Whenevever I look at comScore ratings, I’m always floored by the results, and not just the fact that Yellow Pages ranks as high as it does but that it supposedly has almost half the number of monthly unique visitors as Google sites.
Frankly, I find that more than just a little hard to believe. I consider my online habits to be not unrepresentative and I certainly don’t have yellowpages.com bookmarked and only use it if I do a Google search — usually for a local product or service — that brings the site up as top listing if not the top listing.
Just as the results it offered in print were always spotty, so too are the online ones, which is why I believe newspapers — with their archives of valuable content, reporters and connections to plugged-in local freelancers — could fairly easily grab a large portion of city search traffic and advertising.
Really, the only reason I can think of to explain the growth Yellowpages.com in the US — highlighted by this graph at Niki Scevak’s site — is that more people are searching online for local products and services than ever before.
Anyone else have a different explanation?
P.S. I’ll get graphs and tables up shortly but Blogger won’t let me for now.
Update: Yellow Pages does so well because it also includes white pages phone listings so every time you look for a number, they get clicks. Now, that makes more sense.
AnnBrocklehurst.com 