Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines have revolutionized how we learn, how we collaborate, how we shop, and in general have helped billions of people around the world harness the full power of the internet.

Today there are well over 10 billion unique searches done each month, and that’s just in the United States! Of those searches,

• 40% of queries have Local intent ⁽¹⁾
  • 5% use the city and/or state name
  • 2% use informal terms, like neighborhoods
  • 0.5% use zip codes

On Yahoo alone, 100 Million unique visitors per month search with “local intent” ⁽²⁾. We can extrapolate that there are HALF A BILLION unique Local searches per month on Google, based on Yahoo’s ~15% market share (though we’ve not seen any “hard numbers” released by Google about its average Local Search volume). We’ve seen both Google and Yahoo make dramatic shifts in how they return results in 2008, and all the trends point to Local.

On top of that data, respected technology experts around the world think the world of mobile search is ready to take off in 2009 and 2010. In some places around the world, like Japan, many of these technologies are already in place. They’re in use even in the United States, with more sophisticated devices like the iPhone. Mobile searches are primarily going to pull their results from Local Search Engines.

All of this is to say:

The potential to attract new customers via Local Search is enormous.

We hope that GetListed.org helps your business get started building and improving its search engine presence. And if you find yourself overwhelmed by the world of Local Search, help is literally right at your fingertips.

1 - (source: Ian White)
2 - (source: Frazier Miller, GM of Yahoo Local)