Local searches - for products, services and information online for specific locations - are a big boon for shoppers and, potentially, for marketers, according to a comScore Networks study commissioned by TMP Directional Marketing, MarketingCharts reports.

Some of the study's finding on consumer behavior and attitudes while searching:

• 82 percent of online local searchers follow up offline, via an in-store visit, phone call, or purchase; of these searchers, 61 percent went on to make purchases.
• 33 percent of all consumers still consider print yellow pages as their primary source of local business info
• 90 percent say print yellow pages are still valuable because they provide more information, such as accurate phone numbers.
• 60 percent of searchers online looking for local businesses think that the top results are most relevant; 25 percent don't want to have to scroll down.

MarketingCharts offers a few more tidbits of data.