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Mr. Ferguson said that if he achieved his goal, those advertisers would spend at a rate of $40 million to $45 million a year.
I'm no math wizard so someone correct me if I'm wrong. He expects 25,000 bidders to spend $40 million/year... That's $1600 yearly each which is $133/month.
Who are these local businesses, and in what market? I seriously doubt you'll get that kind of money in Santa Fe, NM; Oakland, CA; New Haven, CT and a host of other cities.
San Francisco:
Restaurants? Yes. By tourists. 12295 searches done according to Overture.
Dentists? These guys aren't hurting for business around here. The Overture bid suggestion tool shows 523 searches for "san francisco dentist
Massage parlors and escort services? That looks viable, and could grow. 2050 searches for "san francisco massage"
Other factors could push those numbers higher, though. The share of the nation's households with broadband connections, projected to reach 20 percent this year, is critical to the success of local online advertising.
San Francisco is perhaps the most technologically saavy city in the U.S. and yet the local search figures are anemic. I've done SEO for local merchants and it is a bear. There were no searches, per Overture, for "San Francisco Plumber." If that is the case in Frisco, how much worse would it be for smaller markets?
For instance, 117 searches for "tucson dentist" or only 1469 searches for "tucson restaurant"
One problem I have with this model, based upon my hands-on experience optimizing for local merchants is that I don't think Joe Surfer is looking for local services online. Local optimization for a small business is one of the easiest things to do, but it rarely pays off in traffic.
1: I think that CitySearch visitors may mostly be tourists who are trying to figure out what they're going to do in a city. That's the ONLY time I ever go to CitySearch. And tourists don't look for plumbers or plastic surgeons. They'll use google for that.
2: I bet City Search will do a monthly minimum spend to ensure income, because the clicks won't be there to support PPC.
They are also promoting a partnership with Yahoo and MSN to bring more traffic.
On the other hand, most other PPC services let the advertiser decide where he wants to show up in the SERPS based on how much he wants to pay. If the message that went to my client went to 300 other people, and everybody signed up, who would be first in the listings? I surely would rather be #1 than #300 for the same money.
I personally believe that local Internet searches are a coming thing, contrary to MartiniBuster. I do agree that not many users are qualifying their queries with a local identifier. In other words, they may be smart enough to search for 'plumber', but are they searching for 'Atlanta Plumber', which would certainly produce more accurate results for what they really want.
If there is an advantage to CitySearch, it is that the user types in his/her ZIP code prior to doing the search, so the results can be naturally localized. If I go to CitySearch and type 'Plumber', I'll get one in my local area. That's what's missing on the regular SEs.
I agree-- it is missing. I wonder how long it will be before someone like Google offers such?
Next, I agree placing ppc with internet yellow page type listings will not generate a lot of clicks. However, I think there is potential for local-ppc using some type of content ad system.
For example, I search locally for movies all the time. Seems to me this would be a good place to distribute restaurant ppc's.
Oakland is a fine city whose weather is consistently better than "Baghdad by the Bay." There was no slight intended to any of the cities. I was using Oakland as an example because to me it represents a typical larger city and thus more representative of the general market than Los Angeles, New York, and Frisco.
:) Y
