Marketers with listings ranked at the top of search results pages receive much more traffic to their sites than those just a spot below, according to a new study.

The research found that Internet traffic decreases as keyword rankings drop. Overall, a top ranking generates 10 times the traffic as a spot at No. 10, according to the study. Traffic was found to drop 10 percent for each drop in rank.

Like my father is fond of saying, "Second place is just the first one to lose!"

Ask Jeeves is a search engine that should have faded slowly into the night during the dotcom bust, relinquishing its space to Google, Yahoo and others. But, it didn't! Ask Jeeves survived and is now thriving. The company has reached a point of consistent profitability, and is positioning itself take on its rivals.

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The good news for all search engine marketers is that there is a window of opportunity until September 30 to purchase or renew your Ask Jeeves Site Submit subscription. If you don’t act before September 30, you may be unable to secure this low cost paid inclusion offering. The countdown has begun!

With Site Submit, your content can be found throughout the Teoma search partner network, including sites such as: Ask.com, Teoma.com, Metacrawler, Excite, MyWay.com, Mamma.com, Hotbot.com, and Search123.com. (Forgive me for not hyperlinking all those. I didn't have the time. Right-click, copy, and paste always works.)

According to Entrepreneur.com, one of the most exciting new developments on Yahoo! and Google is local search. Surfers can limit their searches to neighborhood businesses, and businesses pay only for clicks from local customers.

Making the largely national and international medium relevant to local businesses has been tried before. But this works like you wish the Yellow Pages would and could truly open the Internet to millions of local businesses.

If you are a brick-and-mortar business, you need two things: a search engine optimized website, and some savvy search engine marketing to bring that local traffic to your door. (Oh, and a blog wouldn't hurt either!)

I contend that more and more people will use, as many already do, the Internet like they used to use the Yellow Pages, to find local businesses. With both Google and Yahoo! entering the fray by providing local search capability and regionally-targeted paid search, I'd say the trend is certainly gaining momentum.

One upstart directory that has garnered my attention is FindLocalWebSites.com. It's a fairly new Internet directory that uses a Yellow Pages approach.

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