Local Search Market in India 2011

Local search market in India is a common platform for advertising used by business entities. It has an offline and an online category. Local search space provides a platform to the small and medium scale enterprises to advertise with regards to their products and services through local search engines and print directories such as yellow pages.

The report begins with the market overview section which discusses the online segment of the local search market in India. It depicts the search marketing revenue. This is followed by the offline local search market section that discusses the market size of yellow pages in terms of volume. The report discusses the business models of players in the online and offline segments of the industry.

The report has covered the factors affecting the growth of the offline and online segments of the market. An analysis of the factors driving growth in the offline market includes phone-based local search to dominate and offline local searches being conducted in regional languages. Factors affecting the online segment include proliferation of internet and increasing use of mobile internet. An analysis of the market has identified that profitability for small and local business owners is a common factor driving the growth of the online and offline segment. The factors hindering growth in the offline market include lower acceptance in present corporate culture, global drive towards paperless environment while those for the online category include search engines acting as default sites for local information search, lack of awareness and language barriers, building database around local content.

The key trends analyzed in the market include increase in PE/VC investments, local web directories moving towards mobile platform, providing additional services to the users, players entering into joint venture agreements and mobile service providers entering the domain.

The competition section provides an overview of the competitive landscape of the online and offline market. It includes a matrix depicting a comparison between some major online and offline players with respect to their services. The section provides the online traffic statistics of the players in the market. It also includes brief profiles of major players in the market.