Mikkel_Svendsen - 11:56 am on Jan 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

The only sites I've seen that gain 8-10% search visitors from Yahoo.dk are sites that have very poor rankings at the other engines used by Danes :)

Anyway, the fact remain that there have not been one single directory ever (to my knowladge) that have made a good profitable business in Denmark - and possible all of Scandinavia. Jubii are doing ok, and LookSmart was (at one point) doing ok too - but never more than "ok".

When I was managing the search engine and directory at Kvasir we did a lot of analysis of the business of running a directory and no matter what business models and scenarios we analysed we could just not show the kind of profits the investors wanted. I think most people forget all the hidden costs. Even at $299 there was just no way we could make it profitable enough - on a local level.

The problem for local directories are that in the long run the value it produces for advertisers are not as high as the cost of producing and maintaining the directory. The product cost more to produce than what it's worth to the market.