One of the biggest changes for the internet since we all got interested in it in 1995 or so is that it filters information for your geographic location. While we’ve seen how Google allows advertisers to buy adwords based on the geographic location of the searcher, they now are allowing the organic search results to be localized as well.
You can now use the “Show options” link to request that your search results show sites in your area. In the example above, a consumer looking for new tires can select “nearby” to find the sites of local dealers in the organic search results and the adwords are location based, too.
This now puts even more pressure on local dealers to have better internet sites and thereby makes it incumbent upon brand managers to help those dealers with brand friendly content.
Because of broadband connections we now know the consumers’ geographic location without having to ask and can feed content based on that information (that wasn’t the case in the earlier days of the internet).
This is another reason for local advertising dollars to shift from newspaper ads to local Google adword campaigns and to better dealer sites. Think of the dealer site or microsite you provide for him as a newspaper ad that can be seen 24/7 in the local market without having to pay any publication costs.
The challenge is to coordinate the dealer’s site with your brand and all of the other mediums a dealer uses to advertise. The good news is that online adbuilders for dealers can make all of this possible.