Many people use 'location qualifiers' within their search terms to bring back more local results. How do you search for local results?
There are many different ways of searching to get more local results. I used the example 'Indian restaurants' in a previous article to show how the different local searching methods yielded different numbers of competing websites. One method is to use a location qualifier, such as 'Adelaide,' as part of your search query. Here is a table with the top three location qualifiers for Adelaide:
| Location Qualifier | Number of Searches |
| Adelaide | 5 000 000 |
| South Australia | 815 000 |
| Adelaide Hills | 39 000 |
What Does This Mean?
When looking for local results, many people use the location qualifier 'Adelaide.' Throughout your keyword research you should make sure to analyse terms that include the location qualifiers 'Adelaide' and 'South Australia' and compare the search volumes to normal searches, adjusted to Adelaide's relative size.
How Do You Look For Local Results?
Let me know in the comments below how you look for local results. Maybe you don't use search engines at all, maybe you use online directories or the old yellow pages. Go on, add a comment!
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I think Australia is still coming to grips with local search results.
I'll personally use the geographic qualifier of Adelaide or even suburb names successfully, however as local search listings are few & far between in some areas I'll revert to yellow pages from time to time.
General consensus is that we use qualifying words such as 'Adelaide', 'South Australia', or a suburb name when searching. We find this much more useful than Yellow Pages searches. We've found Yellow Pages results to be unhelpful, and the results listed in an undesirable manner (based on age of listing, as opposed to relevancy).
Although personally I search for "Adelaide" when performing a local search, I also quite regularly use the suburb for example "Aborist Magill". Based on analytics data from a cross section of clients, I find that South Australia or SA is searched almost as often as Adelaide, but it also depends on the type of industry and the reach of their services. Local business is generally Adelaide, rural or state/nationwide is quite often the state.
Luke makes a lot of sense. Google places is the right approach for local businesses.