits of social media was recently confirmed by a top millionaire online guru. If you follow the most successful gurus his name is always at the top of the list. As a matter of fact, he was the first online entrepreneur to make a MILLION $$ in a day. That said, recently he published a PDF where he said “I think social media Su-ks”. When I read that I felt a sigh of relief, “maybe I am not off the tracks after all”. You see when you don’t “follow the pack” you tend to sometimes feel like you are going down the wrong path or at least missing an opportunity. Now, I must admit I use all the major social media outlets including Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, etc, etc. However, not for direct marketing. And, even though I publish new product releases on Twitter, analytics tells me no convertible traffic comes from that source or Facebook. My primary use of social sites is for building backlinks, but that is for SEO purposes. And, of course the added exposure. i.e. “branding” doesn’t hurt.

However, I never felt like any of the exposure or traffic was ever really serious “convertible traffic”. In other words social media is used for entertainment and communication, ahh, socializing. “Socializing” people are not in the “consumer mode” when they are cruising the social sites. They are looking for friends, maybe a date, etc. Proof of this observation is that these social sites still cannot monetize themselves via paid advertising to nearly the level of search engines like Google or Yahoo. Why? Because you really cannot target potential consumers when they are out at their “buying behavior mode”, i.e. when they are specifically looking to buy a product or service. To try and pull social surfers out of the “social mode” and into a “buying mode” requires many steps before a behavioral shift is realized. Sure, you can start a dialogue and maybe down the road they will recall your business, but the effort to generate business is much more ROI effective using PPC or SEO. The one bright spot for social media as a business tool may be list building, but my own results have been mixed (via measuring quality of opt ins).

And yes, I have read the eMarketer predictions that social ad spend will increase by about 400% by 2013. But, these same groups are also publishing reports like today’s “Does Social Media Work for Small Biz?” where 88% of all small business owners say social media is not helpful to their business. Proof that most of us are not yet seeing the tangible benefits, i..e., sales, leads, etc, from our social media profiles. Personally I am not even seeing much return on creating and maintaining groups within the social media outlets. And, one of the most raved about tools within social media is creating specialized groups.

So, at the moment using social sites for business generation, in my opinion is still highly overrated. As an owner of several e-commerce business I don’t see myself investing advertising dollars in social media any time soon. And, even though there are those that will disagree, I don’t think many of them can show you their own e-commerce business that has experienced any serious ROI using social media. If anyone can show me any REAL results otherwise, please I am all ears. But please Hold the HYPE.

Well it’s really not rocket science, maybe one needs to understand the propulsion portion of rocket science in order to understand local search. Local search is about being in the right place at the right time when someone is looking for what you are selling. Here is an interesting fact about how consumers are searching today…

Research shows that 85% of all consumers go online to research whatever it is they want to buy before they decide on where or who they are going to buy it from. The recent Cash for Clunkers is a testiment of this. 85% of consumers who participated in the government funded Cash for Clunkers had already made their decision on what car they wanted, the color, and from whom they were going to buy it from before they walked into that dealership. In other words, they searched online and made their decision based on what they found via search.

Who benefited from this process? I’ll tell you who benefited… it was the local car dealers who made the investment to use local search as part of their strategy. And I don’t just mean Google or Yahoo, these smart marketers also use local search as part of their complete online marketing strategies. Here is a great example of local car dealers using local search in San Antonio, TX.

The thing I like about this site is the listing page for the premium advertisers – this is there exact listing, one that demands respect within the search business.

My point is, you must be using local search as part of your strategies, if not you are missing out on some great opportunity for your business.

Which brings me to why I’m writing about MyLocalLookup.com. WhattheYahoogle has formed a partnership with mylocallookup in order to provide our readers a great tool to find local businesses. In addition, we want to add that you can now get your bsuiness featured with a Jet Package for 75% off the annual subscriptions rate. Simple type in the code “Yahoogle” to receive your 75% off at check out.

This is a great opportunity for small businesses who want to get involved more search engine marketing but don’t have the budget to afford the big guys. With this discount, the cost is $25.00 a month and can be cancelled anytime.

As our friends at Growmap wrote a few weeks ago, MyLocalLookup is the only local search engine promoted in 44 TV markets across the country. They have built a unique startegy partnering with TV stations and offering great solutions on a local level. If you haven’t already checked out MyLocalLookup and their TV commercials, you can view their TV commercials here.

SEM (Seaarch Engine Marketing) is a term all of us need to get use to and an action we all need to take. Give your business every opportunity to be found when a customer is looking for you and you accomplish this through SEM.

Business owners… It’s time take control of your business. Get involved with local search, hire someone to help you with SEM, be a part of the Social Networking opportunities. If you don’t have the time, let us know, we can direct you to the right company.

Let’s start with the fact that Microsoft is going to hire 400 Yahoo employees. Good for those employees – there’s nothing like job security in these challenging times. In addition, Microsoft agreed to hire another 150 Yahoo employees “to assist with providing the transition services” for them… again great for those 150 people. But does anyone else win…?

This story, which I read on Market Watch lays out everything that the two companies are willing to say, but never defines who benefits from this merger.

That is my stance here… there is no real benefit to us, the end users. Will their search results be any different than Google, I doubt it. Will their search results display less ads – not a chance. Will their partnership do anything to help you and me, the small business owner who is really feeling the effects of this down economy… not in the least. It’s not like Microsoft is creating new jobs here, it’s not like Yahoo is doing anything at all to revive the job markets, none of this is happening with this deal.

So my final rant is… let’s pull companies together who are going to help the small business owners, let’s create partnerships that turn into win/win/win business enviroments, not two of the biggest players partnering together, for me that’s just dumb – which reminds me of a line from an old movie called “Streets of Fire”, I believe it was William Dufoe who said “That’s dumb smart guy… real dumb if you think you can pull this off”

Let me know your thoughts – I like to express my viewpoints (just ask my team) and if do than we’ll get along great!

The article was written by David Berkowitz who is the director of emerging media and client strategy for Digital Marketing Agency 360i

And Mr. David Berkowitz believes its time for a new model… The articles covers the new pricing models for Social Media and also covers pricing models that are in place today.

Let’s first take a look at some current options;
• Cost Per Impression; better known as CPM
• Cost Per Click Impression; better known as CPC
• Cost Per Action Impression; better known as CPA
• Cost Per Engagement Impression better known as CPE

I think it’s worth your time to venture over and read David’s article – I find his insight to be very useful and I always learn something new from his writings.

So without further ado, please meet GrowMap

GrowMap is a blogger who’s sole entention is to educate businesses about, you guessed it, Local Search. Today, more and more businesses are capitalizing on the benefits of local search engines. There are a lot out there and the question is, which one is best for your business…?

That’s why we’ve started What The Yahoogle, a place to learn more about search, local search and the best places for you to learn about Local Search. We’ve just started so stay tuned and check back often.

Although My Local Lookup might be one of the smallest David’s to come down the pike, we thought we’d take a shot at Google and Yahoo at the same time. After all, we’re targeting the local arena – which is an area that the majors have not put much focus into. You can’t blame them , really, there’s too much money in their current business model. But we can point out their flaws. Bing is trying to go down the same road (as us) with their new television campaign – pointing out the information overload experienced with search engines today.

Now, more than ever, with so many millions of new web pages being indexed each month, do we need more local search directories to help local businesses. We don’t have the ad dollars that Microsoft has to promote Bing (did that really have to be said?), but by partnering with local television stations around the country, slowly My Local Lookup can get into the heads of consumers.

This blog is dedicated to small businesses around the country. We’ll talk about creative ways to get your business more exposure through technology, local search and social and traditional media. Who knows, maybe we can just start a new David Army.

Check out our latest TV commercial!