Nostalgia for Simplicity
What do the yellow pages come back like - once they’re recycled?
I got three sets of “yellow pages” from three different companies at my house this year. I kept one set in case the power goes out and shoved them in a closet, high out of sight.
No longer do I doodle my favorite pizza delivery phone number on the front of the cover. Like Peechees, metal golf cleats and rotary dial phones, I have fond memories of growing up in a different age…
Yet I live quite happily today surrounded by new ways to capture information, being a better steward of the earth and communicating with others.
So why the nostalgic discourse?
Via ClickZ today: U.S. Search Engine Rankings, March 2007
This information just out from comScore Network’s qScore panel - a group of 2 million people who’ve opted in to help researchers describe browsing and transactional behavior online.
As such, the data is indicative of leading trends (vs. behaviors of the internet population as a whole) and interesting to me because the whole population doesn’t usually take long to catch up!
In March 2007, 7.3 billion domestic searches were conducted. Google accounted for 3.5 billion search queries; Yahoo served 2 billion; Microsoft garnered 798 million; Ask.com served 379 million; and Time Warner, which includes AOL, hosted 368 million queries.
7.3 billion searches.
Think about it. People are going online to look for answers, products, people, news and services every day - multiple times per day, if 2 million people generated 7.3 billion searches themselves.
Yellow page advertising was great for small businesses around the country - and still is, in many ways. Increasingly, though, the web is the place for businesses to be found.
Sad thing is, no one’s knocking on doors offering ready-made 2″x3″ ads for small businesses, smartly categorized and re-usable year after year. Yet.
Simplicity is surely mixed into those thousands of yellow pages - let’s hope it stays mixed into whatever comes out of all those bins for reuse.
We need simplicity now more than ever.
Which (I contend) is why Google is still commanding the vast majority of searches. It is the best search engine to use - in its simple elegance.
For my part, I shall be talking about simple solutions for improving online “find-ability” in the months to come.
To your question on Yellow Pages recycling, on average 40% of the paper in those new books you are receiving are from recycled YP paper. Other uses for recycled YP paper are as animal bedding or insulation to name a few.
From recent research you should know that US adults referenced print YP over 15 billion times last year. And that’s just the print versions. 90% of all adults reference them at least once a year, 75% in a typical month, and 50 % on average month. How about on average 1.4X each week? And let’s remember that not everyone has Internet access.
There is no other directional media that can provide buyers the information they need when they need it about local businesses than the print Yellow Pages. It is truly the original local search engine….
But if you insist, that same Yellow Pages sales rep also has a complete portfolio of local search and Internet based products that they can help you with.
Thanks for the answers, Ken! Points are all well taken.
Although I am astonished that 2 million people have generated almost half of the search traffic that the yellow pages counted - how do you do that? - in 2006.
Local search is key for most businesses;and I always recommend online and solid world visibility. My problem is with those who neglect to show up to the online party!
Looks like you have both bases covered.
Cheers!