More small businesses planning Web presence, study says.

Seventy percent of small businesses have or will have an online presence by the end of this year, a big jump from the 35 percent that had a site in October 2002, a study says.

"Clearly, small businesses realize the importance of establishing an online presence and leveraging the Internet as a way to reach new customers," says Rich Riley, vice president and general manager of Yahoo! Small Business. "Yahoo! helps small businesses take advantage of this opportunity by offering a comprehensive suite of services including Web hosting, business email, ecommerce functionality and online marketing."

The Yahoo! Small Business survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that 35 percent of small businesses feel that a Web site is pertinent to expanding their business. Thirty percent said having or obtaining dedicated business email was important, and 30 percent said increasing efforts in online advertising was important. Most respondents (94 percent) said they felt small businesses have a "moderate" to "large" effect on the country's economic growth.

Some experts say that Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and eBay are becoming the biggest vendors to small businesses and that they won't be independent.

"They’re the providers to small businesses. Yahoo! is something like 10 percent of the small business Web hosting market. They’re the largest player. eBay is 430,000 small businesses -- which is again about 5 percent of the total number of small businesses determined by the Small Business Administration," CNET's Esther Dyson told iMedia in a recent interview.

"You know, suddenly, small businesses can get online and market, because every small business person in his or her secret life is also a consumer. And so they get marketed to online, they get email campaigns, they buy things off the Internet, they see ads -- and suddenly all these tools are accessible to them, not through some big business vendor like SAP but through all the same old things. Through Google, through Yahoo!."

The Yahoo!/Harris study found that more online businesses expect to experience growth than those that aren't online. About two-thirds of respondents predicted their annual revenue will increase this year, and 75 percent have an online presence.