Local Search | Jennifer Lind

Local search… is it the new way we search or the old way? It’s both. Local search connects us to our community and to our neighbors. The old way of search is now online and it will continue to develop further than it ever could in the traditional means.

Instead of pulling out the yellow pages book to find your local salon, you can now find the salon just before you boot down your computer for the night. Just jump online to Google Maps, MSN, or Yellowpages.com and search by the town or zip code and type in salon. Within 2 minutes you will have every salon at your fingertips, and you will be able to see their website, print a coupon, send the address to your mobile phone, and read what others are saying about the company.

So in a world where I can now buy clothes from New York while I am sitting here in Minneapolis, why would we still rely so heavily on local search? There are many reasonable answers to this question. At the core, I think people will always like the feeling of going into the store, seeing the behaviors of the company’s employees and the customers in the store, and touching the product for themselves before making a buying decision. The need for community will never disappear completely from our society.

So what is next for local search? Even more interaction with the customer. The employees of our local Panera Bread live here in the same town. They know the community, they breathe the same air, they drive the same streets. The more that our local businesses get involved with the community, with the internet, and specifically with their customers, the better our communities will be (and the more loyal customers they will have!). I would love to see a local business with their own blog, tell customers about a local event related to their products or services, asking customers to vote on their favorite products, opening a discussion to help the customers understand the product or service better, etc.

Customers want to be involved! (And they want to be the center of attention!)

Local search sites and general search engines will eventually adapt to changes, especially changes brought on by their searchers. Next time you are out driving in a new part of town, you may see a message from Superpages.com on your mobile with the nearby location of your favorite coffee shop chain.