CitySearch

CitySearch is a major provider of local information for sites including MSN, Ask.com, Expedia.com, Ticketmaster.com, and many others.

As a small business owner, you should make sure your business is listed — and listed correctly — in CitySearch. Start by searching for your business. If it’s there, click through to your profile page. In the lower right of the main content column (under your business information) you should see two links — one inviting you to edit the listing if it belongs to you, and another inviting you to “suggest a correction” if you see something wrong. (see below)

That first option is somewhat of a misnomer; you cannot simply claim your own listing and edit it. The only way to take control of your own listing is to open an advertising account with CitySearch. The second option — “suggest a correction” — can also be used to add a new listing for free.

Yelp

Yelp is a growing entry in the local search arena, and follows in the Yahoo Local approach by including user reviews, but goes beyond that with other social/community-style features. Their goal is to develop a strong and active user community, which in turn should lead to more user reviews — all of which makes Yelp more valuable as a local search tool. Yelp began in San Francisco and is expanding out from there. Many smaller towns and cities have only a few user reviews, but the San Francisco city page shows the potential for this combination of local listings and an active user base.

Do a search for your business name and zip code to find out if you’re already in Yelp’s system. On the bottom of the search result page, you’ll see a red button titled ADD BUSINESS which leads to a simple form where you can add your business.

When adding your business, you can even rate it from one to five stars. But don’t get too excited about thinking you can spam the ratings — only registered users can rate, and every rating can be traced back to the person who submitted it. Not a perfectly spam-proof system, but probably good enough. During the sign-up process, remember to take advantage of the profile system. Your profile should be an advertisement for your business. This way, as you take part in the Yelp community, other users will be exposed to your business via your profile.

Yelp also offers paid advertising in the form of enhanced listings and featured placement in search results. Their web site offers few details about how these programs work, but they do invite business owners to complete a contact form for more information.

Insider Pages

Insider Pages was recently acquired by CitySearch, but the two will remain separate sites (at least for now). Like Yelp and Yahoo Local, Insider Pages combines local listings with user-generated reviews.

As with the other local search sites, your first step is to see if your business is already in the Insider Pages’ database. Insider Pages offers information for merchants wanting to update a listing or buy advertising from a single location. Sponsored ads show up above and below the main listings on a search results page, and those ads currently run from $5 to $25 per month, depending on the size of your location and the popularity of your business category. Here’s the current Insider Pages rate card.

InfoUSA

InfoUSA is an information aggregator that compiles databases on businesses and households in the U.S. and Canada, getting information from white and yellow pages, business records, real estate records, newspapers, and more.

Chances are good that your business is already in their databases, but InfoUSA offers a simple online form for either adding your business or updating an existing listing.

Local.com

Local.com is a fast-growing local search engine that claims to get about 10 million visitors per month. They offer a variety of advertising options on the site, including banners and cost-per-click ads. The site shows user reviews with some listings; the reviews come from sites such as Insider Pages and Judy’s Book.

Small businesses should, at minimum, take advantage of the free basic listing, which includes your company name, address, phone number, web site URL, and a brief description. Local.com also offers a service called Local Promote Premium, which includes a business profile web page and many additional information options. This service runs $40/month.

MerchantCircle

Merchant Circle offers more than just a business listing; it offers a set of online marketing tools that the company claims will let you reach more local customers. These tools include a web page/landing page with a blog, newsletter-sending capability, coupons, and more. The idea, MerchantCircle says, it to make it easier for small businesses to do what many big businesses are doing to improve their online reach. Note, though, that some of their claims related to how their service will “move your business up in search engine rankings” are not necessarily true.

Your business may already be listed in MerchantCircle, and you should claim it if it is — before someone else does. At this moment, there appears to be no authentication when listings are claimed … it shouldn’t be so easy for anyone to claim any existing listing. But it is, so find your listing and look for the orange “Claim This Listing” button on the left.

MerchantCircle offers a free basic service, plus two tiers of paid services with additional options and benefits the more you pay. You can compare MerchantCircle’s packages before making a decision on which is best for you.

The most interesting aspect of MerchantCircle is the idea of marketing via a business network. Once you’re signed up, you’re encouraged to invite other businesses in your area (presumably ones you work with and like). Once they join, you’re in each other’s network — and your listing will show on their page, and their listing will show on yours. In essence, it’s an automated referral service. It’s easy to think of a real estate agent or agency inviting mortgage companies, home appraisers, even home cleaners or moving services that the agent/agency likes to work with, and creating a network of recommended business — each giving the other some extra exposure from being in the same circle of friends.

Summary

Local Search is still in its infancy, but is expected to grow dramatically over the coming years. While this list of “other” local search opportunities is not comprehensive (more will be added as time allows), it does offer a good start for the small business owner looking to get in to the Local Search market early. It’s impossible to say which of the destinations above will be successful and important 3-4 years from now, so it’s smart to consider each opportunity as part of your search marketing strategy.

Where: http://maps.google.com/

What: Google’s local search service is Google Maps. Google briefly used the name “Google Local,” but opted instead to stick with the more popular and well-known Maps name.

How It Works: You’re probably plenty familiar with Google Maps. Type an address and see the map, or switch to a satellite photo, or even see a hybrid of the two. Here’s Fresno, CA, for example. All you have so far is a map, no business information. But notice at the top, to the right of the SEARCH button, are a couple links. The middle link says “Find businesses.”

When you click that link, you have a new text field to type in the name or type of business you want to find. You might type in something like hair salon and click SEARCH. (Note: users can skip this step entirely by just typing in [hair salon fresno, ca] in their initial search.]

Now you begin to see advertising in the left column where the business listings are. In this example, there’s one ad at the top of the listings (see image) and a couple more at the bottom of the listings.

These ads come from Google AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising platform, which allows businesses a way to target ads to specific geographic regions and geographic-based searches.

How to Market:

A) Make sure your business is listed correctly by using Google’s Local Business Center. When you register your business, Google will send an activation code to your mailing address (snail mail). You have to return to the Business Center and provide that code before your listing will be accepted. Once you do this, Google says it’ll be up to six weeks before your listing is added. You can continue to use the Business Center to update your business information, add a new business, etc.

B) Sign up for a Google AdWords account and create an ad campaign targeted specifically to your local area. This will allow your ad to appear only* when people in your geographic area are using Google; it won’t show up when someone across the country does a search for the keywords you’re bidding on.

* The geo-targeting is quite good, but not perfect.

C) Only after you’ve done A and B on this list are you able to create a Local Business Ad. This is essentially an enhanced version of your AdWords ad. As Google explains:

The ads display in two parts: a highlighted listing in the search results column and a map marker that expands to show additional business details when the user clicks on the ad title or the marker itself. 

In other words, your AdWords ad gets some extra attention in both the left column (the search results) of Google Maps, and on the map itself. Use the link earlier in this paragraph to learn about Local Business Ads.

D) One other opportunity that may be coming in the future is a click-to-call advertising service. Google is currently testing this.