EVERYBODY'S CHASING SMALL businesses. On the user side, research suggests that anywhere from 50% to 80% of all online searches may have a local intent to them. But since most searchers don't enter local qualifiers such as a town or ZIP code into the query box, the engines are trying to become more intuitive about determining when someone who's researching “plumbers” really wants a plumber in their neighborhood.
Both Google and Yahoo! are serving up location-based results in many of their search pages, and want to be able to deliver many more. But they face the old problem: how to get small local businesses onto the Web. And once they're online with crawlable Web pages, how do you induce them to start marketing themselves aggressively?
Google may have solved part of that problem, in a deal that may just hit mom and pop where they live — in the account books. The 2007 version of Intuit's QuickBooks software, a widely used back-office program, will include tools that enable small-business owners to build a business profile page on Google Maps and post their products for sale on Google Base, the search company's free online classified-ad service.
Hosted by Google to bulk up its Maps directory content, these profile pages can include not only store location information and phone numbers but hours of operation, payment methods, services, specialties and even online coupons or discount offers. The business listings also can appear as local results at the top of search results pages when users do a general Google search.
Besides bringing small businesses online, QuickBooks 2007's tools will streamline their sign-up for Google AdWords, the program that lets advertisers bid to place pay-per-click ads against keywords in Google Search. And QuickBooks 2007 buyers will get a $50 credit toward the purchase of search ads on Google's pay-per-click platform.
“We take this long-tail business very, very seriously,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in announcing the deal. “We're convinced this is a way to add a million or more online subscribers to the Google network.”
Other experts agree that it may be just the boost many small businesses need to start marketing themselves on the Internet.
“You can't overstate the importance of QuickBooks to a small business,” says Alan Rimm-Kaufman, president of The Rimm-Kaufman Group, specializing in online marketing for retailers. “This deal is big, big stuff. I think they're going to get very broad adoption in both the business listings and the map listings. With a $50 credit toward search marketing on AdWords, this is a very compelling offer. To me, this looks like a direct shot across the bow of the Internet Yellow Pages.”
Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence and a longtime observer of local marketing, pointed out in a blog post that the U.S. Yellow Pages directory industry has a total of about 3.2 million advertisers. QuickBooks is used by 3.7 million small businesses.
While not all those users are businesses — and though users will still have to upgrade to QuickBooks 2007 to get in on the AdWords deal — Sterling admits that Google will instantly “get access, through a trusted third party, to a huge installed base of potential advertisers.”
