The industry is abuzz with local search news—Google and Yahoo! continue to improve and add functionality to their local search engines. Then there's A9.com, AOL Local, MSN Local, Citysearch, Ask Jeeves Local… everybody's offering local search.

This isn't happening in a vacuum—there's a very real demand for local content and local business listings.

Consumers want it. According to The Kelsey Group, 70% of U.S. households now use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services. Findings also suggest the Internet is poised to surpass newspapers as a local shopping information resource.

Yes, the demand is there—the problem is, the supply isn't.

It's estimated by the Kelsey Group and ConStat's Local Commerce Monitor that only 48% of small businesses who advertise have a Web site. Lester Chu, vice president of marketing and strategic planning at Verizon, believes that 60% of all businesses don't have a Web site. You do the math.

Since most small businesses are nowhere to be found online, consumers are forced to turn back to those darn heavy Yellow Pages. Which begs the question… why aren't more small businesses online?

Consumers Hungry for Everything Local

The technology is in place and getting better every day. Consumers are HUNGRY for the information. And it's STILL not there! Why?

This has really been bugging me. When I started beating the local drum 3 years ago, local search was nowhere. In fact, the term "local search" didn't even exist.

Now we have all of these wonderful tools at our disposal, just begging for people to use them. For example:

• Amazon's A9.com offers a Click-To-Call service to local businesses free of charge (as of summer 2005)
• Google allows any local business to create and display a business listing for free
• Yahoo! offers a FREE 5-page website to any local business

These are all tools that ANY brick-and-mortar business can use, with or without a website, for free. Amazing!

How could small business owners not know about this stuff, you may ask? Everybody's talking about it… online. Plenty of articles are being written about it… online. Webmasters gather and pontificate about who is doing what, this PPC, that CPC, blah, blah, blah…online.

But in the offline world, in the dirt world where they live, do small business owners know about local search? Do they even know what it is?

Even if they know about it, do they fully understand that local search and the Internet can put real dollars into their pockets?

Ahh… and therein lies the rub. No, for the most part, they don't.

And here's the kicker: They don't even KNOW that they don't know.

Small Business Cautious and Confused

Small biz owners are a busy bunch, and after all the hype and fallout from the "dot bomb" era, most seem to be saying "show me the money" before jumping into the fray online.

Even the ones who think the Web has potential are scratching their heads, wondering how to get their arms around it. They're bewildered by all of the options, offers, and snake oil, and of course, the confused mind says no. We may live and breathe the Internet, but to them, it's all smoke and mirrors.

So, we have a growing consumer audience and a local business population that is reluctant to put forth the effort to go after them. Either they don't believe the market is there, they're too confused to know what to do, or they don't have a clue.

So what's the answer? Heh. I'm sorry to say there's no simple solution. In much the same way that the telephone became not a convenience but a necessity, the need for an internet presence will become obvious over time. Those that get it will flourish. Those that don't, won't.

Right now, the best thing we can do for small business owners is to go where they are (offline) and give them the knowledge they desperately need, even if they don't know it.

Help them move from not knowing that they don't know, to at least KNOWING that they don't know.

Encourage them to take baby steps onto the Web—get listed on local search (it's free), build a simple website, collect customer email addresses, etc.

Everything else will come in time.

    --Sharon Fling is the author of "How to Promote Your Local Business on the Internet" and creator of GeoLocal.com, a portal on the subject of local search and internet marketing for small local business. For more information, visit http://www.geolocal.com or http://www.geolocal.net