As a leading Digital Marketing and Local Search Association, Siinda is strongly interested in exploring the influence of the new DMA legislation posed by the European Union concerning SMBs and their providers through local search.
Near Media and Siinda assessed how consumers searched for kitchen remodeling professionals, how consumers evaluated the results presented by Google, and what elements of a business’s digital presence received the most engagement.
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Among the questions we sought to answer:
What search result interface types received the most engagement, and by extension, did the local search interface elements introduced by Google in response the Digital Markets Act1 receive meaningful searcher engagement?
How widespread is the “zero-click search” phenomenon, whereby a searcher never leaves Google’s own properties before making a decision?
What attributes of a business’s digital presence did consumers mention most frequently as influencing their choice of remodeling professional?
Ultimately, where and how should a kitchen remodeling business prioritize its digital activities?
To answer these questions, we recruited a panel of 300 German, French, and Irish consumers, split equally by country and across Desktop and Mobile devices, presented them with a home services search scenario, and analyzed and aggregated their narrated behavior in their native language:
You’ve wanted to remodel your kitchen for a long time and you’re finally going to get started on it this summer. You’ve decided that it’s too big a project to take on yourself and you’re going to hire professionals for the job.
You decide to search Google to help find professionals for your project.
Browse and click any results you’d like. Please “think out loud” as you search and describe your thoughts and reactions.
We loaded the default Google.com homepage in their browsers at the start of the task. We then recorded their screens and audio narration (with permission), and aggregated and analyzed their behavior and decision-making rationales.
Any click was deemed to be a “consideration,” as was any extended lingering on an individual profile with narration that indicated the participant was evaluating that provider.
Google most commonly displayed its Business Profiles in positions 1 and 2, generating 20x the engagement for itself as the DMA-driven Places Sites module generated for Aggregators and Publishers.
Regardless of how localized their results were, consumers in all three countries demonstrated a willingness to scroll deep into the page to find a professional that resonated with them prior to deciding whom to contact first, whether searching in Google Business Profiles or traditional organic results.
Behaviors and specific attributes mentioned by consumers appeared to reflect meaningful differences by country.
There was little evidence of zero-click search in the kitchen remodeling space – in fact, website photos mattered almost as much as customer reviews when it came to choosing a professional to contact first.
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