Yellow Pages Loses Out To Google Places Search

Local businesses have just had a huge new factor applied to their marketing needs with the advent of Google Places Pages and the Google Map. This is a great opportunity for some quick successes by savvy local marketers who act quickly to claim and fill out their pages.

There will be losers in this one. The clueless, the overconfident and those who have their head in the anti tech sand are going to suffer.

Many small businesses with web sites saw little benefit till now. Most local businesses with web sites till now have had litle real advantage. Why not? Those who had web sites were seldom seen unless someone already knew to search for them specifically.

Now, it turns out they may never need to get a web site.

That doesn't mean that they don't need to be found online though. That doesn't mean tht web sites are necesarily obsolete. We have reached a new inflection point int he tools and techniques required to be a successful marketer in the local marketplace. Anyone who fails to act, will immediately begin to lose out on their share of new cusotmers and that will eventually destroy their business.

Every business needs to constantly get new customers.

A web site can offer a lot of advantages, and serve as a great marketing tool and resource for customers. But the main reason in the past and today to have a web site was to be found my potential customers. From now on, in most cases that function will be dominated by Google Places Page search results.

The places page service will (and to large degree already has) replace the traditional role played by the Yellow Pages in the last century.

When people have a need for goods or services that they do not have an already established supplier for, they go the easiest reference source they have to find possible solutions. In the past, you would use the Yellow Pages to find a Plumber or other specialist.

These days 80% of the people who search online use Google, and far more people search online than use the Yellow Pages. This is true of all age groups, but is even more predominant in the younger generations where the Yellow Pages are seldom used at all.

There is a lot of money in this online traffic. And because it is a valuable role, Google has retooled their entire search process to capture the dominant role in this space.

Google wants to replace the Yellow Pages recognizing that businesses are willing to pay high advertising fees to get active prospects. People who are searching for a supplier are doing it because they have a need and thus they are much easier to convert into customers and cash. This remains true today with the online searcher.

The business that is smart enough to take action today is in essence getting the equivalent of an expensive Yellow Pages ad for free. Now how long it will remain free is open to speculation. For the time being, it's one of the best freebies out there.

Google is trying to sell Tags which help highlight the listing. Kind of like getting your old listing bolded in the Yellow Pages. But its not necessary to do this yet in most markets. While these tags generate revenue for Google, its clear that they do not affect rankings and that Googles dominant goal remains to get as many people to complete their listings as fully as possible so they will be of maximum value to searchers.

To that end, they reward businesses who take the time to fully complete their listings with preferential listing on the so called Google 7 pack or map.

A higher ranking matters. The person on top gets more calls than second place and second place typically gets more calls than those who show up third on their Google places search.

As valuable as this new service is, word is slow in getting out to business owners who have often shileded themselves against internet service purveyors. In thousands of niches, in thousands of communities all that is required to get to the top of the seven businesses displayed is to claim your page and get it filled out properly.

It's so easy, that many businesses are making a mistake nad not taking the time to learn what is needed to ultimately prevail when the word gets out more fully in the marketplace. And it will. Eventually, they need to not only fill out their Google Places Search listing, but those of Bing, Yahoo and as many other directories as possible. Within months for some and perhaps years for others, what will matter even more is the accumulation of positive reviews from satisfied customers.

The technology consumers use has changed and will continue to do so. However, the key need of merchants hasn't. From a business' perspective the need is to be as easy to find as possible. And so today, its critical to be seen when people do a Google Places search.