When Steve Espinosa asked me to be a contributor on this blog I was flattered and quickly accepted. Part of me also wondered why he chose me. Some of you may wonder who I am and why I’m writing on this blog so I hope I can put things into perspective…
When Steve Espinosa asked me to be a contributor on this blog I was flattered and quickly accepted. Part of me also wondered why he chose me. Some of you may wonder who I am and why I’m writing on this blog so I hope I can put things into perspective…
1) I’m not an SEO expert, or a market analyst, or an advertising industry veteran. I’ve never worked for a print yellow pages company, or even an advertising company. I believe these are assets. the uninvited movie download diflucan resistant yeast infection
2) I am an entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of CitySquares in Boston. I spend nearly all of my time on the local search battlefield with my troops, taking more ground and planting more flags. My knowledge and my expertise comes from that perspective, on the ground, bloody, dirty, and aggressive. I think there’s a lot more truth and reality from where I stand than at a podium.
So, with some light shed on where I’m coming from, I can comfortably delve into the subject I was assigned: User intent. This is a timely subject, as it’s become more of a theme for me lately, and for the market as a whole. In fact, just this morning I read a piece at Search Engine Land about mobile phones becoming the first source people turn to when searching for local business information. And just three days ago Greg Sterling suggests that “everyone in the local segment needs to mobilize now or in 2009.” At Mashable, Alex Castro predicts that online video will move closer to center stage in the advertising landscape, especially for small businesses.
So what does it all mean? Well, it means there’s no shortage of predictions and opinions, that’s for sure. But as it pertains user intent, nothing is changing. Consumers still have a need - they’re still searching for local business information. They still use Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. They still go to the IYPs, the city guides, the local directories. But now we’re seeing them turn to different devices and different sites than ever before. Consumers are using their mobile devices to call free 411 services, or use free text messaging services. They’re using their mobile browser, or mobile application. Consumers are starting to find local business information from stranger places too, like Facebook, YouTube, even twitter. How about that! As if this local search thing wasn’t fragmented enough, it seems to be fragmenting even more. Yet the consumer isn’t really looking for anything different, are they?
Videos may be more prevalent, more available, more accessible. But are consumers specifically searching for local business videos? Unlikely. Local business profiles, and the websites they’re on, may be optimized for a mobile device, but the user doesn’t necessarily care about clever bells and whistles. Local search apps may have really fancy user interfaces that take advantage of the wow-factor on say, the iPhone, but the user’s intention is still very much the same. They’re looking for the same information as always and they’re still performing recovery or discovery searches.
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What has changed is not the intent of the user, but how information is being delivered to the consumer.
It’s the same old “give me what I want, and give it to me now” factor. Give me “ski rentals in Salt Lake City” or give me “Intelligentsia on Wacker St in Chicago”, but give it to me now. If the device, the app, SMS service, or the website, fails to give it to me quickly and cleanly, than I’m moving onto the next option. But my intent is not changing. I still need what I need, when I need it. Everything else you throw at me is secondary. Those secondaries are niches all to themselves. Hmm, sounds like a good follow-up post!
So what do you think?
Ben Saren is co-founder and CEO at CitySquares, a Boston based local search company. Established in 2005, CitySquares provides small businesses with hyper-local, search engine optimized online profiles. Ben is a high-tech industry veteran with roots in small business and entrepreneurship and experience in Information Technologies, new media, and sales and marketing ranging from Internet startups to multinational corporations. See Ben’s blog at Your Suspect.
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2 Responses
Ben,
I enjoyed your post, looking forward to more of them.
The User is the key, seeing how they use different mediums to find results, and then serving them up the info within that context is huge, the push to mobile is big and coming quickly, being able to adapt will determine who really make a splash.
~ Aaron I
Good points, thanks for the post.
Video, maps, user generated reviews… all secondary to accurate structured local business data that can be accessed quickly from any device.
We see more searches coming in that are pre-filtered through qualifying terms in the query strings. Users are typing requests like ‘licensed plumbers in little rock’ instead of just ‘plumbers in little rock’. So, while the intent hasn’t changed, the search process is evolving. Local search providers must to have the structured data necessary for each business to effectively fulfill user queries.