Local.com Offers Paid Search Placement To Small Businesses

Search engines like Local.com are aiming for a bigger stake in the interactive advertising market, by offering both large and small businesses options that the giants are not offering.

Starting tomorrow, Local.com kicks off its new ‘Local Verified’ service, giving businesses the option of paying an annual fee to secure placement at the top of its localized search results.

Local.com is focused on offering businesses of all sizes multiple local search options, from standard CPMs and banners, to completely free listings.

According to comScore, almost half of consumers who used a local search Web site visited a local merchant as a result of their search behavior, highlighting the efficacy of local search as a source to drive traffic and sales.

Paying $249 for a premium listing with Local.com provides smaller businesses with a cost-effective alternative to the primary search engine's local ad models, allowing them to play with the big boys in the online ad landscape.

The free listings also serve merchants with little or no interactive marketing experience, by allowing them to post or update their business' name, description and contact info, even if they don't have a web site.

The Kelsey Group predicts local search spending to grow to $2.6 billion by 2011.

Part of the shift stems from the online behavior of the small business owners themselves, as they use search engines to find suppliers and contractors and are realizing that the Web can help customers find them too.

Source: MediaPost