Local search, personalized search, mobile search and now a refined location search emphasizes the need for a small business to pay close attention to their local rankings. Local optimization is more than being ranked for search terms within your own city to cater to the locals, it is being easily found and maximizing results to a geographic location which includes nearby areas. It is no secret that the results for local search, personalized search, mobile search and location search are yield the same results. The competition is steep and search engine optimization locally takes on new meaning for small businesses.
Location search is not new as previously we performed a search and attached the city or state name in the search field and results appeared. While this is still a viable choice, we now can strictly search terms without the location in the search field and still receive local results. While this is similar to personalized search, the refined location search takes it a step further with the “Nearby” tool.
How to Perform a Location Search
1. Open a new tab and on the Google search, type your search term without a location.
2. Once results appear, click on Show Options. A left sided menu bar appears.
3. Contained in the left sided menu bar under the third category “All Results” is “Nearby”
4. Click on “Nearby” and a new menu appears 
It is here where you can customize your location and also change it without having to repeat the entire search. Certain areas have various search terms for their location that yield different results ex: Las Vegas/Vegas, New York/NYC. As a businesses it is important to keep these in mind when optimizing and keep an eye on the terms being searched.
As we continue to see changes in technology we can be sure that the search engines will continue to advance search by building upon the tools already in place. Local search optimization will become more and more competitive as businesses learn of its importance. Just think … this is just for Google.
Have you used the Nearby search tool? Has this been useful? If not, will you use it?
photo credit: Casey Florig
