I’m often surprised at how few people know about local sponsored search. Well, I guess I’m not *that* surprised, given the fact that local sponsored search is a relatively new topic in the world of search engine marketing.

What is local sponsored search?

Local sponsored search is an extension of Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing that gives advertisers the ability to show their ads only to a limited, geographically specific audience.

This is achieved by using the IP address of each person who searches on Google or Yahoo to determine their location. Your IP address contains some valuable, geographically-specific information that allows the search engines to pinpoint your location to your specific county, city, and even zip code. This is made possible because the majority of Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) provide geographic information relating to their IP addresses.

Before local sponsored search was made possible, many localized businesses were not able to show up in the sponsored results for Google and Yahoo. This is because if they were to advertise for keywords on Google and Yahoo, they would not be able to limit their audience; they would be paying to have their ad run nationally! That would be the equivalent to a local bank advertising on a nationally televised program. Not only would it be extremely expensive, it would also lead to a plethora of inconsistent leads! (more…)