How will Google’s Local Business Listing ads affect IYP advertising?
Some big changes have taken place in Google Maps. Advertisers can now pay a flat fee each month to advertise their business in the Local Business Listings. But the question that has yet to be seen is, how will this new shift affect online directory advertising, particularly the internet yellow pages?
Well, my guess is that the online directories will continue to lose market share to Google’s local business listings. More and more traffic seems to be diverted away from directories such as www.yellowpages.com and moving directly to the search engines.
If it isn’t bad enough that yellowpage publishers are losing all their print customers to the internet, now they may be in for another heartache as Google steals even more of that through their local business listing ads.
Internet Yellow Page (IYP) type sites have lost a ton of market share to the search engines because of local search results being integrated into universal search. The decrease in users visiting these sites in order to find local businesses and services will continue but the real effects will be accelarated on the advertiser’s side.
Local Listing Ads are bound to be successful with small businesses. The availability of free call tracking is just another way that Google is brining value to the table and allowing businesses to track their results.
I am guessing that the change to the “7 pack” from the “10 pack” results has been made so that Google can make room for its new local listing ads. For small businesses, that means that you might have lost your positioning that you once had. If this is the case, you many want to focus once again on optimizing your website for local search.
In the end, online directories will have to find a way to survive. And to demonstrate that fact, here’s a great quote I found from David Mihm, a very respected internet marketing specialists:
“If the Yellow Pages companies want to stay in business, they simply have to acknowledge that the real value that sales reps can provide is as web marketing advisors, rather than salespeople for a proprietary product. The sooner they start helping SMB’s leverage ALL of the ad products out there, including this one, the faster they’ll recover revenue streams.”
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Great article! I have to agree I see more and more traffic being sought through the search engines. I have never used something such as yellow pages. I’ve always found much more valuable information through the search engines, and with Google Local I don’t see those other types of sites making it for too much longer. Thanks for sharing!