superpages : Natural Search Blog

Superpages.com Adds More User-Generated Content to the Local Mix

About a week ago, Idearc announced that Superpages.com had introduced more user-content features.

Superpages adds Web 2.0 Features
(click to enlarge)

Previously, the primary component of user content on the site was limited to user ratings and reviews associated with business listings.

Some of the new features this recent upgrade added include allowing all users to enhance basic biz profile information, uploading pictures of organizations, wiki-like biz listing “blog” features which could allow simplistic blogging by businesses and/or could be used as a consumer comment or Q/A zone for each business since any user could submit info to them.

Of all the top online yellow pages and local search sites, I believe that Superpages may now have the distinction of having the greatest

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Popularity: 36% [?]

Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 11/14/2007 | Permalink | Email | Print

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Trackback | Comments (6) | Comments RSS | Filed under: Design, Local Search, Market Data, News, Online Directories, Social Media Optimization, Yellow Pages idearc, Internet-Yellow-Pages, iyp, Local Search, superpages, Yellow Pages

News: Pat Marshall new Chief New Media Officer for Yellow Book

The Wall Street Journal reports that Patrick Marshall, Superpages.com veteran, has just been named as Chief New Media Officer for Yellow Book.

Yellow Book USA Logo

I used to work with Pat back when he was President of New Media Services at GTE, overseeing Superpages.com back when it was brand new, and I know him to be a fantastic businessman. Pat is well-known in the yellow pages industry and was the recipient of The Kelsey Group’s New Technologies Leadership Award in 2002.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 07/24/2007 | Permalink | Email | Print

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Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS | Filed under: Local Search, News, Yellow Pages Patrick-Marshall, superpages, Yellow Pages, Yellow-Book

Superpages Launches LocalServe Affiliate Program

I see that my former company, Idearc Media, finally launched the Superpages LocalServe^SM Affiliate Program.

LocalServe was developed by one of the development teams reporting to me during the past year before I left, and it was quietly in beta release up until now.

This is a great way for local info sites and vertical industry-related sites to make money, and the content is perfectly compatible for those niche markets. Superpages has a very rich set of general listings and local search advertisers which can enhance the content of local and vertical sites, while also providing a good revenue stream.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/18/2007 | Permalink | Email | Print

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Trackback | Comments (2) | Comments RSS | Filed under: Local Search, Yellow Pages Affiliate-Marketing, Affiliate-Programs, Local-Serve, LocalServe, superpages

Bill Gates Predicts Demise of Yellow Pages

Last week at the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit 2007, Bill Gates interacted with Microsoft’s Corporate VP and Chief Media Officer, Joanne Bradford in an interview/Q&A session, and he predicted that among those under 50, yellow pages usage would drop down to zero within five years!

Now, he was apparently speaking solely about the print yellow pages, but the statement still seemed a tad bit bearish, considering that Microsoft is partnered closely with my former company, Idearc Superpages.com, one of the largest yellow pages companies (print or otherwise) in the world, to license the yellow pages data and service for use in Microsoft’s Live Local Search, and for the MSN Yellow Pages.

Now, Gates isn’t alone in predicting the demise of printed directories, since many others have also foreseen their eventual extinction, including me. But I think that other analysts out there have stated terms more in the ten-year range. Even if the numbers of some directories are declining, I still note that usage and sales are still very strong, so I’d be inclined to expect that print YP will likely go on for longer than five years.

It could be even longer, if there’s some more revolutionary tech introduced, such as I earlier suggested in “Could Nanotechnology Save Print Yellow Pages?”

UPDATE: Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team, also posted on his blog about the Summit, and he quoted a Seattle Times report which gave a further quote from Bill Gates about the yellow pages:

The traditional Yellow Pages are doomed as voice-activated Internet searches combined with on-screen interfaces on smart mobile devices get better and proliferate, Gates said. The company’s recent acquisition of voice-technology provider TellMe is accelerating the trend.

Dodge further states:

Microsoft’s recent acquisitions of MotionBridge and Screentonic, coupled with the acquisition of TellMe will support Gates vision of search and advertising on smart phones.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 05/16/2007 | Permalink | Email | Print

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Trackback | Comments (3) | Comments RSS | Filed under: Local Search, MSN Search, Yellow Pages Bill-Gates, Live-Search, MicroSoft, msn, superpages, Yellow Pages

Superpages Launches New Redesign

I noticed that my old company, Idearc Media, just launched a major new redesign today for their primary web property, Superpages.com:

Read on for a few of my comments about it.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 04/27/2007 | Permalink | Email | Print

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Trackback | Comments (3) | Comments RSS | Filed under: Design, Local Search, Yellow Pages idearc, Local Search, superpages, Superpages.com, Yellow Pages

Superpages to Factor CTR into Ad Rankings

I noticed that Greg Sterling just reported over at Search Engine Land that Idearc Media’s Superpages is going to begin factoring in ad click-through-rates into the measures used for ranking ads on the vast networks of sites where Superpages content appears. I was aware of this plan prior to my departure from Superpages, and I think it’s one of the cooler things my old teammates are developing.

Naturally, this follows other major ad networks who do similar things. Google, for instance, has begun using quality scores to decide ad rankings and the pricing of the ads.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

Posted by Chris Silver Smith of Netconcepts on 04/26/2007 | Permalink | Email | Print

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Trackback | Comments (0) | Comments RSS | Filed under: Advertising, Paid Search, Yellow Pages Ad-Rankings, Advertising, CTR, idearc, Idearc-Media, Pay-Per-Click, ppc, superpages, Superpages.com

Google Cubed: Our Cubes are Bigger than Google’s!

This past month we noticed that a company started moving into the empty office space adjacent to ours. We’re located in Texas, inside the great Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The office space in the strip of buildings next to us has been vacant a long time. Some of our customer-care folx stopped and asked the electricians who was going to be moving in: it’s Google.

A few of us in management were a bit concerned, because it was entirely odd that Google would choose, out of the entire, huge, gigantic, sprawling metro area, to park themselves *smack* next to us! We couldn’t help but wonder if they were planning to lure away some of our advertising specialists! After all, we knew that they apparently had a small office in nearby Irving where they had AdSense optimizers, so it was conceivable that they might think that poaching our employees might give them skilled people quickly. There’s so much office space in the entire metro area, that it virtually defied reason to consider that they only coincidentally located offices next to us.

However, one of our marketing staff finally came back with the intel that this was to be offices for Google Radio (aka “Google Audio Ads”) – not something all that related to what we do. So, maybe it is coincidence, and not a snarky attempt to leach away our talent.

The workmen appear to’ve mostly finished setup, and it seems like people are starting to work in the building. So, I strolled over there after work and took some pics through the windows. I was stunned to see that Google’s cubes are actually smaller than ours!

(click on the pic to enlarge)