Local Search For Local Businesses

As more and more people join the net, and get used to using search engines to find what they want, more and more of them will be using search engines to locate local products and services.

If you are in Broseley UK and are looking for a French restaurant it is no use if the search engine finds you one in Paris Texas or even Paris France... You want one in Broseley itself or within a short distance from it.

Local search is being rolled out by all of the major search engines and will become more and more popular as more and more local businesses are added to the search engines indexes.

All of the three major engines offer free listing for local businesses integrated with Maps, and you don't need to have a website to get listed.

It is also important to note that the local listings are different to the normal website listing. This means that just because you have an existing website and it is indexed and being found in the standard search results it doesn't mean that you will appear for a search in the local search results using Google maps.

You will need to add your business to the local search database (see below) However, these local listings are gradually being integrated into the standard search results. Google calls this Universal search.

This means that a standard search will show results from the standard index (websites) and also from the local search database.

For example below is a search for "SEO consultant London". Notice that the first listing comes from the local search database:

Adding Your Business to Local Search

Google is the only one that currently allows non USA businesses to add themselves.

1. https://llc.local.live.com/BusinessSearch.aspx

2. http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php

3. www.google.com/local/add --USA

4. www.google.com/local/add?hl=en_GB-- uk

In the UK MSN live current get their local listings from the Thompson directory. You can add your business to this directory here.

Yahoo UK use Infoserve. You can add your business to the Infoserve directory here

Related Article,Posts and Resources:

Here is page with a list of local search engines, yellow pages and guide that You may also find useful: http://www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm