– 60% of activity online is one way or another “related to local content” (Google 5/03)- For every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, another five or six are going to offline purchases that are influenced by online research (MIT Technology Review, April 2005, “E-Commerce Gets Smarter“)
- 97% of Internet users in the U.S. gather shopping information online, and of those consumers 51% explicitly characterize their behavior as “Shop Online, Purchase Offline” (NPD Group) Internet users are looking for “Local” businesses”
- 117 million Internet users accounted for over 3.7 billion searches conducted on the Internet in the month of August 2004 (comscore qsearch, 01/2004-4/2004)
- 25% of ALL commercial Internet searches are conducted by users looking for local merchants (Kelsey-Bizrate 2004)- 35% of ALL searches are “local” (DM News)
