As a mid twenties, married, home owning professional, i like to think that i am most organisations target audience.
This makes it fairly easy for me to get inside my head as a target audience.

As i tell every person i meet, my primary source of information relating to products and services is the Internet.
My FireFox homepage is Netvibes where i hook up to all of my news and industry information via a ridiculous number of RSS feeds, my second tab is Gmail and right there next to it is Google.

News, Mail, Google.

So if i am looking for information on, well, anything, i head to tab number three. If i can't find you there, then i am sorry i just don't know about you.

However!

Recently the big three, Yahoo, Google and Windows Live Search have launched or updated their online mapping offerings and as previously reported Google has finally launched Local Business Listings for Australia.

As soon as i saw this feature launched i was straight onto the site to register us, Cyberdesign Works, for a listing. Whilst i was there i thought i would check out what else is our there in the Local Search arena.

Yahoo!7 run localsearch.yahoo.com.au I am not entirely sure where the get their listings from (it looks like Truelocal.com.au) but i did find us already listed which was nice.

Windows Live Local whilst it looked good i could not find how to get listed. Hopefully my "help" email to Live Search will yield a response.

There are also other great local directory sites such as:

Street-directory.com.au
Truelocal.com.au
Not to mention good old Yellowpages.com.au
DLook.com.au also provides free business listings however minus the map and direct link to your website. Their group qouting facility makes up for this by allowing you to source qoutes from a number of businesses in a single form. Links and an improved profile are available via upgrading your listing.

In discovering these resources of localised business listings, for me, it makes it even more important for the businesses and services that i am searching for be listed. Now because i can, i want to get a map, so that i know exactly where you are located, i want to know your opening hours because there is nothing more frustrating than arriving just on closing time or getting a recorded "our office is currently unattended", and i want to know if you will accept my card. Then once you have passed all of those tests i will check out your website where i want to find what i am looking for, and the price if possible.

For businesses that rely on walk in or area specific traffic it just makes sense to able to be found in a local directory, and as a great supporter of community (or is it just laziness?) I would much rather buy locally, so get listed!


NOTE: Yahoo!7 also provides a great little service called Yahoo!7 Fuel Price Watch, listing the cheapest petrol in in Australia. An invaluable service seeing as everyone us jacking up prices "due to the cost of petrol".

Have a play with Mobile Maps and Local Search as well.

UPDATE - Thanks Meg for picking up my oversight of DLook.com.au
If anyone has a suggestion for alternative Local Business Listing sites please let me know so that i can update this list.