Small businesses 'benefit' from local search engines

5th November 2007

Search engines have replaced phone books as consumers' first point of reference for businesses, claims the LA Times.

The newspaper reports that according to research firm The Kelsey Group, locally targeted search engines and yellow pages advertising spending will grow from $1.9 billion (£913 million) this year to $4.9 billion in 2011.

Local search engines such as Google's ReachLocal, can help small enterprises to get noticed. The newspaper said the small text adverts next to search results are an extremely successful strategy in attracting new customers.

"It's a huge growth opportunity," said Warren Kay, Yahoo!'s managing director of strategic alliances.

"We are very interested in small businesses. They provide meaningful content consumers are looking for," he added.

According to a study by Nielsen/NetRatings, 91 per cent of the US web users who feel they are over-exposed to ads would not mind adverts that were better targeted to their needs. They claim that they prefer to use search engines to fulfil their web needs rather than viewing adverts.