The latest report from Google's analysis arm, Think With Google, considers how local search drives consumer engagement on smartphones, computers and tablets.
Titled "Understanding Consumer's Local Search Behavior," the research was released in collaboration with IpsosMediaCT and Purchased, who surveyed 4,500 respondents and 653 users' smartphone searches respectively.
An overview of the results:
- 4 in 5 respondents use search engines for local information
- 50% of users who searched for a specific store on a smartphone visited that store within a day
- 34% of users who searched for a specific store on a tablet/computer visited that store within a day
- 18% of local searches led to a purchase within a day while only 7% of non-local searches
- 4 in 5 consumers want ads targeted to their zip code, city and/or immediate surroundings
- More than 60% of users want local information in ads, such as phone numbers and addresses
With 88% of users searching for local info on smartphones and 84% on a computer or tablet, there are a variety of searches occurring. Each of these searches show how important updated and digitally available information is.
As far as intent, here's how the consumers responded.
The use cases for smartphone vs computer/tablet continue to be defined by the ultimate portability of the smaller smartphone. This result is consistent with the ongoing narrative that local search is the most valuable end-of-funnel tool for local businesses to convert travelers and passer-by.
Another result confirms this mobility/smartphone usage: 1 in 3 searches on smartphones occur right before the consumer walks into the business.
The research is obviously geared towards increasing the appeal of using Google's AdWords product to advertise to local searchers, as it suggests "using radius bidding," or the ability to target a user within a particular radius of the business, to create an "attribution model" for search conversions.
The following figure shows why - although, quite surprisingly, there's still a sizable number of smartphone searches being conducted for businesses further than 5 miles.
Conventional thinking would suggest a far larger percentage of 5+ mile searches on computers/tablets (while consumers are in research/inspiration stage) and far fewer on smartphone (while consumers are on the ground closer to the businesses).
Five miles is quite a large figure - far more than someone on foot searching for a business would generally cover - so this offers some food for thought.
The most promising results from this research is that consumers are very much amenable to customized-to-location advertising - decried by privacy advocates while highly desired by both advertisers and those selling ad units.
The full report can be downloaded here.
NB: Local magnification image courtesy Shutterstock.