Yellow Book is the Search Engine of the Future… Yeah, Right.

I don't know what is worse - the irrelevance of a phone book in the Internet age or the tacky commercial they created to promote their product.

Let the games begin! I gotta tell you, from a corporate standpoint I have a rough time with just account management. I can not get 1 account manager for the 5 locations I manage - and each one of them keeps calling me. So how is it that I can expect results from a company that can't even keep its own accounts straight? Do you really expect me to take you seriously...

Corey, couldn't agree with you more. Advertising is only part of the equation - it gets your foot in the proverbial door, that's it. YellowBook's traditional business model, one that worked well in the past in regard to revenue (not necessarily efficiency), will eventually weaken unless a completely new model for Search is adopted. Too many bloated, inefficient companies think they can patch, update, upgrade and buy their way into new or emerging markets. Oftentimes, the best approach is one that is brand new.

I dont agree with your comments here. Google and yellowbook.com are two essentially different products. Yellowbook.com offers direct listing information to businesses in a geographic scope by particular product/service headings. Google on the other hand uses key words to generate a results page of indexed references from a database of websites. The problem is that the google index does not always generate returns that are relevant to what the user is searching. For example, here in Charlotte I searched plumbers. The response I got from google listed various site, none of which allowed me to directly find a local plumber that could service my water heater. Yellowbook on the other hand generated results that gave me business listings for local plumbers that could fix my problem. With regards to value of each company, yes google has a lot more revenue. However, I do beleive that both companies have services that offer value to those that use them.

Single Dad... YellowBook also provides listings for individuals. If you do a search for me on YellowBook, I don't exist. If you do a search for me in Google, I am usually found on the first page... or at least within the first 2 pages depending on my competition. YellowBook requires that I pay for my business to be listed. Google does not. I always search Google for local company listings before I search phone book sites. I just did a search for a fence company. I found four fence companies on the first page in Google. My point in this is to show that far more people see value in Google than in YellowBook. Google provides more relevant information. Not to mention that you don't have to pay to be included in their index.

not true, information is picked up from your local phone provider. That is the reason you are not printing in yb. You do not have to have a business line to have a listing in yb. Again, all info from a phone line is generated from the local phone company. I am sorry you are receiving incorrect information, again another reason to sit down with a seasoned media consultant. You may not be receiving everything you should be inprint and online be it information or free advertising.

JMC, So, you are saying that it is better for me to pay to be listed in YellowBook along with everyone else when I can do it for free in Google? Not a chance. You are saying that I should get a phone line with the local phone company? Again, not a chance.

Actually yellowbook.com is a marriage of both traditional yellow page headings and key word search. If the user searches with words other than those standardized than the yellowbook.com uses a relavancy standard to determine the best results. I personally do not like the concept of relavancy as I'm very satisfied with using traditional Yellow Page heading to get a full compliment of all businesses in the geographic area from which to choose from. My experience on search engines leave me quite dissatisfied as usually there are too few relavant returns from my search and no ability to campare features & benefits as one can on a 2 page spread in a print yellow page directory. As far as google's local search I have listed my own business there and a potential customer will never find me as I have yet to move up closer than 20th page. On the other hand I bought a $40 listing and landing page with links on yellowbook.com and I'm usually one of the top 5 listings. However as far as usage goes my traditional ad in yellowbook get me calls as I always ask at the start of the call "what page number did you get my number from in the phone book?" I'm a traditionalist and I believe that if the yellow page publishers decide they do not want the cost of printing paper directory's they will kill that product for the less costly electronic version. However in my opinion IYP will never give the customer the same shopping experience.

jel, i agree with you, maybe some people on here might be confusing internet yellow pages (which is essentially an online version of the big yellowbook) and internet search engines. yb.com works great for my business for the more internet savy people. i also track my ads that i have in yellowbook with a call forwarding number and can check all calls that come in from that ad anytime i like. so far since i have been running my yb.com ad it still hasn't generated the amount of calls i have been getting from the book. im sure over the years that is going to change as more and more people use the net