Comments on: Who Does Local Search Best?

By: Regina

Regina — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:48:45 +0000

Frugalocal :I agree that Google does local search best. Although as a local business owner that doesn’t mean alot, even if with a Google local listing. Google randomly shuffles those results around, one month you might be listed and the next few months nothing.

I have had my local listing in the top 3 for 4 different categories for the past 2 months. Ahead of many very large companies. Does a heck of a lot for my business. Thousands of impressions, many clicks to my site, and even more phone calls. None of this would have happened w/o the local listing. I could never get to the top in organic listings. Simply too much competition in my line of work. I did my own local SEO work, but even if I had to pay a pro several hundred dollars to do it, the return is worth it. One day, things might change and I could get pushed down or off the local listings. But while there, nothing beats it. Just as important, I don't want to NOT be listed. Sorry for the double negative.

By: Frugalocal

Frugalocal — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:16:53 +0000

I agree that Google does local search best. Although as a local business owner that doesn’t mean alot, even if with a Google local listing. Google randomly shuffles those results around, one month you might be listed and the next few months nothing.

By: Craigslist Search

Craigslist Search — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:59:48 +0000

Hi Mat,

I think you need to check out craiglook.com
It’s a local search for Craigslist – allows you to browse craigslist ads within Zip / radius. Especially useful if you’re looking for garage sales, used furniture, electronics, services or businesses in your area and not really interested in anything which is more than X miles away from your house.

By: Joost Kesler SEO

Joost Kesler SEO — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:35:24 +0000

Hi guys. Here in Holland we have a lot of local search engines.
Ilse.nl is a very popular one. But all SEO people focus on Goolge nowadays.
I think with the more local search engines we can generate a lot of traffic for our customers.
We now are starting to offer translations as well. Does anybody has experience in that field?

By: Mat Siltala

Mat Siltala — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:50:10 +0000

@MiriamEllis
Arizona, Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe etc. didn’t matter – that was not the point of the post – the point was if you are listed with Google Local – you could get found when people type in keywords without any kind of geo-targeting – my example was custom pools – the local results came up for Arizona businesses when no Arizona related keywords were searched for. This is the power of Google Local and was my purpose for comparing – I hope this helps.

By: MiriamEllis

MiriamEllis — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:29:27 +0000

Greetings, Matt, I enjoyed your post. I wanted to ask a question, as you are a Local fan. How local do you consider the phrase 'Arizona' to be? Did you try searching for city names (phoenix, az. etc?)while doing this test? My guess is that this might have gotten you some more local results than simply searching by state. The general public searches in some very weird ways for local things, but with something like a pool contractor, my bet is that they'd be looking for something truly local (county or city). I wondered what you were thinking about this doing your searches. MiriamEllis’s last blog post..Watching Weeds Grow Around The Phone Book