43 Percent Of Total Google Search Queries Are Local

[travelin cat]

This is pretty remarkable and opens up an entire industry for expansion:

Chitika looked at “millions of online ad impressions seen between September 21st and 27th, 2012.” To ensure it was measuring “local search,” Chitika compared the queries it was seeing from the engines “against its extensive database of local keywords and phrases (e.g. “near me,” “in Boston,” “around St. Louis,” etc.).”

What Chitika found was that 43 percent of the overall query volume coming from Google (mobile and PC) carried a local intent. That compared with 25 percent on Yahoo and Bing.

[searchengineland.com...]

[Leosghost]

Unsurprising..

opens up an entire industry for expansion:

SSSSHHHHH!
..or everyone will be trying to expand into it..

[Robert Charlton]

Actually, I am surprised, not by the potential, but by the actual number and how quickly it came. I'd researched this fairly recently, and came up with numerous sources that had the Marissa Mayer citing a figure of 20% as recently as late May, 2011. She says in a video here... [businessinsider.com...]

Marissa Mayer, cMay 26, 2011

Today, twenty-percent of the searches that are done on Google are done looking for local information.

In the article noted in the open post of this thread, Greg Sterling's postscript and the concluding graph provides clearer explanation of the jump...

Postscript: I asked Chitika to provide a breakdown of PC vs. mobile search in these findings. Chitika said that nearly three-quarters of Google’s local queries are in fact coming from mobile. It’s the opposite for Bing and Yahoo.

The graph shows 26% of Google local searches coming from PCs, with 74% coming from mobile devices.

And in our last month's Google serps update thread, "a huge shift" towards mobile was discussed around Sept 20, 2012, with many confirmations that the traffic was not just local traffic from mobile phones, but also B2B on "mobile ecommerce on tablets, not phones".

Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2012
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4490381-14-30.htm [webmasterworld.com]

I don't think I've ever noticed so many such reports in one update thread. Sites that didn't have mobile versions were reporting lost traffic, and a high abandonment rate that could hurt them in Panda.

[Panthro]

Why do you think Google keeps mailing free $100 Adwords to SMBs, holding "Get Your Business On Google" workshops, and experiments with special Google pages for a few U.S. cities.

[ichthyous]

Fascinating...and also why Google is in a panic right now that they aren't able to entice more customers into placing ads for mobile. They see the future is coming speeding down the rails like a freight train and they are trying to get ahead of the curve.