Goodbye Yellow Pages

So the Yellow Pages printed directory will soon be no more. The yellow book we all know and at some point all loved will stop being distributed in 2018 and early 2019 and with it will bring an end to my own 20+ year association with the directory.

From 1996 I have had business adverts in various of their publications but it's not always been a rosy relationship like the time when a Yellow Pages sales rep left the company and destroyed all his customers accounts before leaving meaning we failed to be contacted about renewal one year or Yell's refusal to stop an advert from a company with a totally different trading name from ours from running an advert with the same name as ours in the advert which caused customer confusion.

Many of you will question why over the past 5 or so years we still advertised in the printed directory, it's because we ask customers where they obtained our contact details from and as a reactive electrical & security system company we still receive phone calls especially from the elderly who rely on the printed directory to contact companies in an emergency.

Smaller local printed directories will now benefit from the demise of the yellow book which has been caused by the online internet explosion and Yell will now concentrate their efforts on their Yell.com service.

I have never been a fan of Yell.com as unlike with a printed directory you can scan many adverts at once where the online listings is a free for all pay Yell.com the highest money to get to the top of their directory listings. 

As someone who's companies have a good online search presence I have never been convinced to part with my money for Yell's online directory tactics as it brings no significent benefit in increasing our online presence.

In today's world the printed directory will probably not be missed and I can understand the decision by Yell to stop publishing it but I think if they thought the challenge of losing readership and the increasing print cost of the printed directory was a struggle the challenge to dominate the online search listings against similar directories will be just as hard.

While at the same time promising the earth to their customers with keyword search, stats, figures and SEO but in reality it’s just a presence on Yell.com in amongst many other companies, while then moving onto that customers main rival and promising the same results but at the end of the day it’s the highest pounds and dollars that will make the difference to them and your listing.