Ya gotta love the Yellow Pages – all printy fresh. In a press release issued today (the link is an instant download and I imagine you don’t need the pdf clutter), they offered up their top searches for the year – the year 2002. In any case, it’s interesting to see what the top “references” are – their terminology, best as I can tell, for the equivalent of a person taking action based on a Yellow Pages listing. This data comes from the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association, which exists mainly to promulgate the idea that the Yellow Pages are a vibrant and long-lived source of leads for local business. Caveats herewith in place, the top ten are:
1. Restaurants
2. Physicians & Surgeons
3. Automobile Parts-New & Used
4. Automobile Repairing & Service
5. Pizza
6. Automobile Dealers-New & Used
7. Beauty Salons
8. Attorneys/lawyers
9. Dentists
10. Hospitals.
The data also includes the actual number of references for each term. The top term (Restaurants) had more than 1.3 billion references. In other words, folks used that category in the Yellow Pages 1.3 billion times in 2002. How on earth did they came up with this number?The study of course has no methodology attached to it. I mean, how *do* you track this? Compared to paid search, which is entirely trackable? Anyone know?! Guess I’ll have to call the YPIMA and ask. Also, I’ve emailed folks at Google and Overture to ask what the equivalents are in paid search, which would be a fun comparison. …
UPDATE: Click on the (more) link below to see the full response from the Yellow Pages Integrated Marketing Assocaition on how they got this data…Thanks to the IMA for this response!
]]>