As our Managing Director, Matt Hopkins said the other day "Local search is the Next Big Thing". The curious thing is that whilst everyone agrees it seems to be a slow burn and not a quick one.

Back in July it was reported that the majority of searches have local intent and then in August that local search is growing faster than traditional search.

The strange thing is that despite Google's foray into mobile search offerings and Yahoo's Sponsored Local Search listing availability, small business owners in the UK are still not quite catching on that they can use the internet to promote a business locally.

Still, as I recently pointed out optimising now will get you ahead of the competition. Local searches are not competitive in the same way as the big terms, and the visitors will be highly targeted.

Search engines are getting better all the time at targeting locally, whether you call it personalised search or whatever. Apart from the odd hiccup, such as the Google Local Search Bug we found, which is now fixed. 

We've previously blogged on Local UK SEO Directories You Should Consider, but increasingly, the review data carried by the search engines is being aggregated too - check out the list of local directories used by Google Maps for review data  that was researched by Miriam Ellis.

In my search for UK information on the local search market, I came across this comprehensive article on local search engine optimisation tips from Marketing Guy - practically the other end of the UK from us in Edinburgh.

I also quite liked the Abingdon hotel comparison done by Kevin Gibbons of SEOptimise, it demonstrates quite well that local SEO in the United Kingdom is not done to any great extent, and therefore good search engine friendly websites are getting a traffic boost over their local competitors

For some detailed insight see GrayWolf's Local Search Interviews mostly US-centric, but some principles still apply.

You might also find Andrew Shotland's local search predictions for 2008 an interesting read, although I think the UK is behind in some areas - except for point 2 - we already exceeded 80% of search clicks in the UK from Google last September.

And if you get really keen on gaining local search share, you could always try some extreme tactics!