Internet Potpourri

Following are some Internet-oriented news items as gathered by the editors of The Wiglaf Journal…

How Internet Benefits Local Businesses

Even if your business is locally-oriented, search engine optimization (SEO) should be a major concern, according to Patricia Hursh, writing in the ClickZ electronic newsletter.

She reports that Internet users increasingly rely on search engines to find local businesses citing as recent Nielsen/NetRatings study that indicates that an almost incredible 70 percent of respondents uses the Internet to search for a local service business. “More and more people are going to find local information instead of opening the big yellow book or turning to newspaper classifieds,” Hursh writes.

“Furthermore,” she adds, “a revised estimate by comScore indicates that local intent is behind up to 40 percent of all online queries, even if the searcher doesn’t explicitly indicate location. Some of the most popular local queries include searches related to real estate, car sales, restaurants, hotels, attorneys and other service providers.”

The implications of this data are enormous to Web marketers. Make sure when someone visits your site they immediately see you addresses (e-mail and street) and phone and FAX numbers. Don’t make them search too hard, they’ll go elsewhere.

Job Seekers Relying More on the Internet

The Internet has edged ahead of newspapers as the preferred source for finding a job, according to report published by The Conference Board.

In probing how job seekers look for a job, the Conference Board shows the Internet and newspaper advertising are neck-and-neck. In researching a data base that includes persons who reported searching for a job between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2006, 71.1 percent used the Internet and 70.6 percent used newspaper advertising. This compares with 49.2 percent who used networking and 26.5 percent who cited “other” including employment agencies. The data is not mutually exclusive, according to The Conference Board, in that many job seekers use both newspapers and the Internet.

In another basis for comparison, The Conference Board reported that among respondents who received a job offer, the largest percentage (38.2 percent) feels that their offer resulted from their Internet search. This compares to 23.9 percent for newspapers, 27.1 percent for networking and 29.9 percent for “other.”

Clearly, those companies looking to hire, should add the Internet to its employee search options.

A Feast for Historians

Google’s new “News Archives” allows history buffs to search through 200 years of historical content, including many articles not previously available via search engines.

Google’s Anarag Acharya who played a major role in compiling the new products explains “the goal of this service is to allow people to search and explore how history unfolded.”

In putting together News Archives, Google partnered with, among others, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian and Washington Post. Google also partnered with aggregators such as Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, Thomson Gale and HighBeam Research.

Archived news can be found three ways, according to ClickZ Executive Editor Chris Sherman. “You can search the news archives directly through a new News Archive Search page. You can also find news archive results when you search on Google News or conduct a general Google Web search for a query with relevant historical news results.”

There are both free and fee components to this new service. Search results that require a fee are labeled “pay for view” or list a specific price. Google doesn’t host this content. By clicking on to the link, the visitor is transferred to the content owner’s Web site where the transaction is completed before access to the document(s) can be obtained.

Early Holiday Internet Shopping Rises in ‘06

A significant increase in spending per Internet visit for the 2006 holiday season was reported by comScore Networks in a Clickz article. For the first 31 shopping days Nov. 1 through Dec.1, comScore reported spending to be 11 percent per visit ahead of 2005.

As for total spending in the first 31 days of the shopping season, comScore reported a 24 percent increase over 2005 — $11.75 billion vs. $9.45 billion.