Posts Tagged ‘fragmentation’
Defragmentation of Local
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Local Search, Small Businesses, advertising, marketing
Local search is entirely too fragmented.
Searching for a restaurant can be time consuming, boring, and down right frustrating. Local guide sites are just not up to speed with the pace of the internet, and many are way behind. I want to find menus, dress codes, price ranges, and interior shots of potential restaurants.
I am planning a trip with my girlfriend to visit my grandmother in Wilmington, NC. Now I wasn’t expecting much of a restaurant guide, but even so I was disappointed. There is no concise guide, there is no focused listing page. Different sites had different listings for the same restaurants - it was a disaster. Of course Wilmington is not the social capital of North Carolina, but it is home to about 65,000 people. What do these people do? There wasn’t anything resembling a thought out online guide to things happening in the area.
Of course this is what I do for a living so I can be picky.
Our next stop on our road trip, my birthplace, Hilton Head Island, SC. There was a glimpse of hope here as we found one site - hhidining.com. Upon closer inspection this was merely a half baked attempt by a local magazine to transition online. It succeeded about as well as anything done half heartedly usually does.
Here lies the fundamental problem, how do we aggregate all of the local information that is scattered across different mediums, in a variety of locations on and off the web, all across the country. Local is so fragmented and there is only so much you can do using a nationally built database of local businesses (see any form of online yellowpages) and there are several companies that focus completely on syndicating their local information.
Second to the fundamental question (how do we aggregate), how do you monetize this information effectively. Do you use a local salesforce, in the streets calling on these businesses? Or do you attempt to build traffic organically and use advertising and lead generation/affiliate programs to produce revenue? Well we’ve seen several companies (read: any version of the yellowpages) try to use the latter method (search for local restaurants and you will more often than not find Chili’s and other franchise ads). They serve large, intrusive ads all over the page, and generally do an ok job of listing local restaurants. Out of date listings often find their way into these pages.
There are very few businesses focusing on local search in mid-size markets. But is this because the markets are not ready for local online? Possibly, however I don’t believe that to be the case. I believe it is the issue of local businesses (existing media entities - mostly print) not understanding the value of local search. How do local papers leverage the value of their online properties? Most often, simply not well.
The point to this ramble is a basic question: What is holding people back from expanding into all of these untapped markets? There is surely value here, and eyeballs from these captured searchers have inherent value of there own. Small businesses are now craving concise online guides to their small cities, more and more businesses are transitioning their ad budgets online, and there are more internet users than ever before. But who is to create these guides and profit from their value…
