What Questions Do Users Ask In Local Searches?

The research is pretty clear and stable, whether looking at consumer surveys or website analytics. The first place goes to these three pieces of information:

• Telephone number
• Address
• Business hours

More than two thirds of all users searching for a local business name are interested in the phone number, address and business hours of the company (Source: Local Search Usage 2012 ). It should be clear that mobile and local users need this information in a prominent, noticable and immediately visible location on the site of a local business.

It’s important that this information, in the view of the user, is not solely on the company website. Industry directories, review sites like Yelp and Angie’s List and social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are all possible results from a local industry search query.
On top of that, this type of core information about a local business should be current throughout the Internet. These “local citations” create – even without a link – an important factor in consolidating good Google rankings in local search optimization. Potential customers can’t contact much less patronize local businesses if the core data isn’t correct! Incorrect, out of date or missing information is a sure-fire way to lose interested customers.