Who uses printed yellow pages?

J

JOhnH

Touchdown! Greaser!
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I don't know many people that still reach for the "Phone Book", especially the yellow pages, so a couple of years ago I cut my yellow pages ad way back to the bone.

I received a flyer from one of the local yellow page companies with the results of a survey.

Question: When searching for local businesses, products or services, where would you look first?

Responses:
Print yellow pages 68.0%
Online Yellow page directory 7.4%
Search Engine 15.8%
Social Media 1.9%
Other 3.3%
None of the above 3.7%

Personally, I think this would be a better topic for that MBA student in another thread that has to write a paper on business ethics.

Do you reach for the printed yellow pages first?
What do you use?
 
Online.
We have a stack of 5 Yellow Pages (Collinsville, Tulsa, Greater Tulsa, Green Country, Westchester County (New York)) sitting on a ledge in the living room. On top of that are a library book that needs to be returned, a battery from the fire alarm that was removed the last time we were sanding, a balsa wood airplane left by one of the children.
Don't know when was the last time one of the YP books was even opened.
 
At my home, all phone books go straight from the driveway into the trash can.
 
Their numbers are bs. No one uses the YP when Google maps is already in their hand.
 
The yellow page publishers had a pretty good thing going, till they decided to extort small business into buying ever larger ads, or triple the rate of their small ones.

Pretty soon, small businesses tried going without and discovered fewer and fewer people saw their ads, so the expense was largely wasted.
 
Was that survey taken in 1998, or was it only people 75 and older?
 
We haven't opened a YP book in years. As someone above stated, they go from the driveway -> burn barrel.
 
They're good to save for emergencies - like when you run out of toilet paper.
 
Florida Cracker said:
The yellow page publishers had a pretty good thing going, till they decided to extort small business into buying ever larger ads, or triple the rate of their small ones.

Pretty soon, small businesses tried going without and discovered fewer and fewer people saw their ads, so the expense was largely wasted.
Click to expand...
+1. Five years ago we had a full-page ad in the first position in three local books. The publishers thought they had us by the neck and treated us like dirt.

Now we have no YP ads -- everything is internet now. Two of those three local YP books are out of business, and the third is more a pamphlet than a book.
 
My wife insists we keep the phone books they deliver every year or so. I think they get used about once a year. That survey must have been taken by their own marketing department... OF their own marketing department. No, scratch that. I'll bet not even their own people use it that much.
 
I stopped my YP ad over thirty years ago when they, without my knowledge, change my $400.00 per mo0nth add to a over a thousand dollars per month ad. They could not produce a signed contract for the larger ad, so I just stopped with them completely.

My business continued to grow and prosper with a white page ad only. Word of mouth was my best advertising vehicle. I have run a small ad in the community paper for years, just to remind people of my shop.

I, like everyone else, just tossed phone books in the trash when they arrived. I haven't looked at one in years, many years.

-John
 
I found my last YP when the snow finally melted next to my mailbox. Not sure how long it was there.
 
I see them at my Mother in Law's house. But she is 82 years old. I throw them in the trash.
 
I'm the exception...I'll use the local yellow pages for our small town when looking for a local service provider. But never bother with the more regional Qwest books.
 
I'm starting to see a pattern here. And it doesn't match the one in their survey.
 
JOhnH said:
I'm starting to see a pattern here. And it doesn't match the one in their survey.
Click to expand...

That's because the responses here are from people who are comfortable enough with computers to be posting on a forum.

Just like the respondents in the yellow pages survey were probably recruited using a card struck in their yellow pages!

Yellow page ads used to be a must-have for certain businesses. Taking the advertiser for granted certainly created some ill will, but that was going on for years before the business declined. I think the real dagger was deregulation of the Bell system, which opened the directory business to independent publishers in the 1970s. When there's more than one directory, which do you buy? Few businesses can justify the expense of being in three books.
 
You could google uses for yellow pages. Keeping the recycle people happy.
 
LDJones said:
I'm the exception...I'll use the local yellow pages for our small town when looking for a local service provider. But never bother with the more regional Qwest books.
Click to expand...

Likewise, they're not bad when looking for a pizza joint, or hunting for a new restaurant. But that's about it.
 
I do find the online YP to less than worthless. A plain old Bing search, or even Mapquest does a good job.
 
nddons said:
Likewise, they're not bad when looking for a pizza joint, or hunting for a new restaurant. But that's about it.
Click to expand...


When you have YELP on your phone, or use it before you leave the computer, you have much better access to information. Yelp drives a huge amount of my dining budget while travelling to Mom and Pop / Hole in the Wall types of places.

My candidate for businesses that might still get value from Yellow Pages is:

  • Bail Bonds
  • DUI Attorney
  • 24 Hour Plumber
  • Towing Company, maybe.


I rarely (as in never, knock on wood) need those, so I don't use Yellow Pages, ever.
 
I don't have a yellow pages and I have never missed it. Google Maps and Yelp for anything I need. Way easier to find more information and reviews about the service provider than simply looking at an advertisement or an alphabetical listing in the book.
 
I still use the yellow pages occasionally...
 
Yellow pages are a scam...only those that can afford to be on top get the best listings and largest ads and business can manipulate their names and ad buys to make them appear a better choice then the competition.





...the internet searches would NEVER do that!
 
Shawn said:
Yellow pages are a scam...only those that can afford to be on top get the best listings and largest ads and business can manipulate their names and ad buys to make them appear a better choice then the competition.





...the internet searches would NEVER do that!
Click to expand...


The switch for one of our companies from Yellow Pages to Google AdWords was interesting. For FAR less money, you can be at the top of Google in a much more effective manner than Yellow Pages.

The pricing of Yellow Pages got out of hand, and, I think they also created a death spiral as they charged more and more, which caused you to have to cut back on their advertising.

And the reach of Google is much better. I only market to a small percentage of the population, but our marketing area is 500 miles all directions. It would cost a fortune to be in every Yellow Page book, where, with Google, I can target each small town, and, depending on how I set up the campaigns, be very cheap in getting eyeballs, clicks, calls, and contacts.

Our industry used to be big on Yellow Pages, now, I still see competitors spending money on yellow pages, and can't find them on Google. I don't tell them what they are missing.
 
All I use is Google Maps. Quick search for the city (or center on self if looking for local stuff) and then search for what I'm looking for.

I was in line waiting for a hair cut at my local barber and noticed his business wasn't even listed on Google. I inquired about it and he said he didn't know how to do it. So I listed him under my account with his permission.

The phone rang while I sat there and gave him the 4 digit code, I entered it and blam, he was listed.

He offered me a free haircut for my efforts. I declined and said all I want is a 'head of the line' pass cause now his business has tripled. I'm happy for him but hate having to get in a long que every time I go in.

I've since transferred the account to his gmail now that he sees the benefit. I don't think he advertises at all in the YP anymore.
 
Any phone books I receive at my house go right into the recycling bin. Haven't used one in years.

Back in the mid 2000's, I was a real estate agent and as part of my marketing, I spent $1000 for a full page color ad in the Yellow Pages. Want to know how many leads I got from that? ZERO. And I know I got none, because when people contacted me, I'd always ask how they found me, and it was always because of my web page, or some marketing fliers that I sent out to various neighborhoods. Not one person called me because of my Yellow Pages ad.

In my opinion, in the Internet age, phone books are worthless, and paying for an ad in them is even more so.
 
I used to do the recycle thing first thing, too -- until I realized how much online yellow pages were a scam -- they do more to redirect the query to other queries to make the whole thing a royal PITA.

I will first try a search engine, like Google, and if it comes up with insufficient data, I go to the hard copy stuff. It's amazing how much info is still put into the yellow (not white) page adds that hasn't (for some God-unbeknowst reason) followed onto the digital versions.
Sometimes (especially when specifics aren't known/decided on and only general topics come up) how better equiped and organized the yellow hard copy still is
 
We used to get a 50/50 coop on "real yellow page" advertising from Ford, that was a long, long time ago. We continued on until maybe 2005-6, their sales tactics aren't the most honest I have come across, but they are what they are. I found out that my office manager, now ex-office manager, had renewed our ad in 2002 or 2003 for $12-1500 per month!:eek::mad2::mad2: Of course once it's published, you're screwed, so I ate it that year and sent a letter that no one at my company was authorized to sign any contracts with Yellow Pages except me. I ended up staying with them on a smaller scale for another couple years, but I really don't think that have much if any value for our business.
I personally haven't looked up anything in a paper phone book in at least 2-3 years. :dunno:
 
JoseCuervo said:
When you have YELP on your phone, or use it before you leave the computer, you have much better access to information. Yelp drives a huge amount of my dining budget while travelling to Mom and Pop / Hole in the Wall types of places.

My candidate for businesses that might still get value from Yellow Pages is:

  • Bail Bonds
  • DUI Attorney
  • 24 Hour Plumber
  • Towing Company, maybe.


I rarely (as in never, knock on wood) need those, so I don't use Yellow Pages, ever.
Click to expand...

I'd add electrician and computer repair technician to that list.

I had a paper YP ad back when computers were so expensive that most families (and quite a few small businesses) only had one computer; and when that was down, they couldn't search online for someone to fix it. Network problems also took down entire company networks, necessitating dusting off the book. So for me, the YP ad paid for itself. This was, of course, before smart phones became ubiquitous.

If I were still in that business, I'm pretty sure that the YP ad would be worth it around here. Cell coverage is spotty enough to render smart phones dumb, as well as mute, in many places. There seems no logic to the coverage. My little village of < 600 residents has incredible VZW, (barely) usable AT&T, and a faint hint of Sprint; but some much nearby burgs with many more residents and businesses are complete dead zones. So when a router or switch craps out and cuts them off from the Interwebs, they pretty much have to reach for the book.

-Rich
 
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Yellow Pages are nice. I moved, don't know any business names or locations. I tried Googling a local restaurant whose name I knew, and in five pages their website didn't appear. Lots of reviews--every reviewer on each website had a separate hit. Then there were the many hits from business sites wanting to sell me information about the restaurant. Fortunately one of the reviews mentioned the website, so I was able to find it.

Try googling a category in your town. It's a 2-minute job finding the woodworking & lumber businesses in town with the Yellow Pages; search engines bring up businesses 100+ miles away, blogs, advertisements to save money on "woodworking" on ebay, amazon, etc., when what I need is a place to buy a hand saw to use this afternoon.

Knowing the business name and address, your ipad/smartphone is great for getting there.
 
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It makes pretty good kindling, since I don't get a paper newspaper anymore.
 
Captain said:
I was in line waiting for a hair cut at my local barber and noticed his business wasn't even listed on Google. I inquired about it and he said he didn't know how to do it. So I listed him under my account with his permission.

The phone rang while I sat there and gave him the 4 digit code, I entered it and blam, he was listed.

He offered me a free haircut for my efforts. I declined and said all I want is a 'head of the line' pass cause now his business has tripled. I'm happy for him but hate having to get in a long que every time I go in.

I've since transferred the account to his gmail now that he sees the benefit. I don't think he advertises at all in the YP anymore.
Click to expand...

Good story!
 
I miss Sears catalogs. Nice and thick. They burn real nice. The bra section came in handy before Victoria's Secret catalogs were invented :D. And, the "non-slick" pages could be used for camping purposes. YP has always been my 2nd favorite behind the Sears catalog.
 
bartmc said:
I miss Sears catalogs. Nice and thick. They burn real nice. The bra section came in handy before Victoria's Secret catalogs were invented :D. And, the "non-slick" pages could be used for camping purposes. YP has always been my 2nd favorite behind the Sears catalog.
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You mean the Sears and Roebuck catalog? :wink2: Not even gonna go where you went as we've all been there :hairraise:
 
The Yellowpages? They go directly from my doorstep into the garbage can. I use Google.com.
 
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