If back then, paid search growth was starting to slow as the market matured and search was still in its early years of struggles to survive, its customer usage has grown a lot by now.
The apparent lack of local search usage and the complexity of campaign set up and management were the most important things that came in the way of the fast development of search engine marketing. The truth of the matter is that now the problem has been solved and there are no more barriers against the growth in both consumer and local advertiser adoption.
The fact is that paid search however needs to tap the small business marketplace, in order to achieve its goals and use all its potential. The main problem standing in the way of the development of search engine marketing is, by far, the one regarding the matter of convincing the local advertisers to the search-marketing arena. The actual state of things is fully being described by the dilemma that there is not enough local traffic to attract advertisers and not enough local advertising content to attract users. How can we solve this, that is without none of the parts to lose any advantage? Nevertheless, the data coming from the numerous consumer surveys shows that there is a noticeable growth in the awareness and usage of local search.
It is a fact that the largest majority of the survey respondents stated that they had conducted local searches at one time or the other. This is a good thing, as it means that people know about them and about the way they should be used. The bad part is that few people had a low percent of their total search behavior dedicated to local information. Almost have of the respondents who performed local searches wanted to buy a particular product or service.
The conclusion is that people tend to use the Internet, and particularly the search engines, more and more often, and that their aim is to find local information. This situation will not end very soon, especially because of the fact that search engines add and improve local offerings for the consumers.
