The day has come that search engines edge out Yellow Pages for local business searches. According to a study by TMP Directional Marketing, search engines have taken over Yellow Pages as the more popular way for people to look for local businesses, 31 to 30% respectively.

Worth noting however, the decline in Yellow Pages use from 33% in 2007 to 30% in 2008, resulted in an increase in Internet Yellow Pages use from 17% to 19%. So with that, the 3% lose in Yellow Page use went online with 2% going to going to Internet Yellow Pages and 1% converting to search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Also interesting, despite the advancements in mobile technology, handset functionality and mobile broadband speeds, local search on mobile devices did not see an increase from 2007 to 2008. Curious! I’m not a mobile Internet user, so when I watch TV advertisements and read tech articles, I’m convinced that more and more people are going that direction.

The Take-Away: Local businesses can no longer rely on print alone to get in front of customers. A web presence is increasingly more important as local business search trends migrate to online resources.

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