We’ve been saying for a while that ‘local’ is going to be one of those ‘next big things’, and the win by Red Beacon at TechCrunch 50 has been something of a clarion call for this. Now a new study from TMP Directional Marketing has come out with some interesting data to back this up.
The study shows that the web generally, but in particular mobile and social network search, are increasingly factors fueling growth in the overall search market. This grew to 21.9 billion total US searches in June 2009, a year-on-year increase of 31%.
In particular 4% of ‘young people’ do their searches for local information on social sites like Facebook. That figure can only grow:
It’s interesting that traditional directories remain strong. Internet Yellow Pages type sites sites gained ground, from 19% usage last year to 21% this year. As you’d expect, print directories declined 3%, but I would have thought flat directory type sites would be going down.
Anyhoo, more interestingly, mobile search is booming, with 32% of searchers with internet-capable cellphones now searching for local business information, an 11% increase from 2008. Some 60% of smartphone owners search either via their on-board browsers or via applications, and you can bet most of those will be iPhone users.
I love the stat that shows that only 5% of mobile searchers send text messages from their cellphones to directory assistance. I mean why would you – you’re already on the Web?
However, SMS is convenient and growing – overall, the number of mobile users who got their local information via SMS increased by 27%.
The study also shows that the most popular local content categories searched on mobile are directories (42%), maps (41%), restaurants (37%) and movies (30%).
[Hat tip to Marketing Vox]
mobile buzz phrase will change from Apps too….
“there’s a Locator for that!” the king of location based services has yet to crowned.
Are we missing Yelp, insiderpages (and thousand others) in the list?
It’s not so surprising that traditional directories did well in the survey – TMP Directional Marketing was for decades an ad agency that specialized in placing ads in the Yellow Pages, and it is probably still a major component of their revenue base.
Anyhoo?do you mean anyhow?
has anyone looked at how the emerging markets are doing? Mobile stands to be the leader in the future as that is the only “widely spread” medium. Plugging myself but working on mobile aps that will stand to benefit from this fact. Any VC interested?
Local directories have been pretty good at extracting traffic from search engines. Because of the $ at stake I expect that to continue for some time.
Now that social media appears to be ready for prime time in terms of lead generation, you can bet all of the big local search players will be trying to figure it out.
We absolutely love this!!!!!!
This should be getting more than 20 comments. But as well, this isn’t big news.
Many companies have been fighting over bringing the internet viable systems of integrating local content/ local solutions.
The directory paradigm will always be strong, but actual ground scouting of content will be key to any new business success.
Companies like Going, Angie’s List, the company above, Campuslive, Even blogs like the Dirty, have made navigation where localizing content is pertinent, but these sites have eyes in the real world that can post it up.
Even Google, when it began its local search, was paying people money to find local businesses. This is old news, but it is good to see people thinking about how important it is. Lightning in a bottle, I am excited to see who does have the next big thing in local search/dir/content.
This is great news for mobile marketing opportunities!
i saw this report when it came out – wasn’t it a collaboration between TMPDM and comScore??
i think it’s very interesting, and actually, was able to give a pretty decent presentation on it as of late. the numbers they’re showing for local search don’t bear well, however, compared to survey’s [not quite studies] we’ve done with business owners & searchers in the milwaukee area.
most people we discuss local search with hate the idea of being found on / searching through internet yellow pages, traditional directories, etc.
i, naturally, have to give them the 411 on the benefit to the online directories, as they wouldn’t like their lbc results otherwise.
definitely an interesting thing as we’re researching the 45-64 market for a client and their products. gives a good baseline for where we should point them to focus on.
cheers for the post, cheers for the study.
“you can bet most of those will be iPhone users”
Most will not be iPhone users. Maybe in the Bay area, but if you consider the outside world of North America, and certainly globally, it would be Blackberry if anything.
Good article, very interesting.
My bilingual local search is in Beta, come by and take a looksie and demo Techies, crunchie’s and geeks.