The Problems Facing Local Search Media Such as Yellow Pages™
Extracted from Yellow Page website…“The www.yellowpages.co.za is a
web based directory service, containing advertising and listings of
businesses in South Africa. It also includes the City Guide, Maps and
Directions. The searches on the site can be performed by keyword,
business type, business service and business name and location.
Customers enter a keyword/s, and powerful search engines call up a range
of suitable matches. The search criteria can be narrowed down in various
ways, according to geographical region or category classification. As is
the case with 10-11-8, daily updates of information are made, ensuring
that data is as current as possible. With 64% of people with internet
access having visited www.yellowpages.co.za, at an average of 2.8 visits
per month, the yellow mouse speaks powerfully for your business - and
90% of them are in the LSM 6-10, or middle to upper income group.”… from
the Yellow Pages™ website December 2009
It is important to see the trend towards using the online version of
Yellow Pages™ . This information is shown below and extracted from a
search on Google Trends for South Africa. Over the last 6 years the
number of people using online Yellow Pages™ has increased 3 fold.
This trend shown in the following graph is a strong indicator that
people are becoming more accustomed to using the Internet to find what
they want.
This graph shows the rapid increase in using the Internet to find Yellow
Pages™ as distinct from grabbing the Yellow Pages™ directory… the
probable reasons are ease of search, and more specific search options.
It’s worthwhile to compare the rate of growth of searches for Google
(yes people search for Google) and to compare this with Yellow Pages™
search. Over the same period from 2004 to end 2009 in South Africa
growth in Google search has been about 7 times compared to a 3 times
growth in Yellow Pages™ search as can be seen below…
The rate of growth in people searching for Google is much stronger than
that for Yellow Pages™ . Notice very dramatic increase in Google
searches from mid 2009.
The above graphs are interesting but we need to realise that in South Africa search behaviour is way behind the level of search sophistication enjoyed in the USA and other developed regions such as the UK and Australia. Take a look at the following graph which shows the relative change in world trends for the same 2 search queries as discussed.
There has been a steady and ongoing decline in searches for Yellow Pages™ commensurate with an increasing rate of searches for Google across the world.
In the USA which is the country that sets all the trends for online behaviour the rate of decline of Yellow Pages™ is even more noteworthy.
Yellow Pages™ has been in serious decline in the USA for the last 5
years at least. The market share of Yellow Pages™ and similar
directories both online and offline continues to decline.
Given the above scenarios it is inevitable that the dominance of Yellow
Pages™ as the first choice for carrying out a local search will be
seriously challenged by a new model.
That new model is Local Search based upon effective and free use of Google Maps.