According to the Comscore search report for June,  Google had 10.29 billion searches. Google has said in the past that about 20% of all searches have local intent so that would mean that over 2 billion searches in the U.S. on Google’s main search site in June were local in nature.

If you extrapolate that to  all of the search engines, you’ve got over 3 billion local searches.

What have you done as a small business owner to take advantage of these huge numbers?

A new report from BIA/Kelsey and ConStat says that 97% of all US internet users research on line to find local products and services.

As a small business owner if you have been neglecting how your company is being represented online, you must act now to make sure you are in control of your online image.

Even if you don’t have a website your company is already listed in many of the online directories and is showing up in search queries.  Something as simple as having your business listed more than one way in Google Maps could cause you problems.  A user could see two or three listings for your business, maybe with slightly different names or an incoreect phone number or address.  That user could assume you’re spamming and decide not to do business with you.  Or even worse you could be penalized by Google.

It’s very important that you take control of how your business is represented online and do it now.  Especially in this tough economy, you can’t afford to lose a single potential customer.

Google is now testing enhanced listings for businesses in two markets, San Jose and Houston.  They haven’t yet committed to a release date for this feature, but it was recently featured in the Google Lat Long blog, the blog of the Google maps team.

From the Google Lat Long blog:

“These enhanced listings allow business owners to highlight an aspect of their Local Business Center listing that they think best reflects what they have to offer their customers. The business owner can choose to enhance the way their listing appears in search results by including a link to point customers directly to photos, videos, website, coupons, directions, menu or reservations signup. Let’s say a deli owner thinks the huge selection of imported cheeses really makes her deli stand out - she may want to give potential customers a quick way to see the menu on her website or a photo of her display case. Customers who access this relevant information can make an easier, more informed decision about which business to call or visit.

Here’s an example for optometrist in San Jose, CA. Notice the yellow tag below the North Valley Optometry listing with a link to “View photos” of their business and the photo icon placed on the map:”

There is a fee of $25 per month to add this enhancement.  It will be interesting to see if this feature makes a difference in click through rate on these listings.  You’ll notice in the sample above that there is a little yellow camera icon on the map.  That will definitely help differentiate this listing from the rest.

My guess is that coupon might be the enhancement choice that moves the needle most.  The menu choice would also be a great one for restaurants.

Of course you can’t take advantage of this new feature when it rolls out if you haven’t claimed your listing.  So head on over to the Google Local Business Center and claim your business’ listing today.

We are now officially past the tipping point for small businesses and online marketing.  The number of local searches continues to increase every month and the localization of the search engines is happening at a break neck pace. The search engines continue to serve local search results for more and more non-local queries.  And new local features at both Google and Bing seem to be popping up every week.

For small business owners the time is now to take control of how your business is being presented online.  Even if you don’t have a website, your business is showing up in the many online directories and the search engines.

So where do you start? The online world is one with it’s own language and many acronyms.  It can be very scary for people who are not techies.  You’ve got your HTML, CSS, SEO, PPC, XML, and so on.  But what does it all mean to a small businessman?

Luckily, there are some pretty easy steps you can take to improve your business’ online visibility that don’t require learning how to write code or decipher the ever changing search engine algorithms.

Let’s start with the one step that is the single most important thing you can do to control how your business is represented online.

Claim your business listing in the Google Local Business Center.  The good new is that only about 10% of all businesses have done this, so simply taking this one step will put you ahead of your competition.

The Google Local Business Center is where Google allows local small businesses to submit or correct information about their business.  The information listed about a business in the Local Business Center is also one of the major factors that Google considers when they decide which businesses are displayed near the map for a local search query like this one.

Once you have created you Local Business Center account you can edit your business’ listing.

You can do that by simply searching for your business by name and town, state.

If your business doesn’t show up next to the map simply click the “more results” lnk at the bottom.

When you find your business you can click on the name of the business to get to the Google Place Page for your business.  To claim your listing click the “Business Owner?” link in the upper right hand corner.

From here you’ll be able to input and correct all the information about your business.  You should take a few minutes to go through all the fields and fill them all in.  The more information you add to your Local Business Listing the better your listing will do.

One thing you should not do is try to cram keywords into every field on the page.  Describe your business, but do it reasonably without keyword spam.  Google’s computers very good at detecting attempts to “game” the system and if you do get caught, your listing and website can be put into the Google penalty box.  That’s very hard to get out of so it’s really not worth the risk.  Just be honest and write your descriptions for people not search engines and you’ll do fine.

You should also add photos and videos of your business, your products and yourself if appropriate.  The more you add to the listing the better.

The whole process should not take you more than 20 minutes.  But it’s the best 20 minutes you can spend to increase your small business’ online visibility.

Of course there are other factors that affect where your business shows up for local searches.  We’ll cover more of those at a later date.  So head to the Local Business Center now and claim your listing!

AT&T’s new site Buzz.com local recommendation site seems to be more focused on advertisers than users.  By limiting input from the general public and relying on “expert” reviewers, they’ve taken the ugliness of bad reviews out of the picture and that should make small business owners, aka Buzz’s advertisers, happier than they are with sites like Yelp.

It’s an interesting approach that will need some time to evaluate for effectiveness as a business model.  I believe that the sucess of the site will depend on a few factors.

1) User adoption.  Is the site easy and fun to use?  Will the smart phone apps be like Gowalla and Facebook, a joy to use and addictive?  Or will it be clunky and a chore to use?

2) Promotion.  Will there be all sorts of advertising to initiate awareness?  AT&T has spent a ton of money refuting Verizon’s bad coverage claims.  Will the Buzz promotion budget be even a fraction of that, or will they try a social media only strategy?

3) Advertiser buy in. Will the local small businesses buy in and spend money to advertise on Buzz?  Only 10% of small businesses have even claimed their listing in the Google Local Business Center, so will they pay for enhanced listings and the like on a compeltely new site?

It will be interesting to watch the evolution of Buzz as it progresses.  Stay tuned for more.

Neilsen Online has released some interesting stats about American media consumption.  It turns out that US users are not replacing old media with new.  They’re just adding to their old consumption.

• The average American’s television viewing is up 20% over the last 10 years to 141 hours each month. That’s a whopping 4.7 hours per day, every day!
• Online video viewing is at 3 hours per month.
• Text message numbers are exploding.  The average US adult sends 500 texts per month and the average teen Sends more than 3,500 text messages per month.
• A lot of this cross media consumption is happening simultaneously.

Now all three big search engines, Google, Bing and Yahoo are returning localized searches for non-local queries.  All three have said that their goal is to figure out what users intentions are when they search and fulfill those intentions with the search results.

You might say to yourself “How can the search engines know what my intent is when I search.”  More often than not it’s not that hard to figure out.  Of course there are instances when they’re still completely off the mark, but they’re getting better and better at figuring out intent.

Here’s an easy one that I did recently to test.  I searched (not logged in to any of the big three) for pizza.  Now, 99 times out of 100 when someone types pizza into the search box they are looking for a local place to get some pizza.  So this one is a no brainer.

Click the images to see them larger:

You can clearly see that each of the search engines is giving me local pizza restaurants near where I am searching from.  If I owned a pizza place in this neighborhood, I’d always want to be in the map pack of each of the search engines.  In most cases the highlighted local businesses are accurate, but there are a bunch of pizza places in this neighborhood that are not showing here.  So there is work to be done on those listings.

It’s now more important than ever for Local Small Businesses to make sure that they have a handle on how their business is being presented online.  Even if your small business doesn’t have a website  it is crucial to claim your listings at each of the big three search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo.  The localization of search results is going to continue and every small business will be affected.  Don’t get left behind.  Take control of how your business is seen online.

Google continues to give local businesses great ways to use your “home field advantage” aka the fact that you’re local. This time it’s with Google’s Local Business Ad Extensions in your Adwords ads.

What is a Local Business Ad Extension?  It’s an extra line at the bottom of your Adwords ad that displays your business’ street address.  It appears directly below the url in your Adwords ad.

Will this increase your ads’ click throughs?  It’s too soon to tell but I would bet on YES!  The Local Business Ad Extension is a feature that reinforces the localness of your ad to a searcher that has expressed a desire for local results.  It also gives you a substantial differentiator from your competition. So it makes sense that it will increase click throughs for you.

So how do you add the Local Business Ad Extension to your ads to test it?   If  you have a Google Local Business Center account (and every local business should have one)  you will have the option of linking your Local Business Center account to your AdWords account so the addresses can be dynamically inserted into those text ads depending on the search query.

For businesses that don’t have listings created in the LBC, AdWords provides an option to manually enter your address.

These ads will appear on the main page search results in addition to the maps.google.com page.  So make sure you have your LBC account linked with your Adwords account, and keep an eye on your click through rates.

This was reported over at Pit-Stop Media:

“This morning when I was doing my routine checkups on the Yahoo accounts that we are managing, I was seeing “0” in all the stat fields. At first I thought there was something wrong with the accounts, but I immediately remembered that just a while ago, Yahoo had a reporting delay which took them days to fix, and this might very well be another one.

So I picked up the phone and called Yahoo, talked to one of the representatives, and confirmed that this is another reporting delay that no stat was updated since yesterday 10pm. I was told the problem is being worked on, but they have no idea when will it be fixed.

Once again, nothing was mentioned on the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog. I guess most of us just have to run blindfolded for a few days.

Looking at the bright side, who doesn’t like a wild ride in the summer?”

Here are three things on which you can easily focus to ensure that your lead generation pay per click campaign generates a huge boost in your return on investment.

Do deep keyword research. It’s great to look at the keywords that have mega traffic, however they are more often than not way too broad and unfocused to have any kind of conversion value for you.  Spend the time to find the keywords that are targeted, have a decent search volume, have a lower cost per click and lower volume of competition.  This group of keywords will probably take you into the long tail and bring you more qualified leads from prospects who are much further along in the buying process.

Sell benefits not features. Features are nice but benefits make sales and cause clicks on your ads.  For example if I tell you that this basketball has a gyroscope inside of it, that’s a feature.  It’s interesting, but it doesn’t make me do back flips and want to run out and get one.  However if I tell you that it always goes in the basket when you shoot because of its new gyroscope, that’s a benefit.  You never miss a shot.  That’s why you’d buy that basketball.

Fulfill the promise your ad makes with your landing page. Your landing page should be specific to your ad.  this one simple step will ratchet your conversions way up.  So if you have a automotive campaign with three ads, one focused on convertibles, one on sedans and one on trucks send the users who click on the convertible ads to a landing page specifically about convertibles.

Your conversions will go even higher if you use a landing page that reinforces the specific benefits that your ad does.  So if you ad for the convertible mentions the fabulous feeling of the wind blowing through your hair with the top down, the landing page headline should reinforce that idea as should the copy on the landing page.  You might even add a nice picture of a happy couple in their convertible with their hair a flutter.

These are 3 easy keys to increase your ROI from any lead generation pay per click campaign.  For help with starting or improving your lead generation pay per click campaign contact Shore Hills Internet Marketing, the lead generation experts.