• by March 2, 2004

ComScore Networks Tuesday said it will track the behavior of consumers with regard to local search via a new product called qSearch Local. Local search queries make up 7 percent of all Internet searches in the United States, according to comScore, which found that in a single month nearly 36 million Internet users conducted more than 200 million searches that included local modifiers.

ComScore said it will integrate qSearch Local into the qSearch system, which tracks consumer search queries across more than 25 major search engines. The service is currently available.

"The local aspect of search is going to become a core focus for all the portals and the Internet Yellow Pages players," said James Lamberti, VP- marketing solutions, comScore. "The industry has a very nice problem [on its hands] in that it needs more inventory. There's more demand than inventory, and one logical place that it can get inventory is in the local space," he said.

Lamberti said that consumers are increasingly localizing their searches by adding zip codes. The qSearch Local product is the "first step for us in really attacking the local [search] market. The next step is to bring in the Internet Yellow Pages players into qSearch." He said comScore has been conducting limited reporting on Internet Yellow Pages providers, but is now looking to combine reporting on the portals with those providers. "We want to be able to see where the real growth is and the change in [consumer] behavior," Lamberti said. Spending on the $14 billion Yellow Pages business is rapidly moving online.

The new product will categorize and analyze search activity that includes local modifiers such as city and state names, zip codes, phone numbers, or the words "map" and "directions," comScore said. The product will attempt to estimate the number, type, and search engine of origin of local searches conducted by U.S. Internet users.