Thanks for Sphinning my article Alan!

I said this to Mike via private email -- it's interesting, but the percentage of searches that anyone would actually do at a state level is tiny. You might want "montana campgrounds" or "oregon beach resorts," but local search is much more about city and neighborhood-level searching than anything else.

Agreed - The average user will conduct WAAAY more searches on a neighboordhood or city level and the big "value" in local search will always follow the addage that "the closer the better".

I think the key to what is happening with local search results though is that Google will continue to broaden what returns the results to a hyper local to a much larger level. It definitely has gone beyond city level. Local Business Center users are just going to have to make sure they don't limit there listing possibilities with too many geo modifiers in listings, business titles, categories, or anything else that "sticks" them to one geo modifier. Unless they are only concerned about that certain search.

One thing that is fore sure though, Universal results are gainning some major momentum and are going to continue to pick up more and more total search %.

Thanks for taking time to comment Matt!

Guys:  I commented on Mike's article at SEJ.  There is definitely traffic out there.  Some of our businesses see good quantities of that traffic.  It depends on the service/product.   I've also researched volumes of traffic for products/service names for different states and its major cities.  Volumes differ by many factors.  I've not looked at enough to give definitive answers as to how much traffic there is either way.

I'd guess though that the traffic is significant enough that Google has created maps to satisfy the search demand.  I'm guessing this expansion of maps for states from some of the Eastern smaller states to a wider number of states is somewhat of an experiment.  I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be doing it though if they weren't seeing the search traffic with state terms.

I think you're right, Matt, although Earlpearl's observations are right, too -- it depends on the vertical, I think, as well as the location. I believe statewide search may be much more prevalent in smaller states like Delaware and New Jersey, than in states like Texas or California.But, as Earlpearl says, the service/product factor in as well. I believe the economic probs of the last years likely increased "staycations", for instance -- and I often do statewide searches for things to do and see as well as places to stay.Mike further qualified in his article by suggesting that people do their keyword research -- so, it should be taken on a case-by-case basis. But, I think that if there's some significant percentage of statewide searches for your keywords+state phrase combinations, it may mean the difference in adding that state name or state abbreviation into tags where I might've otherwise opted to leave them out (in effort to be more relevant to exact match searches).

Well localized search in combination with Googles Favorite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuVSpG-ZdkU) place will really make search more localized as well as mobile. I suspect that Google will try to get closer to "the offline" world during the next year. The only way they can get closer to the end users every day life is also localizing their products.

The search volumes are less relevant as the traffic is better qualified and of higher value. Plus there are neat ways in which you can geotarget duplicate content versions with small changes and rank very well. :)

Haha.  There is no way Matt and I can disagree and both be right.  LOL.  Afterall he lives out toward the West Coast and l live toward the East Coast.  LOL.Wihout revealing which businesses get which kinds of searches....I can tell you there are pretty good quantities of searches using state names versus major city names for some search phrases.  Actually one of the ways to check this is to simply do some phrase searches using Google's keyword tools.I'm sure its mostly a matter of topic.  I know if I lived in the Southwest Corner of Utah and a search for Utah pizza mostly turned up places near Salt Lake City....I sure wouldn't drive 4-6 hours for a slice and a piece of pepperoni!!!Suppose you were searching for a relatively rare type of medical specialty.  That might just be the kind of search that is more beneficial on a statewide basis than a local basis.In any case, we have certain types businesses that get traffic and conversions off of state searches.  We have others for which state phrase searches are pretty irrelevant.  It depends on the type of business.

"we have certain types businesses that get traffic and conversions off of state searches"

Agreed, and I said as much in my comment above. But it's a VERY TINY percentage of local searches overall. Dig through Mike B's big category list and pull out how many you'd ever search for on a statewide basis. It'll be a tiny number.