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Google's upcoming service Google Base (see news below) shows a clear trend: search engines try to make their search results and ads as targeted as possible.

Search engines want to customize their results for the individual user based on the interests and the local region. It's likely that local search features are going to become more important than it is today.

Why is local search important to your business?

Local search is the most important trend in search marketing. According to latest estimates, 20 percent of all searches are locally oriented. As you probably know, Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines have started their own local search services to attract people who use their PC instead of the yellow pages to find local services.

Research firm The Kelsey Group forecasts that the local search market will be worth $3.4 billion in five years. This is a huge opportunity for all small businesses with an Internet presence.

How do you optimize your web pages for local search?

If you want to be found for local searches, you should include the name of your city and your region in the title tag of your web pages. If possible, include your full postal address in the footer of your web pages so that search engines can assign your web site to a special area.

There are also a variety of new meta tags for local search engines. With IBP's web site optimization editor, you can quickly add these local tags to your web pages so that search engines can find out the location of the company, the zip code and the city name.

With these tags, local search services can even direct visitors to the exact latitude and longitude of the company location.

The benefits of local search are clear: it allows you to find customers in your area who are willing to purchase from your company. It's a fast growing market with a lot of money.

You should make sure that your web site is optimized for local search so that your business can benefit from this trend.

Big waves from "Google Base"

"Is the search giant preparing for a landgrab in online auctions? Or classified ads? Or even more? [...]

Now, it looks like the search giant has its sights set on tearing into another cast of corporations: online marketplace eBay, the funky classified-ad site Craigslist, the entire newspaper industry, and maybe more."

LookSmart searches for vertical vomeback

"Search player LookSmart has taken a significant step forward on what it expects to be its comeback trail, launching 161 new vertical search sites."

Microsoft's MSN plans book search service

"Microsoft's MSN unit is working on its own service for searching the contents of books online -- trailing rival Google once again, but hoping this time to avoid a major challenge encountered by the Internet search leader."

Google's mulling TV ad brokering

"Google, already dabbling in print ads, recently confirmed that it's 'mulling' ways to extend its ad-brokering system to television spots as well. If Google succeeds, it would mark a major turning point for an industry that has rebuffed other attempts at creating new ways to buy and sell TV ad time."

 

Search engine newslets

• Google has a new flight search feature.
• Take a look at Yahoo's info page about Yahoo search.
• Yahoo releases the Yahoo! Travel Trip Planner.
• Yahoo adds a save feature to Yahoo MyWeb.
• Yahoo improves video searching.
• Yahoo releases Yahoo Autos Custom.
• The search engine Ask España is out of beta.
• The Google database might devalue all content.
• Lexxe is a new search engine that answers questions.
• A new interview with Google founder Sergey Brin.
  

GoogleBase, Craigslist, Oodle, oh my

"This raises an interesting question with regard to GoogleBase: Will Oodle - or anyone else - be able to crawl its contents? My guess is no.

While Google is extremely aggressive about its right to crawl anything it can, it will most likely act like an owner when it comes to content - and metadata - it hosts on GoogleBase. [...]

[Google] will become a publisher, a competitor in the content creation and management game, which places it in direct competition with the multitudes who feed and feed off the main Google search engine. Watch. This. Space."

Google wants to dominate Madison Avenue, too

"Google commoditizes everything. [...] There is no better example of that than Google Base, a service that allows users to post all sorts of information free, including classified ads, he said.

Newspapers, which increasingly use Google to sell ads on their own Web pages, will see Google Base as a 'frontal assault' on their lucrative classified-ad business, and they will say, 'I can't trust Google'."

A similar article can be found on the Wall Street Journal.

Googling around

"I was thinking about all the cool stuff Google has done when I realized that none of it was original. [...] Everything Google has done has been derivative. The search engine was taken from the AltaVista idea of huge computer farms. Gmail is a clone of Hotmail. The Google Chat is nothing special. Orkut is a copy of Friendster. I could go on, but you get the idea."

Titans column: Omid Kordestani

"You've heard of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's famous co-founders. But there's another figure insiders know to be Google's 'business founder': Omid Kordestani, the company's 12th employee and senior vice president for global sales and business development."

Google days "over and done with"

"Marketing search guru Mike Grehan said at a Netimperative dinner last night that it was inevitable that Google would turn into a portal. He suggested that Google had run its course, and the third generation of search would cause changes in the market."

Microsoft Bill Gates takes Google

"Google and Microsoft are at war. They are spending millions in research and marketing to out do one another. Google is aiming on taking down the Microsoft operating system and replacing it with their own. After all why should Google be second with a search toolbar clinging uncertainly to a Windows browser?"

"We were wowed when we came across Axandra's SEO software.

The SEO software released by Axandra is simply one of the most impressive, and more importantly, effective bits of SEO software that we have come across. [...]

The software in its current form today is simply the most complete, most effective SEO software available on the market. This is much more than software to help manage links, this software will tell you what your top competitors are doing.

We highly recommend all website owners to at least give the trial a shot. "
Mark Daoust, review on www.site-reference.com

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• View all past issues...