Small marketers targeting regional customers via search engine advertising can now save money by using a new service from Yahoo. Called Yahoo Local Sponsored Search, the service lets marketers target
ads to a specific state, city, or even neighborhood. As a result, the marketer's ads pop up only when someone within 75 miles of the targeted area does a search using the keywords the company has
chosen. Advertisers save money because, since they pay for each click, only real potential customers will see the ads, not users who are too far away to buy the product or service but may click on the
ad anyway. Not having to pay for clicks from out-of-area Web surfers isn't the only benefit offered by local search. Like other search engine advertising, the local variety lets you track your account
closely to find out which keywords are most successful at drawing customers and how much you're spending each day. For companies with tight marketing budgets, those are no small advantages. A growing
number of small businesses are using local search, according to a November 2005, survey by Boston's Yankee Group. The survey found that more than 30 percent of businesses with 20 to 99 employees and
40 percent of those with 2 to 19 staffers were using local search engine advertising.
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