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Now, with the world moving more and more to online search and marketing, I submit that the model of the large, traditional leaders in the diretory business - a large salesforce, face to face sales, an advantage built upon access to data - is not a model that will sustain them.
So, what next?
Are they vulnerable? How?
What moves have they made and what moves do you believe they will - or must - make to survive?
Are the big players going to be the new sycophants of the SEs? Their partners? Will that approach be sufficient - or are their shortcommings for the big players in that approach?
As always, I've got any number of answers, which I'll add to the discussion in due course, but what do you think? What does your crystal ball tell you?
Is the dinosaur threatened with extinction if it doesn't evolve? Will the big company tyranosaurus no longer hold sway in the swamp because the raptors will gain some advantages through their savvy using the WWW?
Is it the end of an era?
Is it the end of an era?
No I don't think so, these companies are a household name offline and will always have a large user base, they will have to make changes and maybe even licence their data to other search facilities, which some do now but are selective on who they choose.
In the UK one of the well know directories still advertise often, sponsor TV programs, have the ads on billboards etc
It's only a few years ago these big boys did not seem to bother with seo and were not normally in the serps until they must of realised the potential the web could bring to their online growth.
I don't think any company can survive on past reputation anymore and have no choice but to try and keep ahead, but as always with a large company.
2 They start to implement these changes
3 Something new is on the horizon
As for being a sycophants, no the search engines have started to add local search to their own search results so they must feel there is an additional market share to capture.
