**by Hanan Lifshitz**
In order to be found online by potential customers, local businesses
can take action in a number of ways. In my last post,
<http://searchengineland.com/smb-online-visibility-in-2nd-tier-cities-29616>
I presented data on how many Columbus businesses advertise online,
publish a website, or update their online listing.
When properly implemented, these actions can significantly improve a
local business's online visibility. However, many businesses who
spend precious time and hard earned money on building a website or on
advertising online fail to see the desired results. Worse yet, many
business owners do not even know how to measure success in terms of
online visibility (e.g. does claiming my listing on Bing really make
my business more visible to customers?).
To help local businesses better assess their online visibility we
started covering a new metric that we believe reflects how well they
are doing online: SMBs' search ranking for relevant keywords on
Google. To do this, we searched for 20,000 popular local keywords on
Google Maps (e.g. "Plumber in Orlando"). We then measured how many
businesses show up in the first page, in the first 2 pages and so on,
up to page 50.
The chart below shows this information for Orlando, Florida:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/23148333@N06/4172013058/>
Note that the 20,000 keywords used in this study include similar
terms (e.g. plumber, plumbing, pluming contractor etc.) and generated
79,050 unique business results. Our Orlando MSA file includes over
128,000 businesses, meaning that over a third of Orlando businesses
did not show up in the first 500 search results at all.
It is interesting that 32% of the businesses showed up in the first
10 results for at least one of the keywords. While in general web
search, getting on the first search results page for your category is
a formidable achievement, usually reserved for companies that made a
special effort, it is safe to guess that many of the companies that
made the first page here have never even heard of Google Maps.
Note: this data will soon be available as a personalized free report
to all businesses in Orlando and in other cities on www.amivisible.org
<http://www.amivisible.org/>
(currently in beta).
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.
Hanan Lifshitz <http://searchengineland.com/author/hanan-lifshitz/>
is CEO at Palore <http://www.palore.com/>
, a provider of local businesses' advertising data and information on
their online activity. He also blogs at The Palore Blog
<http://palore.wordpress.com/>
. This column is researched and written by the marketing department
at Palore, which is led by Hanan.
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