In fact, mobile browsing has shot up 45 percent from August 2007 to 2008, according to the second annual Local Search Usage Study from TMP Directional Marketing, conducted by comScore. Overall, the study found that one in five local business searches are done with these devices.

"We can expect mobile Web penetration and engagement to keep rising as connection speeds increase, data plan prices decrease and smartphones become more mainstream," said Serge Matta, senior vice president of comScore.

Other findings:

• Americans go online 31 percent of the time to research details of a particular business, a slight increase from 30 percent in 2007. Print Yellow Pages searching slipped from 33 percent to 30 percent.
• After an online search, consumers contact a business by phone 39 percent of the time or visit the business in person 32 percent of the time. Last year's results showed consumers just as likely to visit a business as they were to contact that same business by phone. (The shift could be a result of higher gas prices, comScore stipulated.) Just 12 percent of consumers followed up a search by contacting the business online.

Study results were derived from on an online survey of 3,000 respondents.

Try this:

Now that you know consumers are heading online to look up local businesses, start working on getting your shop listed at the top of search pages.

About 90 percent of people will just rely on the first 10 items that come up after a search on search engines like Goggle or Yahoo, says SAF's chief information officer, Renato Sogueco. "The trick is to get your business to be in that top 10," he says. Basic, but proven techniques include relevant keyword suggestions, keyword placement on the actual Web page (headers, body text, etc.) and linking to outside sites.

Source: SAF

St. Clair County recently invested $3.3 million on the airport's warehouse, including $900,000 to buy and install refrigeration units and $2.4 million for specialized equipment for loading and unloading flower shipments.

The flowers from Colombia and Ecuador temporarily will be held in 19,000 square feet of the airport's 163,000-cubic-foot refrigerated warehouse space. It was the first of weekly floral shipments scheduled to arrive every Thursday.

The arrangement is the result of Fresh Connections, a joint venture among logistics firm Teqflor, management company Mission Cargo and wholesale floral distributor Baisch and Skinner. The partners will begin making shipments to 40 percent of the U.S. perishable flowers market from the airport next to Scott Air Force Base in Mascoutah.

Manufacture processing products from the Midwest will then be flown from the airport to Miami International Airport, where the cargo will then he flown by Arrow Air into Central America and South America.

“This targeted acquisition significantly strengthens our proprietary flower cuttings portfolio and broadens our offer to growers with two new crops. The Yoder brand is highly recognized in the flower industry and their Chrysanthemums and Asters stand for top quality genetics“, said Robert Berendes, Head of Business Development at Syngenta.

The acquisition includes all rights to Yoder’s Chrysanthemum and Aster genetics and breeding programs, as well as the Yoder brand name, and will involve some 150 employees joining Syngenta.