In my last post I discussed how search engines sometimes have trouble returning the best results because relevance is very subjective and language differences (even when comparing US English to UK English) can make things quite tricky when determining exactly what it is you’re looking for.

When I mentioned my friend was looking for cleaning services in her area, she wasn’t wanting to find some Wikipedia article on the history or origins of cleaning, she wanted to find someone local who could clean her house. This is where local search is perfect. It’s designed for businesses who provide products or services in their local geographic region and want local consumers to buy from them. They don’t care if someone on the other side of the world can’t find their site, nor are they concerned on gaining millions of hits a month… they simply want to be found locally by people who are interested in buying.

Local search works well because of the following reasons:

1. The search algorithms are now quite good with geotargeting, meaning local businesses gain greater priority when searched for in their region. For example, if someone is using Google.com.au and does a search for Ipswich, they’ll find results pertaining to the small Queensland town instead of having results from the Ipswich in England or Massachusetts returned.
2. Colloquialisms, slang and other language variations (UK and US English etc.) are better accommodated for with the local search algorithms as they are appear in the content of local web sites.
3. A lot of local search providers incorporate other additional features like maps which enhance the user experience and make it a lot easier to find things if you’re not familiar with the area
4. But most importantly, the people who perform local searches are more likely to make a purchase from you

If my 4 points above haven’t yet sold you and you’d rather see some statistics about local search, have a look at Marketing Pilgrim’s post on Local Search Trumps Paper or read through some of the excellent interviews on local search conducted by Graywolf – Local Search Tips, Tricks & Secrets.

So now that you can see how popular local search is becoming, what can you do about it? First-off, you’ll need to understand When Might Google Show Local Search Information in Web Search Results? And it would also help to understand the other local search offerings from the bigger players:

Guide to Google Local Search
Guide to Yahoo Local Search
Guide to MSN Local Search
Guide to Other Local Search Marketing Options

Aaron Wall from SEObook (which I honestly have to say is one of the best books for anyone wanting to learn more about SEO) has also put together some Regional / Local Search Engine Marketing Tips and Strategies.

The above guides are great to get an understanding for how local search works and how to leverage it in your favour, but some of it isn’t exactly targeted towards Australians. Given that we’re an Australian company and that our clients are generally Australian businesses, we’ve started building an Australian Local Search and Business Directory resource. It’s only small at the moment but it’s constantly growing with the intention of providing the latest news and developments in the local search and online business directory market within Australia.

If anyone reading this has had some great local search success stories I’d love to hear about them.

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