Yellowbook and Yellowpages.com gaining on Google Local?

[Kevin Heisler]

Yellowbook posted impressive traffic numbers +137% in Dec. Yellowpages.com is up, too. They were among comScore's biggest gainers. http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080131-125312

Do you manage Internet Yellow Pages search campaigns for clients? Or do the IYPs go direct?

[CarrieHill]

Originally Posted by Kevin Heisler

Yellowbook posted impressive traffic numbers +137% in Dec. Yellowpages.com is up, too. They were among comScore's biggest gainers. http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080131-125312

Do you manage Internet Yellow Pages search campaigns for clients? Or do the IYPs go direct?

I have mixed feelings about IYPs - I do think they have a place - my concern is their "tactics and deliverables" for the most part. We do feed local business profiles out to various IYPs and do get nice listings and rankings for our travel clients this way. For the most part, we do not buy advertising from the IYP outlets (dex, superpages, etc.) they just don't return on their investment in our experience with regards to high dollar items such as room nights or vacations.

Most of our clients are solicited by the IYPs in some way or another. Mostly they want them to buy into their search marketing "packages" which generally include the standard "submit to the search engines" lines along with "targeted ads on sites in their network" among other things. I really think you have to consider your target market before proceeding. Do you sell liquor in a neighborhood or town or do you sell vacation packages to people all over the world?

I do suggest ALL of our clients have listings in these directories, but actually giving them money for advertising - no. For the most part, and in my experience - we can get amuch better return on investment through AdWords or other paid channels that will drive more relevant and targeted clicks.

Anyone else have experience buying ads from IYPs?

[beu]

I guess there are any number of ways to interpret data. I don't know if it's fair to say any of these sites are "growing" traffic completely on their own or that anyone is closing on Google. I think it's safe to say they are all piggybacking!

It's pretty obvious yellow pages and the like are simply using mom and pop business content from paid ads to drive traffic to their own site via Google Maps listings from Base and/or Local Business Center.

Interesting this trend took off by leaps and bounds shortly after Google Universal began including Maps, Base and Local Business Center results in their main interface. Many mom and pop business queries drive to yellowbook, yellow pages and/or others but as you can see in the URL below all of these results provide the same content.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=e...&iwloc=A&iwd=1

In my opinion, Google could exclude yellow book, yellow pages and or other from Maps, Base and Local Business Center and QUASH all of the above virtually over night.

As soon as mom and pops get "search savy" and start complaining that yellow book outranks their site on Google using their own information that they themselves are paying for, I think one of two things will happen.

1. Either mom and pops will stop buying yellow pages ads so as not to be outranked by their own paid listing resulting in a loss of traffic to yellow sites

or

2. Google will "devalue" yellow listings so mom and pops can rank for their own company's brand terms.

Clearly mom and pops are the most relevant result for their own brand name and not yellow pages. By the way, try yellow pages dot com on your mobile device and then try Google?


Oh well my two cents!

[Reflection]

Thank u for your nice info.

[allstar784]

Something I've noticed, web sites in which I have been detailed as the webmaster, that lead to a way to initiate contact with me have been bought by many IYP sales agents.

I'd say that IYP's are going for the direct hit more or less when their isn't a webmaster or some designated individual handling the web site.

When I used to partner with a hosting company we received countless pre populated e-mails indicated the mass value of being listed in various IYP's the ranking benefits.

I was actually contacted with an e-mail stating, when users look up this company our listing is the first that shows, if you would like an accurate description, please contact (we'll leave him nameless), to upgrade to a paid listing.

I was quite shocked.

[Reflection]

Yes, to update or review a links they need money.

[SEM&YellowPageGuru]

My first post under this new username


I work for a company that has a few IYP sites under its belt. In response to some of the posts I see in this thread:

I dont feel that the IYP sites are "gaining" on google. They are just doing a better job of getting natural page rank on search engines like Google and Yahoo. Overall traffic for IYP's is growing year over year, so is local searches on Google. I prefer to pay attention to ComScore data on the trends in local search vs heresay.

At the Network level (which includes all owned and formally assigned traffic) Superpages.com Network traffic decreased about 2% or by nearly 600,000 Unique Visitors, ending June with 30.2 million Unique Visitors. The decrease is most likely related to the economy. However, this puts Superpages.com at 30 million plus unique visitors for three straight months. No other IYP network has ever achieved that even ONCE.

Yellowpages.com Network decreased about 3% or approximately 800,000 Unique Visitors, ending June with 25.7 million Unique Visitors. Superpages.com Network now has a lead of approximately 4.5 million Unique Visitors over the Yellowpages.com Network.

Yellow Book's network dropped for the second straight month from a high of 14.3 million Unique Visitors in April to a total of 11.9 million Unique Visitors in June. This 2.4 million drop in Unique Visitors over the last two months is a decrease of nearly 17%.

Superpages.com Network is now the 20th ranked Property in the Top 100 Web Properties for June ’08, up from 21st in May ’08. By way of comparison, ESPN is ranked #38 and AT&T is #26. Yellowpages.com Network is now the 29th ranked Property in the Top 100 Web Properties for June '08, back in the top 30 after falling out the previous month.

IYP sites, SEM (paid search such as Adwords, YahooSM, Quigo, etc) combined with local map sites such as Google Maps and Yahoo Maps is the way to approach local search for SMEs.

1. SEO
2. SEM
3. IYP/MAP

This is the proper strategy for local small and medium businesses.

Don't just take my word for it... do your homework.

[Reflection]

Thank you for the above comparison.
I agree with you.
Superpages.com is not only in better position, but also quite helpful for its visitors.