The Fog of Local Search Reportage
Now, perhaps the reporting standards will not reach the zenith of the run-up to the war, but there sure is a similar fog--or perhaps even Nielsen-like nimbostratus--clouding the collective judgement of the Local Search Reportage Posse. I had always imagined, as the crocus is the herald of spring, that somehow these stories were planted, even payola'd, yet last Friday I found evidence of a much less sinister conspiracy- pathological extrapolation:
To analyze the current state of local search advertising, Borrell researchers examined more than 2,100 paid links to appear on Google and Yahoo queries for city-related keywords--such as, for example, "Des Moines real estate." About 36 percent of such pay-per-click links were from local advertisers--up from 5.6 percent 18 months ago.
Bam! With hard-nosed research like that, how can we doubt Borrell's assertion that Local Search will peak at $4 Billion by 2010 (quadrupling during that period, mind you)? When my little sister was 3 years old she was 3 feet tall. I worried what we would do when she turned 9 and could no longer fit beneath our 8 foot high ceilings.