Webwork - 12:04 am on Mar 14, 2005 (gmt 0)

If there's anything close to robust data about local search then please put it up. Not sweeping generalizations about advertising dollars but something far more concrete.

Let's start with a breakdown of the relative frequency of local searches. How do the following rank and what is there relative % of all searches:

Hotels
Real Estate
Professionals: lawyer, dentists, accountants, etc.
Tradesmen: Plumbers, electricians, remodelers, landscapers, etc.
Retail Specialty Stores: Bike shops, fabric, music, etc
AND so on

Anyone have concrete numbers for the # of searches for "hotels" in a given year or as a relative ranked standing or percentage?

Anyone have some hard data on how many hotels were booked through Hotels.com? Anyone able to back into the number through SEC filings or statements made during quarterly investor conference calls or annual corporate statements?

Anyone have decent numbers for the comparison of the number of "hotel searhes" in G/Y/M versus the number of direct searches through Hotels.com or any other direct booking engine?

Anyone have any decent numbers on the number of hotels booked via affilate network sites?

Ditto the same line of questions for the other major categories.

No? The numbers aren't out there? It's all proprietary?

Yes?

I'd like to know how the war is going, not how big the pie used to be.

So, the old pie was $15 billion or a gazillion dollars?

Anyone know if the new efficiencies of the WWW are driving those costs down OR are they going up? Any hard data on whether there's a drag in reducing traditional media spends whilst the advertising and marketing folks are sorting out the efficiencies of the new channels? Any decent reports on how the simple lack of familiarity with the "new marketing" systems (PPC, AdSense, etc.) may be a drag on a more rapid shift in funds?

Any decent data on the spend for hotel advertising in the past year versus before that time?

Any decent data that can be posted regarding the shifting in real dollars and relative percentage of those dollars across the various advertising outlets during the past 3 years?

I haven't come across anything approaching a robust discussion of most of my questions. Lots of generalizations. A world not quite ready for the opportunity that lies before it.

I'll make an exception for BarryDiller.com. The man is a genius. Hotels.com? The single most valuable domain on the planet, bar none in my book, even before he began promoting the heck out of it. He's my poster boy for the proposition that you can teach an old dog new tricks. At least a sly old dog. ;0)

Which is good because I'm now pretty well qualified to share in the classification of "old dog".

Chicago, if there's anyone who I deem on top of this issue it's you and I'm afraid that - in terms of good hard data to crunch and present - there really isn't much for you to work with. Just big number generalizations and generalizations about trends. The numbers that could signals the future are out there "to be had" in the data streams. Either the telling data is not being adequately collected, digested, analyzed or presented.

If there was better data openly available then I believe the tremors "in the industry" would be more palpable.