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.

Applied Web Vitals is a web design and development company. Please feel free to contact us to explore your next design, redesign or site enhancement project.

Even great things come to an end. We’re sad to announce that the long running Myrtle Beach Web Technology Discussion Group has come to an end. With my relocation to Charleston, so goes the group.

Over the course of the past year and a half, I’ve had the great privilege of consulting a number of Myrtle Beach small business owners. And in such a turbulent business climate, the value of our discussions were worth their weight in gold . . . for everyone involved. As a web specialist and small business consultant, my continual education is the value that I pass along . Well, this past year spent with local Myrtle Beach businesses—discussing their website needs, marketing campaigns and branding efforts (among many other topics)—has been a great leap forward in my professional education.

In the next chapter of my career, aptly named “Charleston,” I’ll be firing up a new web discussion group in the Charleston area for small business owners and non-profit organizations. A continuation of the Myrtle Beach incarnation, the Charleston Web Technology Discussion Group will be free and open to everyone, with discussions on topics such as: building and maintaining websites; search engine optimization; Internet marketing and measurement; business blogging; graphic design & do-it-yourself advertising; or wherever the discussion leads…

As always, bring your curiosity and any unanswered web design questions.

The Charleston Web Technology Discussion Group is led by Dominic Taverniti, owner of Applied Web Vitals.

Applied Web Vitals’ latest nonprofit client website is now live. Protect The Human, an Amnesty International special project, was another collaborative effort with Citizen Group, a premier branding and design firm located in San Francisco, California.

We were hired to write and implement the XHTML, CSS and Java Script for this one page special purpose website. The website incorporates the latest standards in usability and web semantics as well as clean, light, search engine optimized code.

Applied Web Vitals is a web design and development company. Please feel free to contact us to explore your next design, redesign or site enhancement project.