Four out of five people use search engines to find local business information. Since Google remains the number one search engine (at least here in the U.S.), the visibility of your local business is hugely dependent on where it ranks in Google searches.

Despite this, only 37 percent of local businesses have claimed a local business listing on a search engine. That means you still have a chance to get there before your competition, or catch up if they got there ahead of you. Either way, If you haven’t claimed your Google My Business listing, the time is now.

We studied 30 of the most prominent, well known, and high traffic U.S. directories including Yelp, Whitepages, YP, MapQuest and 26 others.


Over the past 28 months, there has been a 35% decline in traffic to the top online directories. We’ve separated Yelp from the rest of the group because its traffic is so vast in comparison that combining it with the others skews the view of what’s happening in the industry at large.

In fact, we can see that Yelp’s visit numbers (approx. 80 million/month) are almost the same as the other 29 sites combined! This really shows the impact of Yelp’s investment in its service.

Yelp has grown and nurtured a loyal review-writing audience, which has allowed it to build the most comprehensive set of online reviews for local businesses. In turn, it has secured significant distribution deals with Yahoo and Apple Maps. This, along with establishing itself as a household name brand, has meant its user numbers have remained high and growing while those around it flounder.

 It seems ridiculous but without search information is lost into a disorganized pile. A little like making notes of items important to you which you then keep in a draw, the tactic loses its meaning entirely the moment the draw gets full of bits of paper and you no longer remember what you wrote down, this day, last year and stored there. 

Organizing things in filings, as you go along is no solution either. As information grows its meaning also changes. Like pieces to a puzzle that are constantly being added to the edges, the picture gets bigger which means that the context and importance of the things in the center also changes. 

What we need then is what we have at the moment: self-organizing information that exists in a highly structured form in an index that is constantly being enriched and re-evaluated so that results can be surfaced in a context-sensitive way. 

As the internet and search levels the playing field for business I start to wonder.  Many small businesses and even large industry businesses seem nonchalant about their reach and online reputation?  Acquiring 20-30 more customers for a small price just by implementing a few tweaks to a web presence should be worth the payment?  Much of the rest of the modern world is surpassing us as we become complacent in our business ways.  Many other countries have such powerful broadband and fiber technology and reach right in and snatch up our companies business.  If we want to remain a world economic powerhouse then we must change and implement.  The young people of today and even the seniors of tomorrow will use technology in ways we never dreamed of.  The latest techno of offering search in vehicles will change the spending patterns of consumers just like the Interstate highway system did.  Will your business be left behind?  We can help in establishing your presence in the right areas, or connecting you with experts in the field.  As I look at the website of this business and, understand how it is present in so many languages, countries I marvel.  Are you losing business because you have not implemented new places and technology?  Take a few moments to try the translator in the left hand corner of our website!  Bing speaks many languages, do you?

Things like search, Google, Bing, Windows 10, Gaming to increase business,, voice recognition, URL submission, robots, crawlers, map placements, business views, calls, and directions to your business and so much more are not strange language to us.  Contact us today to improve your online presence and reach.