Google Inc.
Last week, in the first steps of targeting more ad dollars from
small businesses, Google rolled out a new search technology that puts an emphasis
on local results when users enter a zip code or city name.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google fields about 200 million search queries a day and industry estimates put about 10 percent of those searches as being for a commercial service or product. Similarly, Yahoo, which once relied on Google’s technology, rolled out its own localized search engine earlier in March, using mapping technology, and Verizon Communications overhauled its SuperPages.com site earlier this year.
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Called “Google Local” (and available directly at http://local.google.com), the feature takes everything from online restaurant reviews to pages listing Little League sponsorships and automatically factors those pages into a search. Depending on their strength, which is based on the number of links to a site, the localized results are displayed at the top of the search page, complete with a link to a phone book-style listing and an interactive map. Though still in its beta version after an eight-month development process, the difference is in the mathematical algorithms the search engine uses to rank query results. The formula now ties traditional business listings, such as the Yellow Pages, to the more than 4.2 billion Web documents listed on.
The ultimate goal of the change is to gain access to more local advertising dollars. While local ads have yet to be displayed on the site, Google has announced its plans to put ads on the space in the future.
The company already allows advertisers to target people by state or region off of its home page, letting companies bid for placement on the results pages for certain related search terms. Those ads regularly appear adjacent to or atop search results.
“Google’s goal is to connect searchers with the information they need whether it’s halfway around the world or in their neighborhood,” said Sergey Brin, technology president of Google Inc., in a release. A research collaboration between Brin and fellow Stanford doctoral student Larry Page led to the duo co-founding Google in 1998.
Mike Pearlman, a board-certified pedorthist, is currently at the top of the list for a “shoes” search in a Cranston zip code, and while he’s accustomed to fielding international queries, paying for the placement might not make business sense for him.
Pearlman’s business, Sterling Shoes & Pedorthic Services, provides therapeutic footwear for adults and children, a pretty narrow market. The fourth-generation owner of the business, Pearlman said he launched his simple one-page Web site more than a dozen years ago at the insistence of a friend who designs sites.
“I’m a shoe guy,” said Pearlman, who does little by way of making changes or updating his site and said many responses generated from his site come from people who mistake him for a manufacturer.
“The site is up as more of a reference for people in the area,” he said. “I get a lot of e-mail, from people as far away as Los Angeles or Bombay and I try to refer them to wherever I can, but for me, the core of my business is helping a customer face to face.”
Pearlman said in the past few weeks, it has seemed like he’s getting more and more responses from the Internet, but hadn’t thought much of it. Many of his customers are diabetics and he often receives e-mails from mothers who need to outfit a child with leg braces or people who need custom arches. And business does occasionally result from contact made online.
For several years, Pearlman has been making lifts for an Illinois basketball player who can’t find anyone to do the work the way Pearlman does. The more mainstream offerings of Elmwood Sports Center and Step’n Style Shoes were the runners-up in the Cranston search.
According to a report released at the close of 2003, Princeton, N.J.-based research group The Kelsey Group forecast that as search engines became more localized, the advertising market would grow from $1 billion today to $2.5 billion in 2008. The group said that locally targeted Internet listings are “the next frontier for paid searches,” giving Web portals like Google and Yahoo a way to tap into the millions of small- and medium-size businesses in the country.
The Kelsey Group, which estimates 60 percent of all Internet searches are local in nature, said that ads in the Yellow Pages remain far and away the chief marketing medium for small businesses. Though nearly 80 percent of small advertisers use offline directories, less than 20 percent use search engines. And of the $22 billion spent on local advertising, the group said advertising tied to search engines accounted for just 3 percent of those dollars, compared to 46 percent tied to Yellow Pages.
For Frank Lombardo, who bought Intown Laundry & Dry Cleaners on Aborn Street in Providence last year and has a minimal advertising budget, it’s solely directory listings that make him the top result for “dry cleaners” in the 02903 zip code. Lombardo said keeping that top spot on the Internet heap might someday be worth paying for.
“We’re a small, small outfit who’s very, very busy,” Lombardo said. “But I
do pickup and delivery service for a lot of international students who are at
RISD or Johnson & Wales. The Internet is how those kids find me. … I’ve
definitely gotten some movement from the few dollars I’ve spent. The Internet
is definitely something I’d consider targeting in the future.”
