Google’s dominance in the US search market is continuing to grow according to data released by Hitwise today.

Google’s search market share grew by 8% year-over-year while Yahoo! And MSN dropped a staggering 19% and 17% respectively.

Hitwise also reported that search terms longer than 3 keyword phrases all saw a year-over-year percentage increase meaning users are using longer keywords phrases to find exactly what they are after.

With the recent update to Google’s search results showing more local listings we may see Google’s dominance in the local market increase so if you don’t have a Google Local Listing, now is the time to get one. Will this change also see a positive change for one and two keyword phrases?

There are thousands of different home based business products available on the web today and many have become very popular amongst affiliate advertisers. Over the years I have come across a wide variety of home based affiliate websites; some of which are very clear and a few that have simply confused me.

Recently, in a move to weed out some of these lower quality affiliate websites, Google have increased the minimum cost per click for certain over crowded affiliate programs.
A few weeks ago one of our Google AdWords Qualified Technicians attempted to setup a campaign in Google AdWords for a common Home Based Business affiliate site and noticed that Google had placed a minimum cost per click of approx $10 on every keyword.

The same technician also attempted to use similar keywords for a less known Home Based Business site and to his surprise the minimum cost per click was approximately $0.70. Using Yahoo! Search Marketing proved to be a winner for the sites affected by Google’s high cost per click as quality traffic was delivered for approximately $0.50 per click – 1/20 of the price Google wanted.

Affiliate advertisers need to ensure they are promoting a high quality affiliate program that delivers real value to consumers. If your program is just a gimmick or hyper competitive it may be best to look at some other alternatives – especially if you’re considering Google Advertising for your website.

So you operate a local business; but are you doing all you can to reach your local customers or is Mr. Smith down the street taking all of them? Unfortunately in every business there is competition and in order to get in front of your competitors one important factor is to get noticed!

Below are some of the steps I would take if I was a local business and wanted to target local customers with a minimal cost.

1. Add my business name and business address to each page of my website. By doing this your site will be picked up by search engines and rank you higher for local searches.

2. Make sure the logo or home link on each page on my website has appropriate local link text.

3. Get found in local search engines. Either submit myself or get a Local Search Listing. By being included in local search engines you instantly increase your chances of being found by your local customers searching for products and services.

4. Add locally targeted Alt tags to my images. For example, if I was a Hairdresser in Brooklyn, New York and my business name was Mousey Brown Salon I would add an Alt tag to my logo that says “Mousey Brown Salon is a hairdresser located at 732 Lorimer St, Brooklyn, New York”.

5. Submit my images to photo sharing sites like Flickr. Here I can add my own tags to my images and also link these images back to my site.

6. Upload my products to Google Base in order to appear on Google Product Search.

7. I would recommend my customers write a review on my Hair Salon at review sites such as Citysearch.com and Yelp.com. Local search engines often collect reviews from these types of sites and add them to the associated local business listing.

As you can see these are some simple ways (with most being free) to help you capture your local customers.

Good luck with implementing them!

Don’t have time to submit to 46 Local Search Engines? Try our Local Search Listing today!

Local search engines such as Google Local and Yahoo! Local rely on many sources of to gather information on a business and enhance their local search Listing. One of the main sources used for enhancing business listings are review sites – where users post appraisals and evaluations of businesses and products they’ve used.

More than just enhancing the information in a local listing, reviews can also help persuade searchers to select a business, as other people’s opinions help users differentiate between the many listings that result from a local business search.

Below is an example of some reviews that were picked up by Google Local for a Hotel in Orlando.

In this case the reviews were positive and came from four sources including Mobile Travel Guide, Citysearch, Gayot and Tripadvisor.

Businesses should urge their customers to leave reviews on these sites as if they get picked up they can help build your business listing and in turn help with your ranking in the local search engines.

Google released Google Universal Search in mid May 2007 which saw the integration of all its various search verticals including Google Maps, Google Images and Google Video into the main web results.

Although Google Universal Search has only been around for under a month, early results from a recent study by Hitwise show the biggest winners from this enhancement were Google Maps with a 20.34 % boost in traffic and Youtube with an 8.26% increase in traffic.

Percentage U.S. Visits to Custom Category of Top Google Properties

I believe that traffic to Google Maps will continue its fantastic growth in the future as more enhancements like Google Street View are introduced and local search continues its growth.

Findings
1 A business listing with a URL associated to it seems to rank higher than one with no URL.
2 A business listing with more web pages linking to it seems to rank higher than those with fewer inbound links.

Investigation 3 – “Window Tinting San Jose”

Findings
1 All business listings that contained information in their details section came from Super Pages.com and the top listing had multiple sources providing business information.
2 Having the “search term” contained in your business name does not necessarily mean it will help your ranking, but it does help to make your listing stand out in the results (visually).

Conclusion
While the small sample I’ve investigated is probably not conclusive, I believe that in order to rank well in Google Local you need an up-to-date enhanced local listing in as many local search engines and directories as possible.

Local listings with the most reviews didn’t necessarily get the top ranking, but these enhanced elements of a local listing surely play a role in Google’s algorithm.

One thing I have not yet explored (that may affect the way Google Local ranks listings) is the number of links and the quality of the web pages (Page Rank) linking to a listing. In my next article I will post my findings.

The other day I was chatting to a friend of mine from West Seneca, New York and he shared with me his experience using Google Local to find a pest control business in his area. It really highlights the growing importance of Local Search and the real value of an enhanced listing for local businesses.

He said he went to Google Local and typed in “Pest Control West Seneca, New York” and was presented with 10 pest control companies in the area. He clicked on the first company “Good Riddance Pest Control & Water Damage Restoration” and was shown all the information he needed including all their services, what they specialize in, payment methods accepted, when the business was started, contact details and even some customer reviews which helped him make a decision to the company. I reproduced his search and here’s a screenshot of what he saw.

Tom said that he also checked a few of the other businesses listed on the first page to see what information they provided. I have summarized the information presented on a few of the other listings on the first page.

As the other pest control companies had minimal information available on Google Local, he decided to go with the “Good Riddance Pest Control & Water Damage Restoration”.

Conclusion
As local search continues its amazing growth it is even more important that businesses have an enhanced local listing in the major local search engines. As is evident from my friend’s experience detailed above, the more information you provide in your listing, the better your chance of getting business from Local Search. Stay tuned for more information on local search as I continue to probe into the search phenomenon.

ineedhits has just released Local Search Listing. Get submission to 35 Local Search engines including Google Local, Yahoo! Local and MSN Live Search plus your very own Online Profile Page for $24.95/month.

Google has made some changes to their ‘Onebox’ display when a user searchers for local results on Google.com. Earlier this year local search results started appearing at the top of organic results which was great news for local businesses – especially if they appeared in the top 3 positions for that search.

The screenshot below (taken from Small Business SEM) shows the changes to the Google ‘Onebox’. These include:

1. Additional red balloons on the map representing businesses not listed in the top 3 results. This clearly shows users that there are other businesses in the area and not only the top 3 that may have been assumed in the past.
2. The ‘More results’ link at the bottom should provide additional exposure to Google Maps where users can view and search for other local businesses.

I am a huge fan of local business results appearing at the top of organic results due to the relevance of the information presented. A user searching for Italian Restaurants near Portland is instantly provided with a choice of restaurants including their location, contact information, directions and even reviews by others.

In the near future I will be posting some of my findings on Google Local and how you can improve your Google Local Listing ranking.

ineedhits has now released Local Search Listing. Get submission to 35 Local Search Engines and your very own Online Profile Page for $24.95/month. Click here to find out more.

Images and graphics can be great additions to your web pages, and especially useful if they provide a basis for informing or directing visitors within your site. The challenge when using images is to make them as search engine friendly as possible. One of their uses that can cause issues within search engines is image mapping. An Image Map exists when one image has two or more links assigned to it.

Have you ever come across an image of a US map whereby each state has a different link pointing to a page dedicated to that state? On one hand, this image can be cut up into smaller, separate images that have one link each, but on the other hand, it can be one large image that has many links coded into it. It is the large map with multiple links coded into it (image map) that can cause problems for the search engines.

An Image Map is made up of complex code and it is this code that confuses search engines when they attempt to spider your web site. As was mentioned earlier, the same image can be made up of many smaller images, which removes the complex code, however, if it is used for navigation purposes, search engines still cannot index images or text on an image, as they are designed to look for HTML text and not read images.

If you would prefer to keep the Image Map on your site, the easiest and most effective search engine optimization technique, is to create a site map using standard HTML hyperlinks to link to every page on your site. After doing this, add a standard HTML link on each page of your site that links back to the site map. This will allow the search engines’ spiders to go through your entire site with ease and lead to better chances of search engine indexing and higher rankings!

Have you ever come across a website and noticed when you place your mouse over an image some text appears? This text is called an alt tag (alternate text tag) and is meant to be used when the image is not visible on the page (if the user has turned images off in their browser) and to assist vision impaired Internet surfers using screen reading software. But did you know that search engines also use alt tags for rankings?

Search engine spiders cannot see what an image is about so they rely on alt tags to describe the image. Writing keyword enriched alt tags that are unique for each image is the key for successful search engine optimization.

Alt tags should not only state what the image is but as a whole should describe the image and make sure it is relevant to the page. An example of this is if you have an image of a Nokia cell phone on your site, instead of using an alt tag saying ‘phone.jpg’ add more meaning to it by writing ‘We have a wide range of Nokia cell phones and Nokia cell phone accessories for sale at discounted prices.’

While alt tags only take minutes to implement, making sure you’ve got a well-written, keyword-rich alt tag can be trickier than it sounds. However this could make the difference between users selecting your site over a competitor’s!