Local Search Goes Mobile – Pizza & Beyond
Lately I find myself thinking about local search more and more. And it’s no wonder with all the recent local and mobile applications that have been hitting the scene, combined with the dramatic growth in mobile advertising (both in terms of opportunities as well as in shear dollars spent). It’s clear that this burgeoning market space is not only here to stay, but it is here to grow.
If you’ve been watching the local search space evolve, you’ve undoubtedly seen many exciting developments including local search engines from all the major players as well as several community built local guides, like the aptly named Local Guides.
And if you read my posts very often (and judging by the number of comments I get each month, I’m sure you do), the aspect of local search that is both the most interesting, as well as the most logical to me, is how it relates to the mobile web.
No, I’m not taking about pizza. Well at least not strictly about pizza (though that is a very practical every day application of local search – and if I owned a pizza shop you better believe I’d be making sure I was present in both the local and mobile spaces).
I’m talking about coffee shops, taxi services, and I’m talking about everything that a person could find a need for as they are out and about in an unfamiliar town, or their town for that matter, like a wifi hotspot, movie show times, an urgent care center, the nearest branch of their bank, or a hotel.
To be honest, there are definitely more businesses that could benefit from local search in one way or another, than those that couldn’t. Assuming they’re willing to get creative.
Recently there have been some very cool applications that take great steps in melding the world of local search and that of the mobile web together.
Local Search engine, Local.com, has announced the release of their new Local Mobile. And companies like 4Info and Go2 not only offer great tools for helping people find local services on their mobile devices; they offer great tools to help advertisers reach people searching on their mobile devices.
