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About Our Consulting Practice in Local Search
Message from Mike Dobson
President of TeleMapics:
My expertise in local
search includes time spent as CTO and EVP of
Technology for go2 Systems, one of the early
players in the market for local search
platforms, products, and services. I led go2's
talented technical and product development
teams in the company's efforts related to
both wired and wireless local search platforms,
as well as the company's e-commerce and
m-commerce (mobile commerce) offerings. Before
go2, I was Chief Technologist for Rand McNally &
Company and in charge of software development
efforts for commercial and consumer
mapping, routing and navigation software.
In today's
economy, more local companies are turning to
online advertising and away from local newspaper
and yellow page advertising in an effort to
capture more local customer revenue. At
the same time, many Internet players are
focusing on local search as a method of
increasing revenue and profit. While the market
is wide-open at this time, local search is a
complicated and demanding service requiring
sophisticated production systems. If
you want to achieve success in the local search
market, the time to move is now. A
qualified local search consultant can help speed
up the process.
If you are new to
local search, let TeleMapics help you and your
team to develop and successfully execute
projects key to the profitable growth of your
business. Read our blog
Exploring Local
to help get you started.
If your Company
is experienced in the local search market but
not reaching your market share goals, we can
help provide the boost that you need to innovate
your way to success.
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Success in Local
Search
The Local Search marketplace is expanding by
leaps and bounds. Analysts at U.S. Bancorp
Piper Jaffray predict revenues for the industry
will more than double in 2010. Universal McCann
has valued the local search market (which
includes traditional and online publishers) at
$94 billion.
Of
interest to the Local Search industry is the
attractiveness of online advertising to small
and medium-sized enterprises (SME's). The
Kelsey Group writes that the SME component of
U.S.-based local advertising market is
approaching $22 billion in revenues. The online
local search market is estimated by Kelsey Group
to grow to a $5 to $8 billion market opportunity
by 2010.
Challenges
Finding the
"sweet spot" in the local search market
requires a large ensemble of
complex skills. We
believe firms competing in this marketplace will
need core competencies focused on their
ability to create robust, extensible and easy to
use platforms that meet the needs of both
customers and advertisers.
Advertisers
utilizing local search want to make sure that
you can connect them with their customers
through spatially relevant traffic volumes and
geographically relevant advertising placement.
Geo-targeting techniques can help you and
your advertisers fuse ads with search content in
a manner that enhances your customers'
opportunity to close sales while increasing your
revenue. The Advertiser requires qualified
buyers in a location where their product or
service is available.
The
potential customers using local search are
looking for a service that provides the relevant
products or services near them. Creating
a local search platform that efficiently provides these
matches in a targeted geographic context requires high
quality location data, geo-targeted advertising, efficient search
algorithms and careful planning of human factors
interfaces surrounding the search algorithms.
Creating
maximum revenue
generation from local search platforms is
full of difficulties for those who are
unfamiliar with: issues of spatial data quality
(coverage, currentness, attribution and
metadata), geo-targeting, the semantics of
spatial search queries and the application of
spatial data in geographic analysis, mapping,
and navigation. In addition, expertise on high
performance computing and infrastructure
development is a must. TeleMapics' Local Search
Consulting can help you
find your way in these critical areas of local
search and help ensure your success in the
market for local search.
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