Local Small Businesses Raise Search Spend

Small businesses using search advertising have sharply increased their search engine advertising in Q3 2009, according to data from WebVisible. Average spending by small-business search advertisers was up 91% year over year and 93% quarter over quarter in Q3. While Google still got most search spending, it lost 5% of the spending share over over last year. Bing gains 2.9% of the spending share.

More and more local small to medium businesses have concluded that over half of new customers are ‘referred’ by the internet. According to Google, more than 70% of the online searches are for local products or services. Remember, we are talking about billions of online searches everyday.

Stats show that 90% online commercial searches result in offline purchase; 82% of local searches follow up via online store visit, phone call or purchase. However 90% of local businesses have no clue of what to do to take advantage of those online local searches to benefit their local businesses.