Consumers are increasingly turning to the internet to find local businesses where they can buy products or services, according to a recent survey conducted by WebVisible and Nielsen Online.

The survey, which included almost 4,000 U.S. internet users, arrives at startlingly different numbers than a December 2008 survey by Knowledge Networks, which concluded that the Yellow Pages was still the preferred source for looking up a business or service. In the WebVisible-Nielsen survey, about half of respondents said that search engines were the first place they looked when they needed to find a local business. Just 24 percent rushed to the Yellow Pages, and only 10 percent looked to the internet Yellow Pages as a first reference.

The respondents also demonstrated a devotion to search engines as a means of seeking out local businesses; 92 percent of them said they were satisfied with the search engine results, even though 39 percent answered that they were often unable to locate a known business by this method.

The study concluded that consumers were truly looking for businesses with "local intent." 41 percent of respondents said that they included "geographic modifiers" when searching for businesses, for example, by including a specific city before the name of the service they were looking for.