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Local Search Growth Awakens the Amazon
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc., January 31, 2005
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The concept of local Internet advertising is rapidly gaining acceptance
with users and advertisers with a predicted 46% increase in ad-spending
in 2005 according to a study conducted by Borrell
Associates in 210
U.S. media markets.
The Borrell study includes advertising in online newspapers but notes that
local-search spending accounted for nearly 8.4% of the market. 2004 was
the first year Borrell included search in its local online ad-spending studies.
Local search ad spending is projected to grow a whopping 70% in the Washington
DC area in 2005, much of it focused on the highly competitive real estate
market in the counties surrounding DC. Other American cities with high local
search growth projections include; Salisbury MD – 62.3%, Bend OR – 51.7%,
and Missoula MT – 47.9%. The sector is growing so quickly cities such
as San Francisco and Miami are considered slow-growth areas with projected
spending increases in the 22% – 26% range.
Local search is becoming a hot section of the search sector for a number
of reasons. Nearly 75% of US homes now have Internet access with over 50%
of them using high-speed connections. Add the portability of hand-held computers,
cell-phones and whatever I-Pod evolves into and it is easy to understand
why local-search is being accepted and used as an online version of the
traditional print Yellow Pages.
Consumers are starting to exercise their ability to research local-shopping
excursions, find the best prices and plot the best travel routes using mapping
tools provided alongside search results. Ten years ago the publishers of
the traditional print Yellow Pages directories knew this would happen. They
spent the last decade desperately trying to find substantial value-added
features they could offer a formerly captive market.
It took a full ten years for three major factors to form the 'perfect-norm'
for local-search to thrive in. The first was the US broadband barrier that
was breached in 2004. The second was the awakening of interest in search
by the business world over the past two years. The last is the continued
increases in processing power, bandwidth and Internet enabled appliances
and home entertainment. The waves created by this confluence of factors
are beginning to crest and the search sector and traditional print publishers
are partnering up to stake out the best surf. Google and Yahoo have already
claimed their sections of the beach. The latest entry to the local search
market is Amazon's A9.com Yellow Pages.
A9 appeared on the search scene about nine months ago with a huge promotional
push that generated a great deal of attention but won few long-term users.
Drawing organic results from Google's database, the search engine filters
results through Alexa's popularity ranker and its own database of registered
users' preferences. To the right, a series of images drawn from Google-Images
appear alongside corresponding search results. By design, A9 is still a
work in progress as rankings are dependent on unique user preferences.
A second A9 marketing push appears to be underway with yesterday's introduction
of A9's Local search feature, A9 Yellow Pages. Amazon's vision of local-search
has one feature that blows the doors off the competition's products. In
order to produce their version of local search, A9 placed cameras on a number
of Amazon owned SUVs and basically took images of every commercial doorway
in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Chicago, Manhattan, Denver, LA, Seattle, Portland
and the Bay Area. They are hiring new staff, and plan to expand this list
to every commercial doorway in America.
According to CEO Udi Manber A9's goal is to show local search users “...images
of the businesses in the Yellow Pages.” They actually go one step
further by displaying images of every doorway on the same block as the business
the searcher is looking for. This is the test
search offered by A9.Com
Like Google-Local, A9.com is working with a database of Yellow Pages listings;
practically every business that has a telephone should be included.
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