Local Search | Jennifer Lind

With Yellowpages’ recent partnership with MSN, Yellowpages is hoping for increased impressions and click thru rates. It’s a great attempt by Yellowpages to grab more of the marketshare and increase visibility of their ads. This partnership replaces Superpages’ services, who saw little traffic from MSN.

In my monthly client reports, I’ve seen impression data from Yellowpages increase through their various partnerships, but so far we have not seen the same results for the click data. As of now, there is no way to target your ad for the various affiliates out there. It seems that people who are searching on 411.com and areaguides.net should have the same interests in mind, though both of these sites are somewhat different. For example, 411.com is targetted more as a find-to-call site where you can find the business phone number you’re searching for. Areaguides.net has more info about local events, travel, and general city information. If you could target your creative for each of these sites, this may help to improve click thru rates. On the 411.com site, you may choose to customize your creative to include a call related call to action. on Areaguides.net, you may decide to include a coupon with a tourist related package. Of course, as the affiliate list grows, this may make operations difficult. With each listing, you would need to submit creative for each category, on each site.

 For an article regarding recent IYP partnerships: DMNews re: IYP partnerships - a look back on IYPs from 07 and the partnerships that were formed by Superpages, Yellowpages, Yellowbook, and Dex.