I’m not a numbers person and I rarely give much importance to raw statistics. I attribute this outlook to a course I once took entitled “How to Lie With Statistics”. It convinced me for all time that numbers can pretty much be manipulated to tell any story you want them to. I’m influenced much more by trends.

Below are some stats that can give us clues to current trends in Local Search. Don’t be disturbed that I don’t tell you where they came from, because it really doesn’t matter. Most were likely manipulated to prove someone’s point.

80% of sales occur within 15 miles of home.

80% of all transactions occur offline.

25% of all local search is performed at Google Maps.

Local terms used in search queries:

• Only 5% of search queries use city and state.
• Only 2% of search queries use neighborhoods.
• Only 1/500th of 1% of search queries use zipcodes.

Market share for the Internet Yellow Pages:

• Superpages 44%
• Yellowpages  31%
• CitySearch 10%
• YellowBook  8%
• Dex Knows 3%

On 70% of local sites, simply having a rating increases your click through rates.