The Proceptive Perspective Dental Blog

Times they are a changing… Most people may think of Bob Dylan and his celebrated song that captured the character of political and societal upheaval prevalent in the 60’s when they hear that phrase. For those of us in the search engine marketing industry, we are thinking of another type of upheaval capturing the online industry.

That upheaval is in the form of local search.

Now I know that comparing this self conscious protest song of the 60’s with the changes in the search habits of the general populous might be a bit of a stretch. But not as big of one as you might think. Times they are indeed changing, as according to the Kelsey Group’s Blog, 74% of US households surveyed by Nielsen/Netratings for WebVisible now use the internet when searching for local products and services. That is a staggering percentage and perhaps helps to shed some light into why the major search engines have put such focus on developing and improving their local search capabilities.

To be honest, these numbers are not surprising, especially when you consider how search engines and the Internet have become integrated into our daily lives. We turn to it for travel information, managing our bank accounts, searching for new homes, finding movie times, staying in touch with friends and family; all tasks that were previously accomplished through other avenues. So why wouldn’t this move to searching for local services?

Read the full article on The Local Initiative from our monthly newsletter.