Recent Google Moves Suggest Play For Local Ad Dollars

While search marketing propelled online advertising to an estimated $9-plus billion last year, much of the enthusiasm came from bigger and more established businesses, with small and local players remaining largely untapped.

Now, it looks like search giant Google is taking steps to encourage even the smallest mom-and-pop marketers to test the waters of search marketing. In the last week, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant has undertaken three initiatives that appear to be designed to encourage smaller businesses to buy sponsored search listings. Last Friday, Google placed its "Google Local," a local business search function still in beta testing, onto the search home page. The day before that, Google introduced a beta referral program, offering sites small fees to refer business and Web site owners to use Google's AdSense and AdWords programs. And, Monday, Google debuted Google Maps, a mapping utility that provides turn-by-turn directions to and from both addresses provided by the user, and search results from Google Local.

But Google's recent moves might not be enough to overcome the significant obstacles that keep small businesses from adopting search marketing, said Greg Sterling, an analyst for the Kelsey Group. "The central barrier to small business adoption is the learning curve," said Sterling. "They don't want to engage in this process of setting up a campaign and learning and monitoring all the time."

Sterling said that most small business owners don't need new functions to convince them that search marketing is a good idea, but instead they need tools to help them get involved more easily. "Small businesses are struggling with the how, not the why."

In other words, small businesses don't need to be sold on search nearly as much as they need practical help implementing campaigns. "Small business owners have a lot of things to deal with," he said. "What they really want is to be able to hand this off to somebody that they can trust, and feel like they're getting a return for their money."

Currently, few firms sell search engine marketing and optimization to smaller businesses, but this is beginning to change, said Sterling. For example, one company, Affinity Internet, on Tuesday launched a service called Search Engine Optimizer. For a flat monthly fee, the service offers small and medium businesses Affinity's staff of search engine marketing professionals, plus an account manager, to do keyword analysis, site submission and resubmission to search sites, and monitoring of the site's placement in natural results. Affinity's service charges $75 a month for a consultation relationship, in which their staff recommends how better to optimize every month--or for $150 a month, Affinity's staff will also implement those changes.

"Historically, the SEM and SEO firms have arisen to cater to the needs of larger corporations," Sterling said. "Now you're starting to see firms dealing with the small business market."

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