The Yellow Pages….10 years ago the bedrock of small business advertising….now almost a nobody.
Why?
The internet of course.
I don't know about you but our recent yellow pages directory turned up last week smaller than ever, under the remit that it was in it's new handy size?!
Ummm, do I believe that? Not for one minute.
You would have had to be living under a stone to not know that the Yellow Pages (like so many other traditional marketing methods) is dying at the speed of light.
A recent stat I read said that 54% of all internet users have abandoned the yellow book completely – I'm certainly in that crowd.
My prediction – They'll be following the likes of Readers Digest in less than 2 years from now…
Bankrupt.
Yes they've managed to diversify with the web and yell.com but ultimately they've got it all wrong, after all who wants to use a directory when you've got google? Perhaps the funniest part of there diversification methods is there attempt to offer pay per click marketing services where your ad is shown in rotation with scores of other businesses…maybe it should be call per per lottery marketing?
Anyway, to support my case (and give you a smile) heres a great video from an SEO firm in Auz, who did a great job of interviewing people on the high street (wouldn't mind betting we'd get the same results in the UK) 
I've been thinking about search and search advertising. I think that Yellow Pages or 411 has a solid brand name and if they offerred an option for users to search the web instead of just searching for local businesses, they can take away market share from Google. Yellow Pages already has a dominant brand name recognition than its online competitor citysearch, but if they wanted to take over the Internet directory, then their Brand name presence can certainly do that. Yahoo should just buy Yellow pages or yellow book.
If you have a local business, a brick and mortar, you NEED to get found on Google Maps / Places. Your competitor…
Google vs Yellow Pages Video
The was between Google vs Yellow Pages is over…
Google and the Internet don't work that way. The yellow pages don't work that way. You can't expect either Google or the yellow pages in real life to answer your question: “What's fun and interesting and high-brow and intellectual for me to do in New York?” That would be silly. You'd have to know at least to punch in the word “cafe” or “poetry” or “Art Deco”.
For activities, you'd have to know to go to the Village Voice or Zagat or some other *directory* or media offering or “what's going on” sort of page — you wouldn't expect the vasty deeps of the internet to fetch up what you need for your particular vetebrae on the long tail.
So why expect this of SL, where there isn't an effective tagging system inworld?
it's especially silly to stress something that is meant to find *places* and *objects* and *avatars* to turn up “that fun thing that will be interesting for me to do or look at”. You couldn't get anything in real life to do that for you — why expect it out of SL? Actually, there are no shortage of RL books, inworld guides, tour agencies, etc. all over the place trying to guide people, so it's really not the wasteland you imagine.
I'm hoping that if the functions that are now put in (and not used yet) to check off our avatars and our land to be in a search page of the Lindens' making on their main page of http://www.secondlife.com that this will help. For that, they need to fix what was broken for a time inworld regarding proximity of terms.
I think this is the end of Google 7-Pack forever. How long before Yahoo & Bing follow?
Thanks for sharing the video Matt! Although we already get a clue on how Yellow Pages is performing over the last few years, we really want to hear it straight from the people.
That’s why we did the old school thing of doing random interviews, and the answers revealed the obvious, it is Google’s world and the big book is out (as they said…) for good.
Have a great day!
Hey David, thanks for commenting and congrats on a great little production