by Jack Deal

Created on: July 31, 2008

Throughout the depressing news on oil, foreclosures, credit, jobs and stocks; there has been little attention paid to search technology, which is quietly changing our sense of community and the way we do business.

Several trends suggest local search is not just a fad but a tsunami. Each day more and more local searches conducted. Yahoo estimates their local searches have grown by 76% in just 12 months.

This spike in use is partly due to users becoming more skilled at using local search to find exactly what they want. Search logs reveal users are adding more modifiers or attributes to describe more specifically what they want. And they are finding it.

All of this is resulting in a huge fragmentation of the Internet from global to local to niche and hyper-niche. These local niche sites or "tail sites" are popping up to meet consumer demands for more information and direct access to local markets.

Additionally more searches are being done per individual. Yahoo reports their user logs show average user local queries up from eight to twelve per month. These statistics are showing that users are finding what they are locally searching for.

The good news for local businesses is that they can now market in areas outside of their immediate location. The bad news is outside competitors can do the same thing.

Businesses can now create promotional campaigns that can compliment an online experience with an in-store experience; or combine a virtual experience with a real experience. This double barrel approach using both real and virtual appears to be the current hot ticket.

It's called ROBO: Research Online, Buy Offline and it is the true tsunami. The trends are also showing online research often leads directly to an onsite office or store visit.

On high consideration items like cars, fully 89% of all buyers research online before making their new car purchase.

While only 10% of actual purchases are made online; 90% are still made offline. Still, that 10% represents $500 Billion dollars in sales.

Small retail merchants are also complaining about a reverse threat to their businesses: ROBO Reversed. Customers will come into their stores to see and feel a product and then go home to their computers and buy it cheaper online.

Another growing trend is the coming together of local markets and social networks, like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

With a burgeoning presence of smaller and smaller businesses on the web, local business marketing is seeing a rapid shift away from radio,

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