from Hacker News

How Do the Yellow Pages Still Make Money?

by midas on 10/8/15, 2:19 PM with 53 comments

• by protomyth on 10/8/15, 5:13 PM

  Because Google does a horrible job when you need a business in a rural area. It gives businesses hundreds of miles away first. The yellow pages still have its uses.

  Heck, Apple and Siri are worse. Whoever did the location part of maps missed a lot.

• by jay-saint on 10/8/15, 3:42 PM

  After a new controller came into our company we conducted an audit of all existing expenses. Turns out we were paying $277 a month for multiple full color Yellow page listings. The owners set these up well before we had a marketing department and just kept paying for years. We did not even have a copy of the Yellow pages in our building to see what our ad looked like. We have since cut this ad to the most basic listing, but are stuck paying the high rate until the new book is published in February 2016.

  My point is that this is how they are still making money, thousands of business customers that are just used to paying them forever.

• by drewg123 on 10/8/15, 4:47 PM

  I've tried and failed to get my house excluded from their distribution. They hire a bunch of low wage people to just toss one on the lawn/porch of every house, and don't seem to pay any attention to the houses that have asked to not get one.

  This irks me because, when I travel on business, having one of these sitting on my porch is a nice indication that I haven't been home all week, so please rob me. You can stop your mail, set up light timers, etc, but just try keeping the yellow pages away.

  Sigh,

• by kazinator on 10/8/15, 3:17 PM

  Try looking for some business with Google, and then a Yellow Pages search engine (like the Canadian one: yellowpages.ca).

  Dig through reams of spam, irrelevant references, review sites with misleading info, and non-local results? or scroll through nothing but business names and links?

  No contest.

  Just to find the opening hours of some business can be a hassle with a search engine.

• by debacle on 10/8/15, 3:57 PM

  I used to work in agency media and one of the reasons I got out was because these companies are starting to cannibalize that industry pretty heavily.

  They'll put a half-page ad up for $500 a month, but then also cover all of your digital media (advertising, website, making sure you're on Places and whatever then Bing equivalent is) for free.

  They're nailing down these companies who see the web work as a value add for the yellow pages ad, when really it's the other way around. The yellow pages ad is relatively worthless, and they're massively overpaying for their web presence.

• by TodPunk on 10/8/15, 3:19 PM

  This opens up my mind to a lot of possibilities. Some poignant conversation starters for your local lunch group:

  - What kind of investment returns did the stock of those bankrupted yellow pages make and at what cycles?

  - What does it really take to kill an old technology?

  - Is there a way to compete with established dying tech companies at their own game, or is it purely by trying to advance their users to your new tech?

  - What does this say about transitional companies that possibly offer both the old AND the new techs, like the yellow pages that offer online versions? Are they going to move forward or are they just delaying their deaths a bit?

  - What kind of talent is needed to sustain these kinds of businesses? It's going to look very different from the talent that grows new business, but I can't deny that they're both forms of talent.

  Lots of food for thought.

• by cthulhujr on 10/8/15, 3:59 PM

  They're making big money on their online listings -- particularly from small business owners who know no better. A product I used to develop was a direct competitor to them (listings for a niche business market) and the sales team would tell horror stories of the aggressive sales techniques YP uses. They would basically bully small business owners (primarily in the older demographic) into paying exorbitant rates for a templated ("Custom!") web site with unreal promises of traffic and leads. These charts really seem to support that target market. It's one thing, if that's what your clients are actually using to find your business, but it's disgraceful when using your brand recognition to extort businesses. Reminiscent of the alleged Yelp shenanigans.

• by L_U_C_A_S on 10/8/15, 7:07 PM

  "Yellow Pages Ltd. is cutting 300 jobs by November in a corporate “realignment” designed to make the company leaner and free up dollars to invest in its digital ventures as it continues to move away from print directories."

  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/yellow-pag...

• by 27182818284 on 10/8/15, 5:50 PM

  I've seen people use the Yellow Pages as a filter before. For example, a website doesn't take too long to get up these days with templates, but a two-page color ad in the yellow pages costs thousands of dollars. If you can afford the Yellow Pages ad, you're also likely insured, etc. I personally do not use them, and I recycle them when they're delivered.

• by zeveb on 10/8/15, 3:17 PM

  It makes sense, but I gotta say that I don't even take them into my home anymore—they go straight into the dumpster.

• by PaulKeeble on 10/8/15, 3:27 PM

  Specific applications are usually better than their generic competitor. A gerneric web search might be able to find some of the same information but the service yell and yellow pages provides is really vastly more effective. I genuinely couldn't find a stationary shop locally using google and maps this week a task I completed in 30 seconds on yell.co.uk.

  I am not looking forward to the inevitable death because I dont think there is a viable alternative right now and certainly not one with the quality of data that makes yell so useful. Local business searches are just awful everywhere but on yell which is why its still alive.

• by ArtDev on 10/8/15, 4:22 PM

  Its like what my 7-year-old asked me the other day, "what is a phonebook?"

• by Splines on 10/8/15, 5:42 PM

  These days I use Google Maps scoped to my neighbourhood and do a search that way. Trying to do the same with web search is an exercise in frustration.

  The one nice thing about the yellow pages is that it does provide a results filter, in that you're going to find local businesses willing to pay money to show up in a book.

  Having a filter for "serious, local-only businesses" is a useful thing to have. IMO online yellow pages doesn't have that. Yelp and the like are sort of close but their UI and search-locality aren't as tight as they should be to serve this purpose.

• by panglott on 10/8/15, 6:47 PM

  Loves getting the yellow pages: it's the best way to get cheap paper for firing the charcoal grill.

• by eddyg on 10/10/15, 11:39 AM

  If you want to stop phone books from being delivered (and you're in the U.S.) start with https://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/

• by nvk on 10/8/15, 4:18 PM

  A lot of sofas need an extra leg.