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How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

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Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#41

Post by protomyth »

protomyth wrote: post #27

Because Google does a horrible job when you need a business in a rural area. It gives businesses hundreds of miles away first. The yellow pages still have its uses. Heck, Apple and Siri are worse. Whoever did the location part of maps missed a lot.

To give a simple example:

"nearest gas station" - Google gives 3 in the next town over, but skips the tribally owned one (which is $.05 cheaper) that you pass on the way to the ones listed.

Siri gives one station 10 miles away that you pass 4 stations to get to.

"nearest grocery store" - Google gets this one correct listing the two on the reservation and the closest one in the next town.

Siri skips both on the reservation and directs you to the one in the next town. You need to drive by one of the two on the reservation to get to it.

Phone book yellow pages has all of them listed.

This is the easy stuff. Asking about oil changes and tires is pretty bad.

// Siri and Weather.app on iOS is actually incapable of finding the town by zip code or name and give results "Not Found" or more bizarrely a town in New York state even though it correctly interpreted North Dakota. It also gives Fargo listings for Jamestown. Google keeps giving the college location I work at as in a town 40 miles from here.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#42

Post by ddingus »

dceddia wrote: post #32
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.

Many a yellow page has sacrificed itself to keep me warm in the winter.

Me too. For a while, I lived in a largish place with two nice fireplaces. Every catalog, junk mail, etc... went right in. There was some door to door guy who would come by asking about my interest in various things and offering catalogs.

Question: "Sir, how do you use catalogs and the yellow pages?"

Answer: "Home heating, please sign me up for more."

He laughed his ass off, "Seriously?"

To which I replied, "No Joke, why not?"

The conversation moved on from there, and we did discuss how and if people even care about these things, and he indicated many elderly people absolutely did. Turns out, he was door to door in my neighborhood due to a fairly concentrated set of these people who do buy and follow up on direct mail, catalog and use yellow pages regularly.

I suspect YP is going to face a generational fall off of business over the next 10 years as their prime demographics age out.

In addition to YP, there is the whole "direct response" type of campaign, most often executed via the mail, used heavy by televangelists, and others who would be associated with late night TV infomercials. The sweet spot demographic is over 50 for all of this, and as people age out, there just won't be the kind of back fill we saw through the 80's and 90's.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#43

Post by jellicle »

protomyth wrote: post #27

Because Google does a horrible job when you need a business in a rural area. It gives businesses hundreds of miles away first. The yellow pages still have its uses. Heck, Apple and Siri are worse. Whoever did the location part of maps missed a lot.

Google also does a horrible job in urban areas, giving businesses a dozen miles away (~ 1 hour travel time) over businesses within a five minute walk.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#44

Post by kazinator »

gohrt wrote: post #39
kazinator wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Aside, that's not true, in many jurisdictions. US tax authorities chase down and collect money from biodiesel users who don't pay the fueltax.

How do they do that? It seems you would have to ask all vehicle owners to submit their fuel receipts and odometer readings.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#46

Post by L_U_C_A_S »

"Yellow Pages Ltd. is cutting 300 jobs by November in a corporate “realignment” designed to make the company leaner and free up dollars to invest in its digital ventures as it continues to move away from print directories."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/yellow-pag...

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#47

Post by cc438 »

jellicle wrote: post #43
protomyth wrote: post #27

Because Google does a horrible job when you need a business in a rural area. It gives businesses hundreds of miles away first. The yellow pages still have its uses. Heck, Apple and Siri are worse. Whoever did the location part of maps missed a lot.

Google also does a horrible job in urban areas, giving businesses a dozen miles away (~ 1 hour travel time) over businesses within a five minute walk.

Some of that is Google's fault but I place most of the blame on the businesses themselves.

I'd understand it if most of the local businesses that forgo an online presence were all 1-4 person, family operations where they're all too old to have a "Google it first" mindset. However the majority of businesses that refuse to register themselves with Google have no excuse. I can search for the closest laundromat, tire shop, florist, etc directly by name and address and the only results will be those sites that scrape the secretary of state's corporate filings.

Google has made the process of creating an online presence the simplest, most painless process imaginable. Google's My Business service gets you on Maps with all the important info (location, hours, services, etc) for free, yet so few businesses take the importance of being a top, location based result. If a business doesn't come up in my location based search it's as good as if it never existed.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#48

Post by JoshTriplett »

ddingus wrote: post #42
dceddia wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many a yellow page has sacrificed itself to keep me warm in the winter.

Me too. For a while, I lived in a largish place with two nice fireplaces. Every catalog, junk mail, etc... went right in. There was some door to door guy who would come by asking about my interest in various things and offering catalogs. Question: "Sir, how do you use catalogs and the yellow pages?" Answer: "Home heating, please sign me up for more." He laughed his ass off, "Seriously?" To which I replied, "No Joke,…

> For a while, I lived in a largish place with two nice fireplaces. Every catalog, junk mail, etc... went right in.

Phonebooks don't seem to burn very well in a fireplace without careful tending; oxygen doesn't get between the pages well enough.

Re: How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

#50

Post by shostack »

debacle wrote: post #13

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…

I also dealt with them when I was agency-side. Their offerings for YP.com were the most archaic garbage I'd ever seen. They had some crazy point system where you had to buy various "add-ons" to your listing to increase its point value. These add-ons were things like "red bold" which literally made your listing red and bold. The part that really got me was that these weren't just cosmetic--the total points you paid contributed to your actual placement on the page (ie. position). So in one case I did the math and figured out that even though we didn't have any video creative, if we bought the video add-on, the boost to our placement made it worth our while to just buy the add-on. If they had just let me buy points outright in an auction, I imagine it would be much smoother.

This horribly hilarious animation[1] of Yellow Pages sales reps is fairly accurate IMHO.

The frustrating part is they were able to drive volume for national businesses with local presence. The sneaky part is that they were fairly incestuous with other IYP's (Internet Yellow Pages sites...ie. directory sites) like SuperPages, etc. which we also used, but that traffic was obfuscated to make it look like it was YP.com driving it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98ZY1XMUpxI

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