Google or yellow page sites? Where should you be? On one or in the others? In 1? 2? 3? Oh my.

Just when I thought I was done, Myles Anderson posted this absolutely great research over at Searchengineland.com on how the Google Panda updates have impacted the traffic on yellow page sites, and I can’t keep silent about it.

(Notice I have not capitalized “yellow page” there. If you read Part 2 of this series, you’ll know why.)

I hope you read that post in its entirety, but I also know most people aren’t as nerdy as I am to even care for that many numbers and that much explanation, nor do they have the time, so I’ll summarize here for you with some important takeaways on what it means for your local business.

I just got this on my Facebook wall:

“Hi Kathy, you are my resident expert…I am trying to increase the audience of my new blog, Stepford Husband, do you have any tips or suggestions?”

David’s post came with this picture on his blog:

Now tell me, if you saw that wouldn’t you follow it?

Or would hiring an SEO and a #1 position be worth the investment?

If you haven’t already, read the prologue to this post. If you don’t want to bother, then here’s a bit of info to set the stage.

In that post I showed how chiropractors in Scotts Valley were just about rendered invisible because Google bestowed a “Site Links” blessing on another chiropractor in town for the query “Scotts Valley chiropractic.” Dr. Hinde, though in position 2, looked like a mere mortal, while Dr. Thibodeau apparently achieved sainthood. On other queries, though, all chiropractors appeared to be on an equal playing ground, yet Dr. Thibodeau still reigned supreme.

This post answers the question, should Dr. Hinde in position 2 for the more popular and lucrative keyword “chiropractor” try for position 1? He also commands the first THREE positions for “Scotts Valley chiropractic office.” Is that enough?

And what about the other chiropractors further down the page and on other pages? Is it worth their time and investment in SEO to try to improve their rank in Google?

This time we look at where on the SERP (search result page) commands the most attention

One of my favorite sources for SEO information, SEOmoz, recently posted their results of an eye-tracking study they did to show how consumers are trying to find local businesses. I could just point a link to their post, which I’ll do here anyway, but I wanted to bring over their study and images because I have some additional points I wanted to make. Here’s their post. And here’s the Kat & Mouse take.

Online or off? Google? Local directories? Facebook? Where?

Last week I showed you some data that revealed where people were looking online to find local businesses. That was part 1 of this series on where people are looking for local businesses.

That report was published in October, 2011. The same research firm released some other numbers back in March. I’m not sure what they say is much different, but I think the chart is clearer, so I wanted to share this with you as well.

ONLINE sources people check BEFORE visiting a local business or restaurant

Harris Interactive in its new study sponsored by CityGrid Media posted some interesting statistics that are important for you, a local business owner, to know. Here’s what they discovered.

Searching for a local business at home

To no surprise, online search and review sites are where most people go to find local information – 60% of them to be exact in this study of 1000 adults – when they were at home. In the under 35 segment, this increased to 85%! Again, no surprise.

And finally, only 8% said they go to merchants’ websites first before searching. That last metric is a little confusing to me especially since most people have to search to find a website to go to, but regardless of how or why that happens, there is still a crystal clear takeaway from these metrics.