Local Search Forum

Smartest move I made was acquiring the right virtual real estate. Nothing quite works the charm as type-in traffic for very high value leads.

There's still some virtual highway exit ramps laying around. You just have to look smarter to find them.

YPs on the Internet are best referred to as IYPs.

Traditional YP print revenue remains consistant and strong, but many are seeing and predicting 2006 as they year where the Internet really begins to affect traditional print revenue. As a result the YPs are working feverishly to build their Internet assets which include their IYPs, as well as SEO/Data/Content/Publishing/Distribution and Click solutions. The traditional YP sales reps are the front lines in the interactive sales efforts, but new tactics are starting to be employed to acquire new advertisers. YPs are looking more like advertising agencies than simple pushers of the big yellow pages book. Just this week, Yellow Book (the Company) purchased a local internet advertising agency called ClickForward, the rest of the YPs all have cozy relationships with other local search advertising agencies and solution and inventory providers. These same forces are also at work in the newspaper arena - while their core asset being there interactive and authoritative interactive publishing assets.

Do you have specific IYP questions?

Good to see you. Guess I had a couple of comments and questions. The thread came out of a long discussion with a webmaster that was suggesting IYP. I ended up looking at my activity and the activity of 2 other local retailers vis a vis our discussion.

I'm paying for regional coverage on Verizon SuperPages. Activity is roughly 1% of activity for a wide variety of relevant search phrases/geo areas. Compares similarly to G and Y local--similarly about 1% of the direct searches in engines with a service/geo description. I have quite a few very dramatic and effective links driving up to 10 times that traffic.

Then I looked up yellow pages in the web for my region and various town names. There are so many variations on the theme in the serps. Seemed to me to be a very weakened form for creating visibility.

On the other hand I renewed print advertising w/ YP for a portion of my region. Probably the last year I do this. We have monitored sales from sources for about 20 years. YP (for us it was a combination of YP and Yellow Book) has dropped dramatically as our SERPs and regional visibility have improved.

Of note when we purchased tested Verizon's IYP we were presented information that I suspect was wildly overstated.

To get to the questions. Is anyone using any version of IYP to draw traffic. Does anything work well? Are there versions out there that work better than others?

Is anyone still getting value out of print YP?

IYP is search. Search marketing works. In fact, stats show that there are more buyers on IYPs than on serps which have more research oriented queries. IYPs, like other search marketing works, but to varying degrees dependant upon a number of factors. Several of these factors that I have been speaking about for some time that I would recc to anyone are the following:

1. Regionalization
2. SERP performance
3. PPC performance
4. Category Density
5. AD Distribution
6. Data Distribution
7. PPC buys on IYP

1. DEX operates the most visited local search site in their footprint states. Verizon has a footprint. SBC and BellSouth have erased theirs with their in investment in YellowPages.com (YPC). Footprints should direct dollars..

2. Some IYPs get crawled, indexed, and ranked better then others. Run searches for your performing keywords on G, Y, and M. Are there certain IYP categories that rank? If so, ride their coattails. This is a critical and often overlooked strategy.

3. Similarly, many IYPs buy PPCs to direct search traffic to IYP cats. If a IYP is aggressively marketing to your prospect, that should signal one to ride their ad dollars.

4. Many IYP categories are untouchable due to advertiser density. If you purchase a fixed fee listing, but your ad will show up on page 6, then I would reconsider your IYP or IYP cat.

5. YPC feeds ads to Switchboard, AOL, and YLocal. See 1-5 and act accordingly.

6. Regardless of the act of purchasing ads, the IYPs should have your business data and they will accept it for free. Find business profile input pages and give them your data. Rich and structured business data feeds unstructured local search queries, an important and growing trend for historically rigid cat driven IYPs.

7. Some IYPs have PPC buys. Verizon in particular still has cost effective PPC inventory to be had. Their PPC systems can be a pain in the *** to deal with, but cheap prospects can be had with a little digging.

There are more factors and issues out there and maybe I can get into them shortly, but hopefully this will provide a little insight.

I especially liked point 2:

(Quote)
2. Some IYPs get crawled, indexed, and ranked better then others. Run searches for your performing keywords on G, Y, and M. Are there certain IYP categories that rank? If so, ride their coattails. This is a critical and often overlooked strategy. (end quote)

Best serps I saw for my best terms was a number 6 in G. Getting in those serps adds first page real estate on the serps.