USA banks are lending less money to businesses and the businesses’ clients are paying their bills slower

The U.S. Federal Reserve said that commercial and industrial loans to businesses reduced by 3% in 2007, dropping from $3.36 trillion to $3.27 trillion, the largest yearly decline since 2001.

At the start of 2008, bank lending to businesses and individuals was at an annual rate of in excess of 10 percent, but by the end of June it had reduced to 6 percent.

Small businesses with less than 500 employees, which employ more than half of the 112 million employees in the USA, have been most severely affected, with tighter lending standards being applied for companies with yearly sales of less than $50 million.

In addition, 73 percent of business owners said that the number of their clients who delayed payment or asked for deferred payment terms had increased.

So USA small businesses are getting less access to credit from their banks and at the same time are being pressured to extend more credit to their clients.

In these conditions our Local Search Directory for USA Small Business is valuable. We provide qualified prospects to over 10 million businesses listed, most of which are small businesses, at no cost to those businesses.

The size of the World Wide Web and the aggressive competition in the USA for market share of search advertising

In 1998 Google had twenty-six million web pages indexed, in 2000, one billion pages indexed, and today one trillion web pages, that is, one thousand million web pages that have been identified by Google.

They are not all indexed since they are not all unique web pages. There is a great deal of duplicate content, but the one trillion pages is after deleting exact duplicates, although many of the balance are very similar.

So obviously, the Google index is very comprehensive.

Search advertising is the prize and Google currently has the bulk of the search market and the advertising that goes with that enviable position.

To compete with Google, Microsoft, the number three search engine in the USA, plans to spend at least $2.5 billion a year for the next few years.

EMarketer says that online ad sales will double to $51 billion in the USA by 2012, so it’s a huge online advertising market that will be shared.

Our USA Local Search Business Directory is a 100% free service for over 10 million USA businesses, and is being progressively indexed on Google so their products and services can be found by consumers on the Google organic search results.

If a business can’t be found easily online, its future is thought to be very limited.

The credibility and voting power of USA small businesses:

The NFIB/Washington SAFE Trust survey reported the following results regarding small business:

The Winston Group said that USA voters prefer political candidates supported by small business by a margin of three times over those supported by organized labour.

CNN/Gallup said 75% of voters trust small business owners more than doctors, who are trusted by 66%, or lawyers who are trusted by 25%.

Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates said 68% of voters think small business owners are more honest than labour unions, who rate 3%, the federal government, which rates 3%, and big business which rates 3%.

Small business owners make up 15% of registered voters in the USA, and with their employees this number increases to 43%.

Our USA Business Directory has over 10 million businesses listed, the vast majority of which are small businesses.

As the USA economy experiences difficulty, the 100% free nature of our directory is appreciated by those small businesses who are finding the current times a little tough. They are being sent qualified prospects with no cost to them.

The Google click inflation rate and its continued dominance in search advertising

Efficient Frontier Inc. reports that Google’s Adwords rate increased by 13.8% in the second quarter of 2008 compared to the second quarter of 2007. The rate increased 5.6% for Microsoft Live Search and reduced by 7.3% for Yahoo.

For every new dollar spent on search advertising in the second quarter of 2008 compared to the second quarter 2007, Google took in $1.10, Yahoo Inc. lost 9 cents and Microsoft Live Search lost 1 cent.

Google secured 77.4% of total search engine spending in the second quarter of 2008, an increase of 2 percentage points over the previous year. Yahoo lost nearly 2 percentage points, with 17.8% of total spend while Microsoft Live Search remained at 4.8%.

The continuing increase in the cost of Adwords is a reflection of the desirable and competitive aspects of being found on the first page of Google searches.

This makes our USA Local Business Directory very valuable for businesses, as it observes the web 2.0 principle of being completely free of charge.

It is indexed on 440,000 pages of Google, enabling businesses to be found, at no cost to them, in the Google organic search results, which produce 8.9 times the number of clicks that occur on the sponsored links.

Google's search market share continues to increase

Based on a sample of 10 million internet users in the USA, Hitwise just reported that Google's share of the USA internet search market was now 69%. Yahoo's share was 19%, Microsoft's was 5% and Ask's was 4%.

Google had a 60% share in July 2006 and the growth in its share has been consistent since that time, taking search market share from the other three.

Google and Yahoo now have an agreement for Google to provide ads on Yahoo and this agreement is being aggressively contested by Microsoft in hearings in Washington currently. The agreement will not take effect until it has been cleared by the Justice Department.

Since our USA Local Search business directory is mostly found by consumers and businesses on Google searches and is partially funded by Google ads, the outcome of the dispute is meaningful to us.

Internal legal advice not to take action against Google was ignored.

In a Federal Court test court case, in Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued Google, for breaching the Trade Practices Act, by the use of Adwords, claiming there was not a clear distinction between organic search results and sponsored links.

However it has been revealed that the Commission ignored its own internal advice which was not to take action against Google.

Google said that no complaints by users of Google searches had been provided by the Commission.

The Judge's decision was reserved.

This is an important case since the precedent set in Australia could be applied in the USA and elsewhere.

Our Local Search business directory www.usa-local-search.com which is a web 2.0 site, offering a 100% a free service to the businesses listed, uses Google ads to help offset some of the costs of administration, so the outcome is important to us.

Monte Huebsch - Google AdSense partner

Local Search growth with Video Ads

The Kelsey Group http://www.kelseygroup.com/ says that U.S.A local search online video ad revenues will increase from US$10.9 million in 2007 to US$1.5 billion the end of 2012, a compound annual growth rate of 167.8 percent.

Kelsey anticipates that video ad products will command 11.6 percent of the online advertising budgets of SME businesses by 2012.

Kelsey says 62 percent of consumers surveyed said they had seen an online video ad, an increase from 59 percent in 2007.

Of those consumers, 47 percent went to a web site, 19 percent requested information, 18 percent went to a store, and 16 percent made a purchase.

Our local search business directory at USA Local Search is monetised using Google AdSense. We are now including images ads and with Google's new Ad Serving platform, we are making changes to accommodate "rich media ads" including video.

We have taken the advice of the Kelsey research so we stay current with internet user trends and reality.

Monte Huebsch CEO