WebProNews

For the moment, never mind the "world wide" aspect of the Web.  A whole lot of any business's customers are likely to come from its home region, and so a PubCon session called "Local and Mobile" search took a look at ways in which companies can best serve these nearby individuals.

(Coverage of PubCon continues at WebProNews Videos.  Stay with WebProNews for continued coverage from the event this week.)

Alex Porter, a vice president at Location3 Media, suggested taking advantage of map pages to reach customers locally.  He believes that best-case optimization - achieved by tweaking a lot of database entries - can grant a business control of 80 percent of all local searches.  It's a simple, cheap solution, although at the same time, Porter said that people need to make sure their business listings don't get "hijacked."

Bill Mongovan, a vice president at Omniture, then stepped up to talk about creating customized landing pages based on searchers' locations.  He thinks there will be a boom next year in mobile search conversions, and that progress on this front will be a key contributor to the trend.  Analyze the matter as you go, so that you know how many people are reaching you from mobile phones.

The owner of Infuse Creative, Gregory Markel, finally wrapped the session up by confirming what some of the other speakers said.  Since so many searches are conducted on the iPhone, one of the more accessible advanced phones, continual improvements in phone technology should lead to a huge mobile search market. And getting acknowledged by Google Local Listings is, according to Markel, a great way to get your foot in the door.