Electronic Yellow Pages - History

History

The first true online Yellow Pages, was a creation based on the independent YP publisher out of Seattle, Washington called Banana Pages. This was the first print directory which was registered with both YPPA (the Yellow Pages Publishers Association), and the ADP (Association of Directory Publishers) to place their listings online. The Yellow Pages product was the brain child of the co-owner brothers of the company, Peter and John Richards. Many RBOCS (Regional Bell Operating Companies) would follow. Banana Pages eventually became YPI (Yellow Pages on the Internet, Inc) which was sold to InfoSpace.com and became their Yellow Pages offering to cobrands.

Among the first to place their listings on the Web was Pacific Bell's now-defunct “At Hand” online yellow pages that was officially launched on August 30, 1996. At Hand debuted with approximately 1.2 million merchant listings from across California. At the time, the service was competing with BigBook.com, a nationwide Web directory that was since absorbed by SuperPages.

Although it is “old hat” now, At Hand allowed an online visitor to look for a French restaurant in a given town and get an interactive map. If the restaurant has paid for an enhanced listing, the visitor could also find out other information, such as whether it took American Express or if it served bouillabaise. At Hand showcased editorial content from 14 publishers, including HarperCollins, the Hearst Corporation, the New York Times Company and American Express.

Another early entrant into the then-$11 billion yellow pages industry occurred in 1997 when four Baby Bells banded together to create a co-branded Web site and initiated a $1 million marketing campaign to drive more traffic to their regional yellow pages sites. That "original yellow pages" site was simply a map of the U.S., where users could click on any state and be linked to the appropriate online directory, as published by Ameritech, BellSouth, Pacific Bell, or US West. The site experienced stiff competition from Big Yellow (now part of SuperPages) and SuperPages itself.

On Nov. 4, 2004 SBC Communications Incorporated (now AT&T) and BellSouth announced a joint venture to acquire Yellowpages.com. The venture utilized the highly recognized brand name to become the market leader in local search (Internet). At the time of acquisitions, it was expected that the YellowPages.com site would receive more than 50 million consumer searches per month.

In 2005, Amazon.com elbowed its way into the online yellow pages business, with a new service from its A9.com search engine, featuring photo-rich listings that allow an online visitor to “wander around” near a given destination.

According to market research company the Kelsey Group, advertising in online yellow pages is rapidly expanding but still only retain less than 7% of the total market, including online and print. The reason for this is that traditional yellow pages publishers, such as the phone companies, have big sales forces to approach local businesses.

MarketWatch, an online financial newsletter, carried an article on Dec. 18, 2006 detailing how mobile online yellow pages were enhancing small business lead generation. The article noted that Internet-based yellow pages, local search and wireless was growing by an estimated 30.5% versus print advertising, and that a company could only benefit from this online growth by being listed in an Internet-based directory.