{"id":17572,"date":"2014-12-15T13:57:13","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T17:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=17572"},"modified":"2014-12-16T11:41:33","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T15:41:33","slug":"apple-can-local-search-embedded-in-spotlight-as-a-default-move-the-needle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/15\/apple-can-local-search-embedded-in-spotlight-as-a-default-move-the-needle\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple: Local Search Embedded in Spotlight as a Default – Can it Move the Needle?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"walkingsdeadinfo10290124\"<\/a>
More than one ambitious player in local has joined the walking dead in their battle with Google.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Google has long been the top dog in local search. Along the way they bested IYPs, Driving Direction sites and Mapping companies. Google left more than a few, like CitySearch and\u00a0Yahoo Local, among the walking dead and severely limited the growth options for the likes of \u00a0the Groupons and Navteqs of the world. They have gone mano a mano to all comers.<\/p>\n

It isn’t clear that this has resulted in great income but it has resulted in their dominant position in the local search market. And has put them in a position to send significant traffic to local merchants.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mac Yosemite Desktop Local Search via Spotlight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recently though there have been a number of orthogonal “attacks” on Google’s\u00a0long dominant position in the local market. Apps and the on demand marketplaces have become high growth areas and potentially threaten<\/a> Google’s\u00a0place in Local.<\/p>\n

And Amazon seems very interested in local. They have\u00a0created<\/a> a\u00a0\u201clocal services\u201d marketplace, are\u00a0experimenting<\/a> with local grocery deliveries and have\u00a0developed<\/span>\u00a0a Grubhub local take out competitor.<\/p>\n

But what about direct competitors in the space?<\/p>\n

Facebook has rapidly become<\/a> a dominant review site but seems to have otherwise ignored<\/a>\u00a0local search even when it would be obvious to include it.<\/p>\n

\"iOS8<\/a>
iOS8 Spotlight Local Search surfaces both places and apps as well as web searches from Bing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Apple on the other hand has been making a slow, glacial move on mainstream local search. When Apple released Maps in September, 2012\u00a0there were high hopes for their aggressive entr\u00e9e into Local but the Apple Maps fiasco seemed to push Apple into stealth mode in local search.<\/p>\n

It also pushed Apple\u00a0into serious fix it mode and I doubt that they have the desire to confront that s%$t storm again in Local search.<\/p>\n

But recently we have seen some movement on the local search \u00a0front. Apple opened up to direct submissions<\/a> of business\u00a0listings, expanded<\/a> their local business data partnerships significantly to improve<\/a> data quality, appears to have\u00a0created an inside\u00a0Mapping project<\/a> as well and rolled out <\/a>Apple Pay.<\/p>\n

But their most recent move, again in stealth, seems to me more significant long haul and has the potential to significantly impact\u00a0Google’s monopoly in local search: baking local search into their mobile AND desktop OS Spotlight search function.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

iOS 8 was released to consumers in mid September and\u00a0Yosemite, Apple’s new desktop OS \u00a0was released on October 16, 2014. Both have local search available directly from\u00a0the OS and make local search the same familiar process as looking for a local file, email or weblink. It is intuitive and easy. Not well known, granted but it could become so.<\/p>\n

Apple doesn’t “need” local search nor need to dominate it in the same way that Google does. \u00a0Apple needs local search\u00a0to keep folks using the iPhone and as a way of surfacing apps that service users local needs. They need to deliver customers to local businesses and keep the local powers to be happy. They need to keep developers developing. That is a dramatically different agenda driving them then Google’s of needing to gather everybody’s data and selling it aggressively against ads into the local market. And as such they can put the priority on user experience NOT ads. And like Google they do not need Local to “pay for itself” directly, at least for a while.<\/p>\n

And Apple, given their control of the OS and its default choices, doesn’t need to make local search better than Google’s to compete with them\u00a0the way Bing or Yahoo might. They just need to make it good enough, for now, that users don’t abandon it to a Google app or platform. And, in stealth mode, they need users to slowly adopt it as Apple improves it enough to aggressively promote it.<\/p>\n

As we have learned<\/a> with the Yahoo\/FireFox deal, a default search engine can be a very powerful driver of traffic and marketshare. There are still interface issues (for example\u00a0the arbitrary distinction between Siri and Spotlight) and a head on battle with Google over local search is a tough battle so there are no guarantees.<\/p>\n

Apple though,\u00a0seems to have succeeded in that effort with Maps and it appears that is the direction they are taking with Local Search.<\/p>\n

I am curious if you think that this approach will work for Apple. Will it move the market share needle? Does Google have a true competitor that is making a frontal “attack” on Google’s dominance?<\/p>\n

Screens of the iOS 8 Local Search Experience:<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
A partial search via Spotlight works well and is fast. Mispellings though, have nowhere near the capability of Google to understand and correct.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"2-restaurant-map-view\"<\/a>
If you select “More locations in Maps” you are taken to this Map view with the number one listing highlighted.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"3-restaurant-list-view\"<\/a>
List View selected from the Map<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Listing information is as least as rich as Googles when Yelp has the photos. It is necessary to leave the screen to read more reviews in the Yelp app.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google has long been the top dog in local search. Along the way they bested IYPs, Driving Direction sites and Mapping companies. Google left more than a few, like CitySearch and\u00a0Yahoo Local, among the walking dead and severely limited the growth options for the likes of \u00a0the Groupons and Navteqs of the world. They have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-plus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17572"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17605,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17572\/revisions\/17605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}