LOCAL GUIDE SITES

Excerpt from Entrepreneur Magazine - March 2007

The advertising of the future is going online--and going local. This
hot trend is growing rapidly and shows no signs of letting up. In fact,
according to a report by Borrell Associates, local online advertising
is expected to grow by 31 percent this year, hitting $7.7 billion. The
report also predicts local paid search will skyrocket by 86 percent
this year, up to $1.8 billion. Local e-mail marketing will experience
growth of about 54 percent, reaching $233 million.

There's no question that consumers are using the internet to
navigate their way to local brick-and-mortar retailers. A recent study
by ROI Research Inc. and Performics shows that online searches
influence 20 to 30 percent of purchases made at retail
locations--and that number is only increasing. More and more sites,
like Local.com, are making their presence known by competing
against major search engines like Google and Yahoo!. So study up,
plan your budget and get in on the online advertising game.

1. Website: Google AdWords
How It Will Help You: AdWords helps you target local online
customers by setting your pay-per-click ads to appear only when
people search a particular city, state or region. There's no minimum
spending requirement--your daily budget is up to you.

2. Website: Yahoo! Local Listings
How It Will Help You: Local Listings will promote your business to
customers looking for information in Yahoo! Local. Choose from
three different plans (one is free) to meet your company's needs.

3. Website: CitySearch
How It Will Help You: CitySearch offers online advertising tools to
easily open your account, manage your daily results and receive ad
placement on MSN, Yahoo!, Google and Ask.com. Similar to the idea
of pay-per-click advertising, CitySearch offers two paid plans, "Web
Connect" and "Call Connect."

4. Website: Ask.com's AskCity
How It Will Help You: Ask.com recently launched AskCity, a new
local search application that's a one-stop destination for making
plans. In one screen, consumers can map a route, make dinner
reservations, purchase movie tickets and e-mail plans to others.
Pricing for advertising on Ask.com varies.

5. Website: AOL's CityGuide
How It Will Help You: AOL's CityGuide specializes in providing local
entertainment information to AOL service members. Advertising with
AOL allows marketers to target consumers specifically by lifestyle
and market.

6. Website: Craigslist
How It Will Help You: Craigslist gets an estimated 10 million unique
visitors per day. With an online classified ad format organized by
region or city, Craigslist connects buyers and sellers in more than
300 communities; for the most part, posting on the site is free.

7. Website: MerchantCircle.com
How It Will Help You: This free site offers a local business listing
service that allows you to better manage your online reputation and
become more visible in search engine results.

8. Website: Dotster
How It Will Help You: Dotster is a web domain registration and
hosting company offering a local web advertising package called
"Local Site Promotion." You set your monthly budget and Dotster will
make your ad visible on all the major search engines.

9. Website: Local.com
How It Will Help You: Advertising on Local.com will give you access
to their 10 million-plus monthly customers. Choose from a free basic
listing or pay-per-click options.

10. Website: Froogle Local
How It Will Help You: Google's shopping search engine allows users
to search for specific products by location. It's a great way for users
to find retail stores regardless of whether you use e-commerce.

11. Website:ReachLocal
How It Will Help You: This site provides a central location for
businesses to set-up, maintain and track local search advertising
campaigns. Pricing varies.

12. Website: RegisterLocal
How It Will Help You: RegisterLocal is a service, costing $199.95 per
year, that allows you to create a master profile they submit to search
engines and directories on your behalf.

13. Website: TrueLocal
How It Will Help You: This local search engine features full-text
searching and offers advertising opportunities for businesses.
Currently indexing more than 13 million local businesses, TrueLocal
starts at just $1 per month.

14. Website: YellowPages.com
How It Will Help You: YellowPages.com is a large online local
directory site featuring city guides and advertising solutions. Basic
listings are free.

15. Website: Web.com's MyEzClicks program
How It Will Help You: MyEzClicks lists your business on more than 30
major search engines, including Google, Yahoo! and MSN for a
monthly fee.

Excerpt from Entrepreneur Magazine - March 2007

The Basics of Local Online Advertising
Need to drive more business to your door?
Use our practical guide to rev up your local web strategy.
By Amanda C. Kooser
Entrepreneur Magazine - March 2007

The promise of the web has been a global one. It connects
companies to telecommuters, outsourcers, far-off countries and
customers around the world. But a new trend in the web is bringing
it closer to home . . . and business. The “local web” is the way the
internet helps connect people with places in their hometowns as
well as their business and travel destinations. For local
entrepreneurs, it’s about using the web to reach customers and vice
versa.

We’re not here to preach the value of having a website. You already
know about that. This is a look at how to use your site and the many
other internet resources available to help customers find you. It’s
not so much about e-commerce as it is about getting people to your
door. “What we have now is a complicated world where people use
many different sources of information to find local businesses. They’
re using the traditional mediums that they’ve always used, but now
the internet has become a very powerful--and in many cases, [the]
primary--resource for people,” says Greg Sterling, founder of
Sterling Market Intelligence, an Oakland, California, consulting and
research firm with an emphasis on the local search marketplace.

“You need to be where your customers are, and more and more
customers are on the web,” says Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of
global online sales and operations at Google. Take a look out over
the web. There’s no one-stop shop for marketing your local business
online. People use search engines, online Yellow Pages, industry-
specific directories, referral and review sites and online
communities. They follow links from other businesses’ sites and
click on ads while browsing. So here’s a primer to help you plan
your local web strategy.

Get Started
The first step is usually the hardest one. This initial stage requires a
little patience and a lot of groundwork. Here it is: Get listed. That
sounds pretty straightforward, but it actually means you have a
roster of websites to visit. The three big search engines--Google,
MSN and Yahoo!--should be your first destinations. Submit your site
to each engine and then visit their “Local” sections and submit your
company information. For example, go to http://listings.local.yahoo.
com. The “Local Basic Listings” link takes you to the service. You
can fill in information about your business, including hours,
services, payment methods and descriptions. Once processed, your
business will appear on Yahoo! Local maps and in searches that
correlate to your description and category. Google works in a
similar manner through its Local Business Center, and MSN partners
with Citysearch to generate local information. Basic listings are free.

Ask.com recently launched AskCity for local searches, and AOL also
generates its share of search traffic, so be sure to include them in
your local web strategy.“You should absolutely get your content into
every free directory or listing service you can,” says Sterling. “It’s
important to [do this] because you don’t know where your potential
customers are coming from.” Don’t overlook vertical sites that serve
your particular market and that maintain business directories or
listings. Local newspaper websites can be smart and affordable
places to post an advertising link. Sites like Craigslist that feature a
strong local component can be powerful tools. Not only do local
customers browse the ads, but the ads are often indexed by search
engines, providing yet another avenue for people to find you.

Look No Further
In a recent study by ROI Research Inc. and Performics on the offline
impact of internet search, 55 percent to 65 percent of respondents
said that search is at least somewhat influential in purchases they
make at retail locations. That number is on the way up. Beyond retail
products, more consumers are looking for local services online as
well. The same goes for other businesses seeking local partners,
suppliers and services.

Newspapers and physical Yellow Pages haven’t been abandoned,
but they’re now pieces of a larger puzzle. A report by Borrell
Associates predicts that local online advertising will grow by 31
percent to $7.7 billion and local paid search will balloon by 86
percent to $1.8 billion in 2007. If you want to be found in your
hometown, you need to be found online. But being found isn’t always
free.

Many businesses allocate some of their marketing budgets to search
engine advertising. First Crush, a restaurant and wine bar in San
Francisco, subscribes to the Google AdWords program. “We started
with Google because it was such a big name,” says Shahram Bijan,
owner of First Crush. “[We] reached a big audience without having to
spend a lot of money.” First Crush uses 20 to 30 different keywords
to trigger its ads in Google. Bijan’s goal was to drive search traffic to
www.firstcrush.com, where visitors could learn more about the
restaurant, its extensive wine list and event catering options, and
use its online reservation system. “The great thing about the internet
is people are looking for specific information,” says Bijan, 29. “You’
re not just bombarding them with ads.”

Get Advanced
Search engines aren’t the be-all and end-all of a local web strategy.
Most businesses will benefit from a multi-faceted approach. Outside
the top general search engines, a handful of sites have popped up
with a specifically local bent.

A big trend is convergence websites, which combine local business
listings and directories with search functionality and paid
advertising. Citysearch, founded in 1995, is the elder statesman of
this type of site. Its focus on city guides with restaurants, services
and reviews has made it a must-list place for a lot of businesses,
particularly those in larger cities. First Crush uses Citysearch in
combination with its own website and Google AdWords. This
multipronged approach helped the restaurant reach $3 million in
sales in 2006, with an expected 5 percent increase for 2007.

Although Kenai, Alaska, has fewer than 10,000 residents, nearly 50
local businesses have signed up with MerchantCircle.com, a local
business listings service. Tina Showalter, 43, opened the Blonde
Bear Bed & Breakfast in 2005. “Our first summer, we did great with
word-of-mouth advertising, and then we got involved in the internet,
and it has pretty much exploded from there,” says Showalter, who
runs the Blonde Bear with her husband, George, 46. They expect
sales to double in 2007.

The Blonde Bear’s MerchantCircle.com site combines a business
description, reviews, a blog, coupons, a map and links to other
businesses listed on MerchantCircle.com. All those Kenai
businesses on the site got there through word-of-mouth; Showalter
estimates she’s brought 30 other businesses onboard to help build
up the cross-promotional and networking benefits of the site. Look
for more services like MerchantCircle.com to hit the scene as the
local web market heats up.

With all the avenues available for reaching customers online, it’s
important to be able to determine what is working and what isn’t.
“This is all about discovery, trial and error, and refinement,” says
Sterling. “Be willing to try some stuff and change course if it doesn’t
work.” To find out if your strategies are effective, Sterling suggests
entrepreneurs simply ask how their customers learned about them.
Online coupons can also be an effective way to track how many
customers are visiting your website and then visiting your location.

Search engine advertising services come with analytics and reports
that show you how many click-throughs and unique visitors you’re
getting. These numbers can help you determine which search terms
are working, which to spend more money on and which to abandon.
It has been a simple equation for First Crush. “When we put up the
website, we were getting about 150 to 200 unique visitors a day,”
says Bijan. “After we started using Google, we’re seeing 600 to 800
unique visitors a day.”

The Future of Search
There are some subtle shifts happening with the local web. Site-
building tools like those offered by Yahoo! and Microsoft Office Live
make it easier and cheaper for businesses to build a web presence.
As more businesses arrive online, more services will appear to help
them launch and manage their local web strategies. “Over time,
advertising will continue to get more complicated, but there will be a
layer of middlemen there to provide services,” says Sterling. These
services won’t be free, but the most effective ones will be worth the
investment.

Looking ahead, you’ll be hearing a lot about local going mobile. As
cell phones become location-aware, a whole new set of advertising
and services will come to life. Look for the leaders in local web
search to branch out into mobile search. Both Yahoo! and Google
already offer search methods tailored to mobile devices. Yahoo!
features an SMS search service that works with most mobile phones
and can direct users to local businesses.

The local web is both significant and scattered. It all comes down to
making it as easy as possible for internet users to find your business
so you can convert them into offline customers. It’s a trial-and-error
process that combines marketing smarts and experimentation. Get
listed, find out what has worked for your peers, try out search
engine advertising and get on locally oriented listing and directory
sites. The next time someone searches for products or services in
your town, be sure you pop right up.

Websites That Do The Work For You
Most entrepreneurs don’t have time to become experts in marketing
their businesses locally through the web. These sites can take that
chore off your hands.

Dotster Local Site Promotion: An example of a web domain
registration and hosting company offering a local web advertising
package; includes an intelligent keyword optimization tool, pay-per-
click search engine ads and the ability to create online coupons and
special offers.

Froogle Local: Google’s shopping search engine accepts listings for
free from local merchants. Users can search for specific products
by location. It’s another way for brick-and-mortar stores to be found
whether they use e-commerce or not.

Local.com: Online Yellow Pages and search engine that offers a free
listing for businesses. The Paid Local Promote option gives
businesses more control over their listings and distributes your
information to other online networks.

ReachLocal: A central location to set up, maintain and track local
search advertising campaigns. Pricing is variable.

RegisterLocal: A service that lets you create a Master Business
Profile that RegisterLocal submits to search engines and directories
on your behalf for $199.95 per year. When you make changes or
updates, they’re automatically distributed.

TrueLocal: A local search engine that also offers advertising
opportunities for businesses. Features full-text searching.
YellowPages.com: Large online local directory site that also
includes city guides and advertising solutions. Basic listings are free.
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LOCAL GUIDE SITES