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Anyway, on with the response.
It's almost impossible to advertise on every yellow page due to the cost of each one.
I currently only advertise on 2 (unless you want to count citysearch as a similiar type listing, then it'd be 3).
Superpages (owned by verizon) get us excellent traffic. National advertising is by no means cheap, and local ads can vary widely in their effectiveness. They are very proactive about advertising their services, and you often see them as one of those 'why are they bidding on this' ppc bidders to drive traffic to their site.
AOL has recently introduced yp.aol.com. Since it's relatively new, it's very cheap. We immediately gobbled up a few national listings. They aren't getting many hits yet, but AOL is trying to promote this service, and by locking in our first place position, we're betting that this will pay off in the long run.
I've dealt some with switchboard, realpages, etc and a few others, but they don't seem to get the traffic to warrant the prices they are asking (at least for our area).
A couple of them have started to feature PPC listings on the search pages. We started getting more PPC hits than YP hits and therefore dropped the YP ads and increased the PPC spend in that area.
Local search is just now becoming a big thing with the major search engines - but if you look carefully there are local directories that have been out there for awhile and do have quality info and a decent user base - I know we have a few decent competitors...
The only problem is the "fragmentation" that occurs in the "local online scene" - i.e. there are typically anywhere from 3 to 12 "real" competitors in any given local marketplace trying to recruit listings - and businesses (and users) usually only pick 1 to 3 to use / pay to be in - and they don't all pick the same ones... so all your local links and users get spread out all over the place with only the big boys like YP having a comprehensive list of businesses - though only a small percentage of YP actually have web site links... which makes them pretty lame...
Eventually the "local interent" WILL get fixed up and organised - and if it's not by the big boys - a totally new local network structure will emerge that both business and users can get behind as a true alternative - and that's hopefully what we are building out here -O>
Local search is no doubt HIGHLY effective for hitting target markets - and ROI reports from clients are looking really good across many industries.
Overall picking up new paid listings is still difficult - though improving - we see 2,000 people / month look at signing up with maybe 50 actually paying to join.
Basically people are still just flocking to "free local listing" sites - which are a dime a dozen - given script sets you can pick up to open your own directory in less than 5 minutes...
Any 15 yo who can install PHP / MySQL can open their own local online directory - but they never really get anywhere or make any money for themselves - and just dilute the marketplace with crap "free alternatives" for $2 in google adsense click / day ... after 3 years in the local directory scene we have seen over 30-40 "free" local portals open and close...
Eventually businesses and people will have to make a concious choice of who really is the "bees knees" of local search... and when the big boys really start throwing their money into local search it will get interesting again... or will they just take money from YellowPages and promote them? - so far it looks like they are all doing just that...
"Localisation not Globalisation" - a better future for your kids...
