An article by Search Engine Land reports on recent US research looking at local search behaviour and how this has changed in recent years. The survey analysed the actions of around 2,000 consumers who were looking for a local service and found that most (72%) would prefer finding products and services via search rather than having ads 'pushed' to them. A similar number - 73% - said that they were exposed to too many ads and, of these, an huge majority of 91% said they would prefer using search compared to having ads sent or pushed to them.

The sample was an Internet-savvy group - over 80% saying that the Internet was 'vital' to their lifestyle - and search engines were rated the top resource for finding local business information when looking at the share of different resources used. 74% had used search engines, compared to 65% using printed Yellow Pages and 50% using Internet yellow pages. Other sources used were traditional newspapers (44%), print white pages (33%), television (29%) and consumer review websites (18%).

There are more results from the survey reported in the article.