Who’s Looking For You?
October 1, 2009
We’ve been saying here for months that people are looking for restaurants online; it’s estimated that anywhere from 60% – 80% of diners do some form of online research prior to selecting the restaurant at which they will eat. Who are these searchers? Where are they located? What are they seeking? We’ve been doing some in-depth research to get you those answers and more.
A quick look at Google Insights shows us that, of Google users searching for restaurants, the following are the top metro regions where these searchers are located:
What are those searchers typing in to their browsers? Google reports the following as the top 10 restaurant-related searches (remember, these are strictly Google numbers, exclusive of any searches on any other search engines.)
Because the data provided above is very Google-centric and because of the variants involved with each keyword research application, we have compiled specific keyword data utilizing multiple keyword research tools that include the most popular subscription-based and free public tools available to search engine marketers. The findings are enlightening to anyone involved in marketing a restaurant.
The following lists depicts the top metro areas in the U.S. that have logged the most restaurant searches in the top search engines over the past 12 months. Each successive data column to the right of the metro area shows the ranking for that keyword phrase in the keyword research tool listed in the header row of that column. The final column calculates the average ranking in each of the four utilities. We use the average ranking to determine the restaurant search phrase that is utilized the most across search engines.
What are the takeaways from this research? If you own, manage or market a restaurant in any of the cities listed in the table above, you should strongly consider preparing a search engine marketing strategy to place your restaurant in front of these searchers. That strategy should include search engine optimization, local search optimization as well as a thorough review of the restaurant website analyzing design aesthetics and usability.
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