Consumers are turning to the Internet to search local listings on branded yellow page sites for businesses, products and services more often, according to a study by the Yellow Pages
Association (YPA) industry trade group.
The research shows that local Internet search grew 58% last year, reaching 15.7 billion searches. The industry group, which contracts with comScore to
conduct the research, had suspected that local search increased dramatically, but didn't know how the trend related to core search practices by consumers.
Overall, core searches in the
U.S. grew much less -- 21%, or nearly 137 billion searches in 2008, according to the study. Local search is 12% of core searches on the top five search portals. Internet Yellow Page (IYP) companies
such as yellowpages.com and superpages.com, as well as other locally focused online business directories, also saw double-digit growth in the same period, totaling 4.6 billion searches in 2008,
compared with 3.8 billion in 2007. Nearly 45% of searches result in sales.
The study aims to prove that IYP remains a viable product with solid return on investments (ROI) for advertisers,
according to Larry Smith, director of research at the YPA. "We wanted to make sure we could back up our qualitative information with quantitative information," he said.
Smith had not
expected the percentage of local search to far outgrow overall search. Nor did he expect that 75% of the top 100 keywords searched on IYP sites were not branded. "That's important because
both the Internet and paper Yellow Pages are used mostly by people who search on a variety of generic words, as opposed to one specific name like Home Depot," he said.
Users access IYP
and local online business directories several ways and for numerous reasons. Some visit related sites through search engines, directly typing in the URL, bookmark, Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and
CitySearch. The increase in use has also seen a 50% rise in sponsored links to 353 million in December 2008. Smith said this demonstrates the need by consumers for local information.
The
biggest challenge that Smith noticed from the study is that IYPs don't get the credit for connecting the consumer with the product and the sale. In one-on-one focus groups, consumers searching
online for products and services typically started their search at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or AOL and clicked through to an IYP site that led them to the product. But when asked how they found the
product or service, the consumer noted through the search engine such as Google.
The comScore study measured real-life Internet browsing, buying and transactional activity of approximately
one million U.S. Internet users who provided permission to be monitored from December 2007 to December 2008.