DM News: Report: Local Business Web Presence Grows, Marketing Lags

The Kelsey Group reported that while many small businesses are putting up websites, the vast majority aren't using the web for marketing. One in 16 reported having tried search advertising, one in 7 reported having optimized websites to search engines and only one in 5 indicated they had used online yellow pages. DM News reported that Kelsey Group analyst Greg Sterling said the trends show that local marketers are now seeing the web as important, but they haven't yet progressed far enough to take on online marketing.

The results provide both support and countering evidence for Jupiter Research's pessimistic contention that the local search market won't grow as fast as the rest of the market. Jupiter's naysaying local search analyst Nate Elliott indicated that the local search market wouldn't even double between now and the end of 2009.

While the study results certainly bear out the slow growth contention to date, the market looks like it has a great deal to grow and an increasingly savvy and online group of participants. The prediction of whether this bodes good or ill for the local market hinges on an interpretation of the motives behind small businesses. The appearance of many new local business sites may be a lump in the snake of online marketing, soon to spin off online marketing efforts once the site efforts are digested properly. Or the glut of new local sites might just be evidence of unsophisticated me-tooism.