Local Search = Lead Seller paradise.

[CaptainSalad2]

For about the past 12 months and with each and every update I see local tradesmen pushed out of local serps and replaced with “lead sellers”. Some SERPS now contain zero local sites in favour of huge brand lead sellers such as mybuilder.com, checkatrade.com, ratedpeople.com, trustatrader.com who have a landing page for every service and every area.

These lead sellers sell each lead to 3 local tradesmen who are charged around £45 each and then bid among themselves to see who can go lowest and get the job. If this wasn’t bad enough the lead generating powerhouses bid so high on add words none of the local traders can compete and are priced out of the PPC market, only to have these leads sold back to them.

Is this the way forward for google to allow lead sellers to take over local serps and then sell the leads onto the traders? Just curious if I should quit working for tradesmen’s and concentrate on my own “lead” generating site rather than helping local traders find some exposure?

[aakk9999]

It is true that lead sellers are taking top of the SERPs in local tradesmen, at least in UK. I do not see this a problem in cases where they provide additional useful value such as customer reviews. Certainly, I as a customer would prefer a site such as checkatrade where I can easily compare tradesmen and also see customer reviews than having to trawl tradesmen's websites one by one and compare it this way.

You are asking whether you should stop working for tradesmen and instead create your own lead generating site. If that site has some kind of utility then over the time you may achieve good ranking. But I don't think that just having local tradesmen aggregate site will rank you highly in SERPs.

[netmeg]

I dunno, seems like this has been going on for a long time, at least here in the US. People are often at sea when picking some kind of local service (I know I was when I tried to find a local contractor with a decent reputation to build a deck) so they head for the places that have reviews and ratings. That behavior may go a ways in explaining the rankings.

(Normal people aren't as cynical about internet reviews and ratings as we all are)

[CaptainSalad2]

>>>is true that lead sellers are taking top of the SERPs in local tradesmen, at least in UK. I do not see this a problem in cases where they provide additional useful value such as customer reviews.<<<

Essentially the tradesmens version of eBay then really? It easier for the user to buy from e-bay because of the easy compare and review system?!

This is happening across most sectors, the days of the internet "cutting out" the middlemen seem to be fading due to the "brand" push giving them back control over the little guys?!

It’s a bit like my friend who has a live music band, before the internet took off they had to use middle men entertainment agency who had the advertising budget a “one man band” (no pun) simply didn’t, then diversity of the SERPs took off and they scored work directly from the serps both organic and PPC, now the brands (agents) are pumped up they no longer generate leads from their site (and are priced out of PPC) so are once more forced to use an agency, bit of a full circle.

What im wondering is if this is here to stay, less independence and more reliance on middlemen websites like mybuilder.com for tradesmen, eBay for ecom, entertainment agencies for music and anything you can think of really having a "In-between" company who have the money to brand on a national scale and own the organics.

Im not moaning or saying its bad for the user I just want to get a heads up!

Should note Bing and Local is MUCH more diverse currently!