Interview: Peter Hutto of Local.com
Manoj has been in the Digital marketing industry for over 10 years with experience at some of Canada’s largest companies: WestJet and Shaw Communications. Manoj first started in the search marketing industry with Enquiro Search Solutions, where he spearheaded web analytics, SEO Training and the development of cutting edge search marketing solutions for clients. Manoj is also an entrepreneur in the Mobile and Local Deals space.
Manoj is a Professional Speaker having participated at events such as Web Analytics Congress (Amsterdam), Emetrics, Web Analytics Xchange, WebTrends Engage, Internet Marketing Conference, Social Media Innovation Summit and Search Engine Strategies. He has also contributed to several leading online publications such as: Search Engine Land, Marketing Pilgrim, WebProNews, Search Engine Guide and the Web Analytics Assocation.
He founded and successfully sold Web Analytics World (a top 100 Digital Marketing Blog – http://adage.com/power150) and was voted #39th Most Influential Digital Marketer in North America – 2009 (see: www.Invesp.net)
Manoj –
Nice interview with a very interesting business person!
One of the things I find a bit vague in some of the local intent search statistics happens when we come to implied local searches.
Searching for plumbers, yes, likely the user wants a plumber, not a definition of the word ‘plumber’, the history of plumbers in the US, etc.
But what about a search like ‘elder care’?
What does the user really want? A local retirement home, tips on caring for an elder, a definition, a job?
If I were a search engine, and there was no geo data accompanying this search, I’d be hard pressed to determine whether this represents an implied local query on not.
Something I wonder about.
Miriam
Hi Miriam, that’s a good question and I believe engines such as Google are well on their way in trying to figure out a given user’s intent. It’s their whole concept of personalized search results. They may not get it right the first time, but after they have observed your search history (queries, clicks, navigating back and forth from search results to websites) they certainly can begin offering results which better match your intent.
Additionally, Google very often splits search listings on a results page in order to try to fulfil all queries requests
Of course many other factors come into play such as: Cookies (and their deletion), whether you are signed into your Google Account, Seasonality, Current events, etc… All these make it much more difficult for a search engine to show a user the results they’re looking for.
Manoj,
I wonder what the long term prospects are for companies like local, yellow pages, etc…Google, Yahoo and MSN are the starting points for most searchers and Google provides relevant local results through maps and main search box when a geoqualifier is used.
Is it just a matter of time before all local searches will be done through the Big3 or will there remain a core differentiator between local.com/yellow pages and Google?
Hi Art,
I agree that the Big 3 have started taking local search market share from the vertical engines but I have heard that websites such as the Yellow Pages and Local.com still get millions of visitors. see: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/local.com+yellowpages.com/
It might not be a bad idea for one of the big 3 to start leveraging the vertical engines to act as feed for their local search results.
Like Peter mentioned, the experience at sites such as Local.com is quite different than a regular search engine so perhaps this is one way the local engines can stay competitive – it will be tough nonetheless.
Hi all,
Local.com works well my clients here on the east coast. Many local newspapers in this area power their local listings via local.com – the client kind of gets a “two for one” for being listed there.
We have found local search very valuable to our business. It can be quite frustrating to achieve high page rank organically and expensive for PPC. Local Search seems to be a less frustrating and less expensive enhancement to our marketing efforts.
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