We’ve been saying for a while that ‘local’ is going to be one of those ‘next big things’, and the win by Red Beacon at TechCrunch 50 has been something of a clarion call for this. Now a new study from TMP Directional Marketing has come out with some interesting data to back this up.

The study shows that the web generally, but in particular mobile and social network search, are increasingly factors fueling growth in the overall search market. This grew to 21.9 billion total US searches in June 2009, a year-on-year increase of 31%.

In particular 4% of ‘young people’ do their searches for local information on social sites like Facebook. That figure can only grow:

It’s interesting that traditional directories remain strong. Internet Yellow Pages type sites sites gained ground, from 19% usage last year to 21% this year. As you’d expect, print directories declined 3%, but I would have thought flat directory type sites would be going down.

Anyhoo, more interestingly, mobile search is booming, with 32% of searchers with internet-capable cellphones now searching for loca