It’s pretty clear that Experian Hitwise has a comfortable familiarity with Tom Smykowski’s “Jump to Conclusions” mat, at least in regards to comparing search result accuracy with Google and Bing. It’s either that or perhaps the “online competitive intelligence service” needs another lesson in correlation and causation.

In a recent report discussing Bing’s improved market share — something the tech journalism sector is going wild about, but if I’m not mistaken, 68 percent is far greater than 27.4 — Experian Hitwise made the bold statement that, because Bing users click search engine results 81.54 percent of the time, compared to 65.58 percent for Google users, Bing’s results are more accurate than Google’s.

Experian Hitwise found that Bing’s market share rose from 10.60% in December to 12.81% in January. As we pointed out in a previous post, Bing didn’t simply steal users away from its partner Yahoo, either.

Of course, considering the spat between Google and Bing, and Bing’s use of at least a small percentage of Google’s search engine results, it adds more skepticism to Hitwise’s claim.

As many of you know, the principle idea in “correlation does not equal causation” is one thing does not necessarily cause another, or in the case of Google and Bing’s search result accuracy, one piece of data (more Bing users click the results) does not make bold conclusions true (Bing’s results are more accurate).

Taken at face value, it’s easy to conclude Bing’s results are 16 percent more accurate, but then, when you consider so many more people are using Google to conduct Internet searches, the margin for non-clicks for any number of reasons — incorrect spelling, refining the original search query — is a lot larger than Bing’s.

Furthermore, what is the average experience level of Bing users? If Bing users are comprised predominantly of “Internet noobs,” for lack of a better term, would they not be more inclined to click the first result they saw, even if it was relevant or not? If Google’s users are “more experienced,” would they not be more selective about which results they clicked?

And if that’s the case, doesn’t that mean the overall quality of search results — across the board, not just with Google — need to be improved?

As for Google’s results being less accurate than Bing’s, before making such a claim, much more research is needed: an extensive, side-to-side comparison of multiple queries, not just reliance on how frequently the results were clicked. Another obvious aspect to consider is the user’s experience level. An Internet veteran will not click everything they see; whereas an Internet novice using Bing because they liked their witty “search overload” commercials is not as selective.

In regards to Hitwise’s conclusion, as told via Internet chat lingo, the following statement comes to mind: More clicks != better quality of results.

You need more data to make such a profound conclusion.

One of Bing’s Facebook fans brings up a good point about the search market. Google is simply ingrained in so many people’s online habits, Bing’s biggest challenge is to simply keep Google users from being sucked back into the Google way.

Bing reminded everyone this week that it is still behind in some aspects of search, when it announced personalized search results based on location and history.Google has been personalizing search results based on these factors for quite some time. The announcement doe show that Bing is improving, however.

Meanwhile, as Google’s search quality is repeatedly called into question, one of the biggest things it has going for it is probably the fact that it is indeed a habit for so many people, because it has simply dominated the search market for so long.

Bing has a new weapon in this battle, however. Last year, Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7. Initital sales of the devices that run this platform weren’t too mindblowing. Now, as you may have read, Microsoft has entered a strategic partnership with Nokia, which will see its phone OS being used across Nokia devices. And guess what – Bing will also be used across these devices as the default search.

Habits are a lot easier to break when the default is the alternative. Of course, it remains to be see just how well this partnership will pay off for Microsoft. They are, after all, competing with the likes of iOS and Android, not to mention BlackBerry and webOS.

Maybe you remember a couple of months ago when Facebook accidentally rolled out some changes to fan pages, giving all of us a sneak peek of what was to come. Well, now those changes are actually here.

Throughout the day, I manage and monitor multiple fan pages. I just received a notification at the top of the screen to “preview” or “upgrade” to the new style of fan pages. Upon clicking “preview,” I was given a very useful tour of the changes that Facebook accidentally shocked us with two months ago.

And now I will give you that same tour with some explanations and interjections along the way.

1. Facebook Photos Change

Fan pages will now feature the most recent pictures in a bar across the top of the page just like new individual profiles. This bar will feature the photos added to the wall by the admin or any photo that tags the fan page.

The fan pages that we monitor often receive irrelevant or spam-like photos in the “Fan Photos” section of our page. The good news is that these pictures will not be featured in the bar at the top of the page. Also, as it stands now, individuals cannot tag a fan page in a photo, which prevents spammers from simply tagging multiple fan pages in a picture and as a result, receiving the most prominent space on those pages. I’m glad that Facebook anticipated these issues and prevented this new feature from becoming a spam fest that all admins would have to monitor carefully.

2. Facebook Navigation Change

A big change to the overall format of the fan page is the location of tabs, which are often where we and other marketers host campaigns and special features of the page. Instead of being located at the top bar of the page, these tabs are now available below the profile picture of the page. These tabs now feature an accompanying icon; it will be interesting to see if these icons will be customizable in the future.

Developers are thrilled with the updated model for building apps on Pages announced today, which brought the introduction of iFrames to pages. According to Facebook, “this means you can now build apps that run across Facebook (including Pages and Canvas applications) using the same simple, standards-based web programming model (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS). In addition, you can easily integrate social plugins and the Graph API within your tab.” Basically, developers now have much more freedom in tab creation and greater potential for interaction among fans.

One negative of this new tab location is a less prime real estate position on the page. It will be interesting to compare traffic to these tabs before and after this switch. Also, just as with individual profiles, there is no longer an “info box” displayed below the profile picture.

3. Facebook Wall Filters Change

This new feature is one that I have a problem with as the moderator of a page. Now, instead of posts appearing on the page in chronological order, it seems as if “top posts” and “the most interesting stories” will appear first. These top posts are determined by the number of interactions, which translates to likes and comments. This could make monitoring comments a nightmare because the spam could be hiding at the bottom of the page or it could be displayed prominently if it happens to attract comments and likes from fans. Moderators will have to regularly check deep into the page to ensure that spam or profanities aren’t lurking on the page somewhere instead of simply checking the most recent comments at regular intervals.

Fortunately, admins can still choose a default landing of either “Everyone” or just posts from the admin. By selecting a default landing of admin posts only, moderators can help eliminate the potential prominence of spam.

Luckily, Facebook also has a new feature, a moderation blocklist, in the works to block spam and profanities. Using this blocklist, admins can choose strong filters, medium filters, or none at all. Admins are not allowed to see the words or types of spam associated with each filter. However, admins can tailor the filters by “unmarking” spam that automatically goes into the Spam filter. This Spam filter was instituted in October 2010; it currently catches recognizable spam and places it into a filter only available for admins to view.

4. Facebook Admin View Change

This is the most interesting change for me. Before the switch, an admin could interact as the brand page ONLY on the page itself through comments and wall posts. Now it appears as though admins can log into Facebook as the fan page, which now opens up the possibility for the brand page to interact in the following ways:
Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
See activity from the pages you like in your news feed
Like other pages and feature them on your page
Make comments as your page on other pages

Basically, these changes give the branded page a bigger voice on Facebook by allowing them to interact with other pages through likes and comments. The first bullet point above is an interesting one, though. For pages with a lower number of fans, these notifications will be helpful so that admins can receive a quick reminder and remain active on the page without having to check for comments and interactions throughout the day. However, for pages with a large fan base, these notifications would come in overwhelming numbers, making this “helpful reminder” into an overload of notifications. Can you imagine getting about 500 notifications within 10 minutes of posting a comment?

5. Facebook Settings Change

This change is not too exciting – just a new location for managing admin controls and certain features of the fan page.
Facebook is now allowing admins to preview this feature for the next 4 weeks, but these changes will become mandatory on all pages starting March 10, 2011. Admins should note that after opting to the new version, they will not be able to revert back to the previous version.

In a post on the official Google Blog, Matt Cutts, head of the company’s webspam team said that Google’s search quality is the best it has ever been in terms of relevance, freshness, and comprehensiveness.

“Today, English-language spam in Google’s results is less than half what it was five years ago, and spam in most other languages is even lower than in English,” said Cutts. “However, we have seen a slight uptick of spam in recent months, and while we’ve already made progress, we have new efforts underway to continue to improve our search quality.”

“As we’ve increased both our size and freshness in recent months, we’ve naturally indexed a lot of good content and some spam as well,” explains Cutts. “To respond to that challenge, we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly. The new classifier is better at detecting spam on individual web pages, e.g., repeated spammy words—the sort of phrases you tend to see in junky, automated, self-promoting blog comments. We’ve also radically improved our ability to detect hacked sites, which were a major source of spam in 2010. And we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.”

The post was in response to a lot of talk throughout the Blogosphere lately that Google is losing its edge in search – when it comes to relevancy and spam. Some of this was no doubt fueled by the recent launch of the spam clock from Blekko, which may not be on the minds of much of the general public, but that many influential bloggers in the search space are certainly aware of.

Cutts says it is a misconception that Google doesn’t take as strong an action on spam in its index if the spammy sites are Google ads.

“To be crystal clear,” he says, “Google absolutely takes action on sites that violate our quality guidelines regardless of whether they have ads powered by Google; Displaying Google ads does not help a site’s rankings in Google; and Buying Google ads does not increase a site’s rankings in Google’s search results. These principles have always applied, but it’s important to affirm they still hold true.”

Something tells me Cutts and Google will never convince everybody, but at least they’re being “crystal clear” in their explanation.

Some Google AdWords advertisers are not pleased with what they are finding in Google’s Search Query Performance reports for their campaigns. These reports show advertisers what keyword queries are surfacing their ads, and some are finding some of these keywords questionable.

You might think that an ad impression is an ad impression, but when you’re charged by the click, you want the clicks to come from people who are likely to buy what you’re selling, considering that you are paying Google for each click.

A Wall Street Journal piece has put the spotlight on some of these advertisers, including a New York dentist who claims irrelevant keywords have cost him nearly $3,000 over the last year or so. The problem allegedly stems from Google’s session-based broad match feature, which shows ads to users not only for a single query, but also for subsequent queries in the users same search session.

Google explains the feature in the AdWords Help Center:

“When determining which ads to show on a Google search result page, the AdWords system evaluates some of the user’s previous queries during their search session as well as the current search query. If the system detects a relationship, it will show ads related to these other queries, too.”

“The system considers the previous queries in order to better understand the intent of the user’s current query. The added information allows the system to deliver more relevant ads.”

“This feature is an enhancement of broad match. It works by generating similar terms for each search query based on the content of the current query and, if deemed relevant, the previous queries in a user’s search session. Your ad will potentially show if one of your broad-matched keywords matches any of these similar terms.”

Sounds good in theory, but the advertisers complaining appear to disagree with what Google is considering to be relevant. The dentist from the WSJ story cited “” and “[Chinese characters] in Chinatown” as examples – not exactly dentist-related. The story also cites a plastic surgeon, who counted “olivia newton john photos” among questionable keywords.

The WSJ spoke with Google’s Nick Fox:

Mr. Fox acknowledged there are “edge” cases in which search queries “does not appear to be relevant to the ads, but the context of previous queries indicated that the user would have a strong interest in that advertisers’ ad.” In addition, he said, “a user must be interested enough in an ad to want to click on it.” He said a very small percentage of ad clicks are session-based and that advertisers can limit the scope of their campaign to halt session-based clicks.

..

Google’s Mr. Fox said: “It has to be the case that the users, in the very recent history, searched for terms he’s advertising on.”

It’s worth noting that Google says that whenever an ad is served based on the associated keyword’s relevance to the previous search queries, the ad’s performance has no effect on that keyword’s Quality Score.

It’s also worth noting that not everyone is unhappy with the session-based clicks. Jordan McClements, commenting on a Clixmarketing post on session-based broad match says, “If you are in a niche where there is not much search traffic, and a new client/sale is worth a lot of money to you then it is probably a good idea to keep all your ‘broad’ options open.”

John Lee, who wrote that post, says, “I want advertisers to be aware that in the case of session-based broad match – you can’t turn it off. My recommendation is to remain vigilant in reporting, primarily with Search Query Reports to ensure that the session-based query matches that do come through are relevant. If they aren’t, roll that knowledge (and those queries) into your negative keyword lists.”

Probably good advice.

Perhaps the real question is how much of the problem is Google and how much is the advertiser?

Speaking of negative keywords, Google actually just released a new feature this week to manage negative keywords across multiple campaigns with negative keyword lists.

I started off aiming to write an article about all of the things Google has done over the course of the year, and quickly realized that this would be one massive article, even if I only briefly mentioned everything. So I have decided to split the article up into quarters, so you don’t have to take everything in all at once. Check back for each subsequent article.

I have not included every single Google-related story of the year. That would require a book (and a rather large one I believe) rather than an article. I’ve omitted most of the legal stories and rumors (both of which there have been many in 2010), and tried to stick mostly with actual releases, features, acquisitions, and happenings. Even still, I’m sure there are plenty of things that didn’t find their way into the article(s). Please feel free to add more in the comments. All of that said, it’s been a huge year for Google, even just looking at the items included.

January

Google kicked off the year unveiling the Nexus One (and its ill-fated store), and providing books to the makers of the Alex eReader device. The company shared a proposal for a white spaces database, added chat to Translator Kit, launched the “Near me Now” feature for iPhone and Android, showing nearby businesses by category based on the user’s location, and tailored mobile search suggestions to location. Then it was discovered that Google had applied for approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the right to purchase and monetize energy.

Google Fast Flip became available at the bottom of Google News, “Google” was declared the word of the decade, and Google Friend Connect became available for the Drupal and Joomla content management systems (this could be significant to Google’s social strategy). Google was granted a patent for “Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising” leading to speculation that the company could sell ads on billboard imagery throughout Google Maps Street View. Google Docs began offering the ability to upload files of any type, with a total storage limit of 1GB.

Google was targeted in an attack that led to the whole situation with Google and China that has dominated many headlines throughout the year. Google announced on its blog that it would no longer censor search results on Google.cn. This led to a great deal of back and forth between Google and China.

Google changed its policy on AdWords Display URLs, launched a relief site to help Haiti, following the devastating earthquake, and began letting businesses update Place Pages instantly. Then they let users of Gmail and Picasa use their storage space for any type of file, and revealed factors used for ranking tweets. The company, along with Verizon, submitted an FCC filing talking about “open Internet goals”.

The company narrowed down mobile ad targeting and started digging into past Gmail conversations for ad targeting. YouTube announced it would start renting movies. Google launched “answer highlighting” in search results, cranked up the number of sitemaps allowed, launched cost-per-call tracking for TV ads, introduced personalized suggestions On Google Maps, announced Unicode progress, gave mobile users a link to popular images, introduced click-to-call numbers in ads, made Apps Script more widely available, and added a feature to Google Reader for creating a feed for any site. Finally, Google’s Social Search became more than just an experiment.

February

In February, Google Voice s implified SMS to multiple recipients, Google offered $5.7 million in research funding, and started luring more Google account users with a Google News feature. Gmail search became more like Google search, and Google launched 2 new mobile features for maps, as well as Log Search for the cloud. The company began letting AdSense publishers donate earnings to Haiti relief, began suggesting competitors for local business searches, and ran its first Super Bowl commercial.

Then Google launched Google Buzz, began hosting AP content after a seven-week-long hiatus, and launched the Speed Dashboard for YouTube. Then the company acquired Aardvark, introduced Maps Labs, started using MySpace updates in realtime search, gave $2 Million to the Wikimedia Foundation, and open sourced its “Living Stories” experiment.

Google acquired popular iPhone app reMail, and discontinued it in Apple’s App Store. Then they launched Google Shopper on Android. Google completed its acquisition of On2 Technologies (announced the previous summer), upgraded its ad-serving product for publishers, brought Google Earth to Android, integrated Panoramio with Picasa, improved voice/video performance for Google Talk, started letting users find search results based on location, and bought Picnik.

Also, six features graduated from Gmail Labs, and Google started including Facebook Pages in realtime results.

March

In March, Topeka, Kansas adopted Google as its city name. Google improved click-to-call ads with phone extensions. Google Gesture Search was released to let Android users draw searches. Android got its first Microsoft app. YouTube changed its default size on embeds, and Google open sourced reMail. Google acquired DocVerse, personalized search results more with a new star feature, and launched Public Data Explorer in Google Labs. Google Webmaster Tools got new labs features, Google Maps took steps to improve marker accuracy, and Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace.

Google Maps got biking directions, YouTube got new mobile ads, and Google scored a major Italian book deal. Google product search for mobile started showing when items were in stock, and Google gave Google Wave a push with an extensions gallery. Google launched a tool to help small organizations advertise on YouTube.

Facebook unseated Google as the most-visited site on the web. Google launched Blogger Template Designer and a Buzz widget for Android. The company introduced uncensored results in China and tested hotel pricing in Maps. AdMob launched tools for cross-platform mobile development, and Google introduced AdWords Search Funnels reports and alerted users of suspicious Gmail log-in activity. Google also rolled out a remarketing AdWords feature, added a file transfer option to iGoogle, and gave an AdWords for Mobile interface to advertisers. Google took the limit off AdSense category filtering, and launched “Ad Innovations”. Gmail opened up to apps with OAuth support, and YouTube made changes to video pages.

The business of content farms like Demand Media is creating content in the form of articles and videos that search engines will crawl and feature prominently in the long tail of search results. Demand Media and all content farms’ Achilles’ heel is that much of their Internet traffic and revenue relies on Google. With Demand Media this is a subject that many investors are concerned about because they are about to launch their IPO.

What should be scary for Demand Media and content farms in general is the notion that Google could turn off or drastically turn down the traffic spigot at any moment. Over the years, all website owners held their collective breath upon every Google update of its algorithm, hoping their site would be favored. We have all heard stories of sites that have disappeared from the top Google results for their keywords or have even been removed from the index entirely. This happened to tens of thousands of harmless Internet directories a couple of years ago.

Could content farms be next? And what Google does the other search engines tend to follow, which makes content farms highly reliant on the good favor of Google. A very scary business model indeed!

Could Google possibly make changes to its algorithm that will slow down or even shut down content farm traffic? Well, Google answered this question with an affirmative just last month. At PubCon, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, said, “There is a debate going on internally at Google over whether they should consider content farms web spam.” The key is how Google would determine what a content farm is. Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt says a lot of people think their content is auto-generated. “That’s just wrong,” he says.

So if it is not “auto-generated content,” is it still a content farm?

Interestingly, there have been article submission sites around the Internet for years. The first email newsletter to power itself from article submissions was InternetDay back in 1997. Since then hundreds of article submission sites have launched with some becoming hugely successful companies such as EzineArticles.com.

In recent years there have been many other ventures launched based on the content farm strategy, such as AOL’s Seed.com and Yahoo’s Contributor Network. Barry Diller is also reported to be starting a new content farm called The Writers Network. With all of these big players in the content farm business it may be hard for Google to crack down. Also, since Google makes hundreds of millions of dollars on AdSense from content farms, does this protect them from losing Google traffic?

One thing is certain: the future of content farms depends on Google

Bing introduced a handful of new features. The one that will likely catch the most interest is the extension of its recent announcement regarding Facebook. Now, Bing will start showing you which of your Facebook friends have liked search results as they appear in your searches.

Social (Facebook)

“Starting today, if your search results include a specific link that has also been ‘liked’ by someone in your Facebook network the link will be highlighted as ‘Liked’ within Bing,” Microsoft’s Bing team explains. “This gets especially interesting for a query like ‘Xbox’ where my friend ‘Liked’ the ‘Kinect’ site and while our algorithms didn’t feel it was relevant enough to make it the ‘answer’ we reference above, we are still able to indicate that my friend liked that link that happened to show up within the results.”

This will be one clear advantage that Bing has over Google in terms of regular web search. Google has done a lot involving delivering social results, but Facebook data are THE social results that matter most – at least as long as Facebook is the dominant social site that it is today. With people constantly “liking” content all over the web, this can be a great indicator of relevance on a personalized level. It’s going to catch your attention when you notice your friend appear in the search results.

Bing has been running a similar feature in search results for several weeks, including likes from places like CitySearch, but there should be a much more broad set of potential results that will include “like” info now. It appears the feature may still be rolling out, so if you don’t see the “liked” results, you’re not the only one. I do get a message about it when I search with Bing, but after some testing, I’m clearly not getting these results.

For example, as illustrated by Bing here, I should see when my friend has “liked” a movie on IMDB underneath the IMDB result for that movie on Bing. I have tested this with a specific movie that I made sure one of my friends had “liked” and that “like” did not appear under the result.

Sports Tickets

Bing has also added sports ticket info from FanSnap directly into the search experience, so users can view ticket results from 57 ticket companies, see ticket selection and price ranges, find the best ticket prices, and access a “view-from-seat” feature.

Image Search

Bing has also made changes to how it presents and organizes image search results. “The first thing you will notice is our new Instant Answer that organizes a rich collage of images directly into the main results page,” Bing explains. “Once you click through to the ‘images’ page you will notice that we’ve populated the tabs with the most common search queries associated with a given image.”

“Instead of making you qualify that you’re looking for (Casablanca, Morocco or Casablanca, the movie), we have organized the tabs so that one simple click gets you to what you’re looking for,” Bing adds.

Local

For local search, Bing has added interior views, enhanced OpenTable integration for restaurants, real-time transit and Streetside for Mobile. Bing has partnered with EveryScape Eats, which provides imagery of restaurant interiors. These can be accessed by clicking “step inside” on Bing Local details pages (it utilzes Microsoft’s Silverlight). For now, it includes about 5,000 restaurants, mostly in Boston, but the company will add locations and cities over time. We’ll see if they expand beyond restaurants. Google has already been experimenting with taking pictures inside businesses.

Additionally, Bing users can access local details pages for restaurants that are signed up with OpenTable and search for available reservations from Bing itself.

Bing Mobile on the iPhone now has “up-to-the-minute” data for transit agencies (in Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco so far), and Streetside – Bing’s eqivalent of Google’s Streetview is available on Bing Mobile now. Bing has also made adjustments to its map style and a bunch of other updates to its iPhone and Andriod apps

A slow-loading site is a frustrating site. Would-be visitors won’t stand for delays. So to make your site more accessible, consider using Google’s Page Speed family of tools.

The Page Speed tools include both a Firefox add-on and an Apache module, and they work by running a series of speed tests on a site. Then they deliver performance recommendations. Follow the tips, and you should see more visitors spend time exploring your site.

Google Page Speed

Punch Above your Weight Online – Localised search results have recently experienced a major overhaul within the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) which has resulted in a fantastic opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses.

Local search results were previously relegated to a small map, which would appear within the first page of results, but now they enjoy first page domination for local search terms.

The benefit of this to small businesses is that they can now appear above their much larger revivals who are relegated to the last few results on page one of Google.

Don’t miss out on local search results; they’re your next customers. Here’s 10 tips to help you capture them:

1. Claim your Google Places listing – it’s easy to do and if one doesn’t exist for your business then you can quickly and simply create one. What is it? A Google Places listing is effectively a profile attached to Google’s local search results. It is important because Google ranks these profiles above all others in their new first page local search results.

2. Add pictures to your Google Places listing. The effectiveness of your Google places listing is impacted by its completeness. Images will not only flesh out your listing, but when they appear in the search results, besides your Google Places listing, they are eye-catching and attractive which will increase clicks.

3. Gather citations – citations are instances on the web where your business is mentioned, Google uses the consistency of the information it finds and the authority of the referring site to boost your rank in local search engine results. The quality as well as volume of citations is an important factor in local search engine optimisation.

4. Include your locality in on-page optimisation – revisit your META and Title Tags to ensure your town is included wherever possible. Make sure your address appears on every page and that you have a contact page.

5. Submit your site to local directories including Yell.com, Qype.co.uk, Hotfrog.co.uk, local Chamber of Commerce and business directories. Local directories will have greater relevance in local search as it narrows your field of operation for Google to a localised area.

6. Manage your online exposure – make sure the information distributed across the web that pertains to your business is managed carefully. Trawl local directories and existing listings, double-check that your details are correct and that they match both your Google Places contact information as well as your websites contact page.

7. Get your reviews and testimonials on the web – no doubt you will already have testimonials collected from customers, these need to go online as well as in other marketing materials. Put a process in place of asking satisfied customers to review you online if at all possible. Pen a short email with instructions of where and how you would like the review left and send this to all satisfied customers.

8. Use a local phone number instead of a 0800, 0845 or 0870 – this again refines your location making it easier for search engines to place you within a specific region.

9. Target local keywords – when link building make sure you target some local variations on your keywords in the anchor text of your links.

10. Use your supply network – think about local search as being similar to networking. No doubt you will already have a network of local contacts, associates and suppliers who all allow your business to thrive. Simply transfer this network online by linking to each other.

Local search is set to dominate first page results for all local search terms. Small, local businesses should take advantage of this by implementing some or all of the tips above which will allow them to compete with much larger businesses who have until now monopolised the first page results by investing in aggressive SEO campaigns.