Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

thumbtack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 55 posts

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#11

Post by jay-saint »

After a new controller came into our company we conducted an audit of all existing expenses. Turns out we were paying $277 a month for multiple full color Yellow page listings. The owners set these up well before we had a marketing department and just kept paying for years. We did not even have a copy of the Yellow pages in our building to see what our ad looked like. We have since cut this ad to the most basic listing, but are stuck paying the high rate until the new book is published in February 2016.

My point is that this is how they are still making money, thousands of business customers that are just used to paying them forever.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#12

Post by kazinator »

jbob2000 wrote: post #5
kazinator wrote: post #2

Try looking for some business with Google, and then a Yellow Pages search engine (like the Canadian one: yellowpages.ca). Dig through reams of spam, irrelevant references, review sites with misleading info, and non-local results? or scroll through nothing but business names and links? No contest. Just to find the opening hours of some business can be a hassle with a search engine.

What's funny about your comment is that yellow pages uses google search and maps to compile it's results. Why not skip the cruft and go right to the original source?

Which yellow pages where? Yellow pages isn't a specific company; it's a kind of floating trademark that exists in different ways in different countries and regions. My comment was specifically about yellowpages.ca that I have here in Canada.

> Why not skip the cruft and go right to the original source?

That depends on whether the compiling that you're skipping provides value. Why skip the gas station cruft and refine your own crude oil to make gasoline? Hey, no road tax!

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#13

Post by debacle »

I used to work in agency media and one of the reasons I got out was because these companies are starting to cannibalize that industry pretty heavily.

They'll put a half-page ad up for $500 a month, but then also cover all of your digital media (advertising, website, making sure you're on Places and whatever then Bing equivalent is) for free.

They're nailing down these companies who see the web work as a value add for the yellow pages ad, when really it's the other way around. The yellow pages ad is relatively worthless, and they're massively overpaying for their web presence.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#14

Post by cthulhujr »

They're making big money on their online listings -- particularly from small business owners who know no better. A product I used to develop was a direct competitor to them (listings for a niche business market) and the sales team would tell horror stories of the aggressive sales techniques YP uses. They would basically bully small business owners (primarily in the older demographic) into paying exorbitant rates for a templated ("Custom!") web site with unreal promises of traffic and leads. These charts really seem to support that target market. It's one thing, if that's what your clients are actually using to find your business, but it's disgraceful when using your brand recognition to extort businesses. Reminiscent of the alleged Yelp shenanigans.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#15

Post by at-fates-hands »

function_seven wrote: post #10
jbob2000 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny about your comment is that yellow pages uses google search and maps to compile it's results. Why not skip the cruft and go right to the original source?

I just did two identical searches in google.com and yp.com, and the results I got on yp were entirely different than those on google, and more numerous. yp.com has a ton of listings directly submitted to them. They may use Google as one of many data sources, but they're by no means the original source.

This is one way YP.com is transitioning to more online marketing. They have started to bundle their yp.com offerings with their print offerings.

If you buy a print ad, you can get a cut on the .com ad and placement depending on how much you're spending. I also noticed yp.com has the first 8-10 listings are paid ads, which go right below the fold. If you don't scroll down, you'd never notice the non-paid listings.

It's pretty sketchy to me, but I guess they're doing what they have to in order to survive

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#16

Post by gopowerranger »

ghaff wrote: post #9
zeveb wrote: post #3

It makes sense, but I gotta say that I don't even take them into my home anymore—they go straight into the dumpster.

Not that I use the local YP much, but it probably depends to a large degree on how often you need local services like plumbers etc. To be sure, even as a homeowner, you tend to compile your own rolodex (to use an anachronism) of local service companies to use but every now and then you need something different that may not be easy to find on the Web. (Web presence is still very [EDIT] hit or miss for a lot of local c…

This is true and happened to me just last week. I used to belong to Angie's List, which helped a lot, but I so rarely used it that I dropped the service. I wished I kept my Yellow Pages last week when I wanted to look something up.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#17

Post by wvenable »

kazinator wrote: post #2

Try looking for some business with Google, and then a Yellow Pages search engine (like the Canadian one: yellowpages.ca). Dig through reams of spam, irrelevant references, review sites with misleading info, and non-local results? or scroll through nothing but business names and links? No contest. Just to find the opening hours of some business can be a hassle with a search engine.

Did you actually try this? I just searched for a Vancouver business, the name of which I'm not exactly sure of, to find the hours. The yellowpages site didn't find the business at all but it was the first result in Google with direct links to their website, a map, and the closing time was listed right in the search results. It turns out I did get the business name slightly wrong.

Ironically, the 4th link on the page was a link to that business on yellowpages.ca -- so they did have a listing but I couldn't find it by seaching there.

Google is the one tool to do everything and it does things more than well enough that sites like yellowpages.ca are pretty irrelevant.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#20

Post by drewg123 »

I've tried and failed to get my house excluded from their distribution. They hire a bunch of low wage people to just toss one on the lawn/porch of every house, and don't seem to pay any attention to the houses that have asked to not get one.

This irks me because, when I travel on business, having one of these sitting on my porch is a nice indication that I haven't been home all week, so please rob me. You can stop your mail, set up light timers, etc, but just try keeping the yellow pages away.

Sigh,

Post reply on HN