Online Yellow Pages vs Online Players
The Yellow Pages industry’s online revenues are growing while their print business is shrinking. However, there are plenty of competitors online including businesses who are perfectly capable of marketing their own businesses without using the yellow pages, and many online directory players who are providing better, faster, stronger options to the legacy business directories.
For example, here is how the major YP companies stack up against two popular sites used by local businesses and consumers, Yelp and Craigslist:
It will be interesting to see if the yellow pages is capable of taking the web as seriously as web pure play companies have done. Due to the network effects and community contributions, catching up online is not going to be easy.
April 1st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
So long as online YPs restrict their search responses to only paid advertisers, it’s impossible for me to see much value in using them.
Or are there online YPs now that list ALL businesses whether they paid for a listing or not?
April 9th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Mark, this is a great question to ask the YP you are wanting to use. They should be able to tell you how many people found your profile that lists your information. It could be a major selling point for them.
Also keep in mind the average age of the person using the yp and the online yp.
Most people do not like to perform a search that lands them on a page to do another search. When was the last time you heard a 26 year old say “I found the greatest plumpler at _____ yellow pages or _______yellowpages.com” It does not happen thats why.
You need to know who your customer us and is not and once you know that you will know for sure what demographic you want to hit and what vertical to use to get them.
Good Luck
Mark
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