Robert Blaise

Local SEM firm WebVisible and Nielsen last year surveyed U.S. consumers about their local search behavior. There were some very interesting and striking findings. For example, 51% of users were doing category searches for local businesses without a geographic modifier. Today findings from a second wave of that survey were released. The second survey is broader and addresses a range of issues, including consumer attitudes toward advertising in general, use of the Internet vs. traditional media for local information, and offline purchase behavior.

So, you can thank Google for raising your online customers’ search expectations through the roof. The 900-lb. gorilla of Internet search delivers such quality results — in just tenths of a second, as the results page tells you — that online shoppers won’t settle for anything less than blindingly fast search results from thee-commerce sites they visit.

1.Are the results relevant?
2.Does your company have the resources required to run and maintain the site search?
3.Does the vendor give you control over the site search?
4. Will the vendor enable you to repurpose data from search?
5. Will the search solution constantly improve?

Do you tweet on Twitter? Or network on Ning?

A new and growing array of tongue-twisting tools and technologies is available to help people easily interact and share information online.

While it may be tempting to avoid these obscurely named technologies, there’s good reason for small businesses to learn what they are and how to use them: So-called social media can help small firms to better connect with and market themselves to consumers and others in their industries. And they’re often free.

Have you ever been stumped in finding the right words to search for? Back when I was planning my wedding, I had a list of wedding songs in mind, but the problem was that I couldn’t remember any of the artist names or song titles. So I started typing into the Google search box parts of the lyrics that I did remember — and like magic, I saw suggestions with the artist name and song titles that I wanted! (I was opted-in to the keyword suggestions Google Labs experiment at the time). At that moment, I was so proud to be working on Google Suggest, a search feature that provides real-time suggestions while you search.

Today we’re excited because Google Suggest will be “graduating” from Labs and available by default on the Google.com homepage. Over the next week, we’ll be rolling this out so that more and more of you will start seeing a list of query suggestions when you start typing into the search box.

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources