How Much Traffic Do Local Sites Get from Google?

But for the past five years or so, straight up local search has been king. Over that time Google has grown to dominate what was not that long ago a very fragmented market. That being said, I was curious to know exactly what percentage of total web traffic Google was sending to local sites.

I had access to and looked at the analytics for 16 websites that are purely local in nature. Most of these sites have done minimal online marketing, search optimization or in bound linking although a few have. Very few have any budget for online marketing.

I looked at the analytics for businesses that are dependent on traffic in their front door to stay alive and do no appreciable business on the net. For these sites, the vast majority of their web traffic originated from within 75 miles of their location. I compared traffic from Google search to their total traffic (search, referral and direct) for 2009 and 2010.

In 2009 36.9% of their total traffic and 69% of search engine traffic to these sites came from Google search. In 2010, 44.2% of total traffic and 74.3% of search traffic did. Of the sites that had been live during both years, only one saw less traffic from Google in 2010 than in  2009. For the site that was most active on Facebook (most were not), only 1% of total traffic came from Facebook.

Admittedly, this is not a true sample of all locally focused websites and their traffic sources. These businesses were mostly rural with only 1/4 of them being in cities over 200,000 and most serving cities in the 6-30,000 population range. Their marketing budgets are small in general and even smaller for online marketing. It is not clear how closely they might resemble a more representative sample or an urban sample. Although it is not unlikely that they resemble those businesses in the long tail of urban markets.

But for them, Google is clearly king and provides far more traffic than any other single source. For 1/3 of the businesses, Google sent over 50% of their total traffic in 2010. Google not only sent the most traffic but sent significantly more in 2010 than in 2009.

For those SMBs that are just getting started in Local Search it is clear where they need to look first in assessing their marketing plans. For those that already have a plan in place, it makes sense to evaluate the value and cost of the traffic to your website.

The future of local search is unclear. For the present though, Google offers a solid base of traffic and should be a point of focus of most if not all local search marketing campaigns.

What do you see in your truly local clients? Do they have similar, less or more traffic from Google than this sample? Is this sample representative of SMBs in larger markets? Do you have locally focused business sites that are receiving a high percentage of traffic from sites other than Google?

Google Science Fair seeks budding Einsteins and Curies

Are you a student who loves science? Do you have a good idea for an experiment that you’d like to share with the world? In 1996, two young computer science students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had a hypothesis that there was a better way to find information on the web. They did their research, tested their theories and built a search engine which (eventually) changed the way people found information online. Larry and Sergey were fortunate to be able to get their idea in front of lots of people. But how many ideas are lost because people don’t have the right forum for their talents to be discovered? We believe that science can change the world—and one way to encourage that is to celebrate and champion young scientific talent as we do athletes and pop idols.

To help make today’s young scientists the rock stars of tomorrow, in partnership with CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, we’re introducing the first global online science competition: the Google Science Fair. It’s open to students around the world who are between the ages of 13-18. All you need is access to a computer, the Internet and a web browser.

You may have participated in local or regional science fairs where you had to be in the same physical space to compete with kids in your area. Now any student with an idea can participate from anywhere, and share their idea with the world. You build and submit your project—either by yourself or in a team of up to three—entirely online. Students in India (or Israel or Ireland) will be able to compete with students in Canada (or Cambodia or Costa Rica) for prizes including once-in-a-lifetime experiences (like a trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer), scholarships and real-life work opportunities (like a five-day trip to CERN in Switzerland). And if you’re entering a science fair locally, please feel free to post that project online with Google Science Fair, too!

To enter, register online and create your project as a Google Site. Registration is open through April 4, 2011. Please note: you must get parental or guardian consent in order to compete. You can check out the complete rules here. After April 4, we’ll begin judging and will announce our semi-finalists in early May.

The semi-finalist projects will be posted on our online gallery, where we’ll encourage the public to vote for a “people’s choice” winner. From our list of semi-finalists, we’ll select 15 finalists to bring their projects to Google headquarters on July 11 to compete in our final, live event, where world-renowned science judges will select a winner in each age category, as well as a grand-prize winner.

Here’s an example of a great science fair project site to inspire you. We asked Tesca, a U.S. high school senior from Oregon, to create it for us based on an award-winning project she’s been working on for years. Tesca’s objective is to make hospitals more efficient using artificial intelligence—a world-changing goal, to be sure.

So if you think you’re the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie—or Larry Page or Sergey Brin—sign up today for the Google Science Fair. Prove once again how science can change the world!

Loci 2010 – David Mihm

David Mihm is the President & CEO of GetListed.org, in addition to running his own Portland-based search engine consulting business. He’s a Search Engine Land columnist and a frequent speaker at the SMX, SES, and Kelsey Group conference. He has created a number of tools to assist the SMB in navigating the rough waters of local more easily and publishes the annual survey of Local Ranking factors. More importantly he cares about the state of local search and how it impacts SMBs. He brings that sensibility and an astute mind to his list of articles that  stood out for him in 2010.

He thinks through the issues top to bottom and whenever I have a question, he is the one that I call.

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The Local conversation this year was once again dominated by Google, and in particular, its decision to completely reinvent its Local interface, moving away from the 10/7-pack and into a blended organic/local SERP.  (Btw, it bothers me that we still do not have a conventional term for this type of result two months after it launched!).  So a couple

Looking ahead to 2011, I think it’s going to be all about reviews, reviews, reviews this year as the differentiating factor for most Local SMB rankings.  Google’s extensive–though not quite exhaustive–push of Hotpot here in Portland these last couple months only goes to show how much stock they’re putting in reviews.  So I want to bring people’s attention to a couple of your posts in this arena.

Then, a couple of conceptual / theoretical posts–one by Chris Silver Smith that highlights an often-overlooked fundamental principle of Google’s Location Prominence patent, and one by Carolyn Johnston of Microsoft addressing one of business owners’ and marketers’ biggest frustration: why is my business data wrong, and what’s with all of the duplicate listings?

And, one tactical post–in my opinion the most actionable post in our industry over the course of the entire year–hats off to Garrett French.

Localization, Unique Data Sets & the Future of Search –
Few people follow the economic side of Google’s UI decisions as closely as Aaron Wall.  In this article he lays out some of Google’s less altruistic motives behind Place Search.

Dead Fingers Walking –
Andrew Shotland’s darkly satirical commentary on the same Places UI upgrade (pre-dating Aaron’s article by several months thanks to your own publication of the beta Place Search interface, Mike).

What Are the Implications of the New Integrated Local Search Results? –
Your own commentary on this seismic (or catclysmic, if you ask Andrew) shift in the way Google returns results for Local Intent searches.

Review Services – Do Positive Only Reviews Have a Place? –
Perhaps not one of your greatest literary epics, Mike, but I see this debate raging for many years, particularly as Google begins to incorporate self-generated testimonials and hReviews into its Place Pages.  It’s an extremely important question to ask both the search engines and the marketing community.

Principles for a Review Plan: Considerations in encouraging customer reviews –
You pretty much nail the matrix of important considerations in this easily-digestible column.

A New Behemoth Emerges in Google Maps: Wikipedia –
Chris Silver Smith highlights the importance of the highest-rated referring Place-related document as part of Google’s Location Prominence patent, here pointing to Wikipedia as a very highly-rated source.  Perhaps not actionable for most businesses but I think the concept behind this discussion is incredibly valuable.

Why Local Listings Data Is Tough –
A great “Q&A” posed from the perspective of the marketer/SMB to the search engine that is very illustrative of the difficulties in getting accurate data to flow all the way through the Local Search Ecosystem.

Phone Number Co-Citation Analysis for Local Link Builders –
Garrett French’s terrifically efficient strategy for making sure you’ve got your competitive bases covered when it comes to Local listings.