A bloggers view on search in Europe: Martijn Beijk

Wed 17 December 2008 16:57, Martijn Beijk

[Editor]Searchcowboys is happy to introduce yet another blogger to you. Today we like to welcome Martijn Beijk to our team of bloggers. Martijn Beijk is a SEO Consultant at Onetomarket, the Netherlands, with an expertise in Local Search Optimization and mapping products.

Until recently he spent almost a year working in Barcelona with Onetomarket Spain, discovering the Spanish market. You can frequently find Martijn blogging on his blog about Local Search, the Onetomarket Blog, marketingfacts and from now on also here on Search Cowboys.

Why do you think Local Search is important?
My curiosity in Local Search started to grow after developing products with Google Maps and becoming interested in everything that is geo-related, context-aware or location-based.
With the introduction of Universal Search and mobile devices that are location aware it is clear that Local takes an important role. It is interesting to see how much you can gain by putting a little bit effort into some local optimization.

“Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. “ and “the best locally relevant results served globally. “
This is not something to ignore, this is something to adhere! Local Search Optimization differs a bit from regular SEO as the emphasis lays more on locally relevant keywords, structure, reviews, local link-building and citation gathering.

What’s the difference between Europe and the US in Local Search?
To make it simple the US market is big, basically it comes down to one language, one country and big authoritative local directories like Yellow Pages, City Search, Localeze, Yelp and others. These are also the main information providers for Google Local (now Google Maps), MSN and Yahoo Local.

Google’s market share is up to 95% in some countries in Europe. This is where a big difference is. Focus in Europe is on Google or other local authorities (qype, ilocal, 11870, yellow pages). Yahoo and MSN local business support is poorly developed in Europe or doesn’t even exist at all.

The other way around, Google in Europe focuses more on data provided by user data or small trusted sources instead of big Yellow Page directories and the most important reason for this might be the slow update cycle.

So where you would focus more on the big data providers in the US, in Europe it would be wise to use the Google Local Business Center as your first step into the world of Local Search. Each business needs a different strategy but all include onsite and offsite local optimization. The big challenge occurs when you are trying to optimize for fields of service instead of real physical locations and sometimes you have to get really creative!

<Google testing Suggest in Germany

German online marketing fair OMD...>

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