Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Web war
Yellow Pages fighting off challenges from Yahoo, AOL and Google sites

By James Pilcher
Enquirer staff writer

Are the local phone book and directory assistance going the way of the typewriter?

It could happen, with big national search-engine names such as Google, America Online and Yahoo creating local sites seen not only on computer screens but also on cell phones.

Even the originator of the local search, at least on paper, is fighting back. Cincinnati Bell Yellow Pages has been electronic with its own widely used Web site for several years.

And last spring, it launched one of the most advanced local content cell phone search sites available.

What the battle means for consumers is an ever-increasing variety of ways to look for everything from the best pizza in the neighborhood to where the nearest tire shop might be in a strange part of town.

And all of these local Internet searches can be done with added bells and whistles such as maps and driving directions, user reviews and even search results that can be downloaded to a cell phone or by using a wireless phone to punch a button and connect directly with the business in question.

"The next generation may not even know what a Yellow Pages is," says Dave Green, vice president of Web services for Covington-based IT-Web consulting group Systems Insight Inc. "For anyone under the age of 20 who has been brought up with a computer, the Net is the first resource for anything. So it only makes sense that these companies would get increasingly local."

The new services don't just apply to the under-20 set. Retiree Tim Langner of Milford says he pretty much uses Google for all his information needs, even looking up local businesses.

"Right now, I'm trying to get my printer fixed, and I'm having a dickens of a time with the phone book," Langner, 67, says. "That way I can get a local company and have the address right there so I can be sure to get someone near me."

Branching out

Just in the past two months, Google has expanded and begun advertising its own local search function on its already popular Web site. AOL also launched its own local search function for all users, not just subscribers, in late February, pulling in such names as Mapquest and Moviefone.

And Yahoo has been adding to its local search Web site for over a year - all of which means further threats to printed forms of information such as the Yellow Pages.

"We are in an unprecedented period of product features when it comes to local searches on the net," says Greg Sterling, analyst for the Kelsey Group, a Princeton, N.J.-based local market research and consulting firm. "Consumers have access to a lot of information right now, and more and more of it is being geared toward their local needs."

Yellow Pages officials say they have been in on the movement from the start, as they launched a wireless version for cell phones in May and their own searchable Web site as far back as the late 1990s.

"The strategy is to distribute to our customers and advertisers content independent of medium or device," says David D. Miller, vice president of sales and operations for privately held CBD Media LLC, which owns Cincinnati Bell Yellow Pages.

But those Yellow Pages are the direct competitor for the likes of Google and Yahoo, experts say. That's why the search engine giants, as well as AOL, are getting more specific about local searches.

All have slightly different ways of gathering and presenting the information, but the big players have created products that not only include search results but also maps to the chosen destinations and even user reviews of different businesses.

"This is a very consumer-oriented experience, while the Yellow Pages is normally a very advertiser-directed activity," Sterling says. "But the Yellow Pages have this deep inventory of advertiser information that the search engines don't. So it will be very interesting to see how each adapts to the challenges of the other."

As for the Yellow Pages, Miller says its parent company earns about $80 million in revenue, with about 95 percent of that coming from print advertising. The rest comes from the Internet part of the business, which Miller says is profitable, and that number could be growing, with total searches going up 500 percent between January 2001 and last month.

And the company says its own market research shows that its Web site might not have the most visitors but does draw the most searches in this area.

Penny Cappel, director of marketing and patient relations for Mangat-Kuy Plastic Surgery Centers of Edgewood and Kenwood, says the Yellow Pages' Web site is working for her company.

She is paying Cincinnati Bell Yellow Pages $99 a month for 600 guaranteed monthly visits to the practice's Web site, on top of her annual bill for an ad in the print version.

It is part of a program that guarantees "click-throughs," or visits spawned from the Yellow Pages' own Web site.

"We're getting about 1,500 a month," Cappel says. "We all know this is the way the country is moving. We like our position with this - we come up as the first plastic surgeon that comes up with an ad on their site, and it has definitely paid off for us."

Pocket phone book?

Another local front of the search engine wars is in thousands of local consumers' pockets or purses. The cell phone is looked at as a new frontier for local search, with more and more phones being equipped and handling wireless Web sites. Google, Yahoo and AOL, as well as the local Yellow Pages, all have their own wireless application protocol (WAP) sites, designed specifically for ease of use for cell phones, and all have a local function.

In fact, many sites allow search results to be downloaded to phones by way of text messages. The Yellow Pages' site allows a user to click on the number at the end of the search, which is then dialed automatically without the user having to write the number down and redial.

"This eventually will supplant 411 as the way to find a phone number while on the road," says Andy Nulman, president of Montreal-based wireless Web content provider Airborne Entertainment Inc.

Yellow Pages officials say cell phone searches account for about 5 percent of the company's total Internet searches but that the amount of such wireless inquiries is going up 40 percent a month.

"Just as all politics is local, these Web searches on phones and the phones themselves are going local as well," Nulman says. "The devices are becoming more personalized, so the content must be, too."

E-mail jpilcher@enquirer.com