Local Search & Mobile: Emerging Trends Small Business Should Know About

Local searches on mobile phone continue to grow day by day. People are using their smartphones to search local things and also look for services like doctors, hospitals, schools, restaurants, and much more. This article will let the small business owner know why their business should be locally optimized for mobile. This article includes the following:

• Search trends on internet
• Local search Trends
• Search trends on local mobile search

Internet Search Trends

• 74% of Internet users perform local searches.
• 66% of American's use online local search, like Google local search to locate local businesses.
• More than 100 million people a month use Google Maps from mobile phones to find business information.

Local Search Trends

• 61% of local searches result in purchases.
• 82% of local searches follow up offline via an in-store visit, phone call or purchase.
• As much as 43% of Google Search traffic has local content!
• Consumer said they would buy in store versus store when they are: close to store. (30%), could get the product quickly (35%), and saw better pricing (31%).

Local Search Trends on Mobile

• 54% of Americans have substituted the internet and local search for phone books.
• Microsoft has claimed that 53% of mobile searches on Bing are local in nature.
• Mobile local searches for local information are expected to grow from 27.8% in 2008 to 35.1% by 2013.
• Nearly one in two shoppers for local products and services are using their smartphones.
• Over 50% of local searches for businesses happen on mobile devices. With 79% of smartphones users and 81% of tablet users reporting that they use their device for local searches.
• 50% of consumers who visit a store within a day of their local search use their smartphone. 34% of consumers who visit a store within a day of their local search use their computer and tablet.
• Consumer behaviour before visiting store and while in store: 1 in 3 searches smartphone occur right before consumer visit a store. 15% of in store activities involve conducting smart phone searches about a product or for price comparison.
• 4 in 5 consumers conduct local searches on search engines. 88% users use their mobile device and 88% users use computer and tablet to perform this searches.
• Consumers use their smartphone for local search to find business information like business hours (54%), direction to local store (53), local store address (50%). Consumers use their computer/tablet to find information like availability of product at local store (45%), business hours (42%), local store address (38%).
• Over 60% of smartphone owner access local content via app.
• 60% mobile consumers expect business to be within distance.
• 1 out of 3 smartphone users search specifically for contact info like phone number and driving direction.
• 63% people who do local searches typically buy within 1 hour. 66% mobile searches conducted in a store are used to help making purchasing decision.

People have now become more tech savvy and prefer to use their smartphones to find and search various things on internet. Gone are those days when people used to visit their nearest local store to buy something. Time has taken a big leap forward. Now people use internet to compare price and read reviews on their smartphone, tablet, laptop and mobile before going to buy anything. The above data shows that local searches have now gone mobile and use of smartphone is continuously growing for local search as it helps users to make better decision in buying things online or from local store. Now it has become essential for small business owners to optimise their business locally for mobile competitive advantage.

(This post is brought to you by an enterprise application development company providing custom web and enterprise mobile application development services to global business)

Ref:

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140403171335-26818297-local-internet-marketing-statistics
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2343577/Google-Local-Searches-Lead-50-of-Mobile-Users-to-Visit-Stores-Study
http://searchengineland.com/report-mobile-traffic-to-local-sites-growing-faster-than-total-internet-now-at-27-percent-158139
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2265547/46-of-Searchers-Now-Use-Mobile-Exclusively-to-Research-Study