It’s somewhat curious to me that the major IYP players were not included on this panel. I wholly agree that the IYP sites need to appeal to the customer and adapt to consumer usage preferences, but I do believe that some of the larger players are starting to get it right in this space. At the end of the day, it’s all about the data and when the data is bad, outdated, inaccurate – it leads to a poor consumer experience. What would be great to see is the IYPs that have a print legacy *change* their mindset to that of the end-user (i.e. the consumer). It’s not about pre-defined ‘headings’ like you see in the Yellow Pages, it’s more about categories and a variety at that. The Internet has clearly changed the way the world interacts with anything (research, friendships, purchasing, etc), but the savvy players will understand that it’s about the consumer at the end of the day and fostering an environment that makes it easy to business with them.

I can’t agree more that IYP sites need to become more consumer-focused. While it has not historically been the case here and elsewhere, Dex has held that position for quite some time with Dexknows.com. I don’t think it’s as much about a resistance to a focus on the consumer; instead the challenges have been in “unraveling the knot”.

Many of the problems plaguing IYPs today revolve around the legacy products sold on the site, the nature in which IYPs accept and handle information from their core print systems, the taxonomies used (often print-headings based), and the geographies scoped (often matched to print directory scopes). This is all compounded by search algorithms that have historically driven impressions and clicks to specific products/pages and at times put relevance by the wayside.

We have addressed as many of these problems as we could through consistent improvements to the current platform and have seen a very positive response to our efforts; but, fully addressing these topics requires the development of an entirely new platform and site. We have been hard at work on this effort for all of 2008 and expect to deliver something to the market later this year.

In short, I think IYPs “get it”, but a lot of wood chopping is needed to create an environment that you describe above.

Jeff Porter
VP/GM DexKnows.com

The most telling tidbit: While major IYPs have advanced, they appear more oriented to supporting advertisers than the consumer. According to David Ingram, CEO of Brownbook.net: “There seems to be a mismatch between what consumers want and what the directory industry sees as important. Consumers want ease of use and accuracy versus publishers, who seem to focus more on advertiser-driven needs.”

The only caveat I would add is I believe publishers seem to want to focus more on publisher-driven needs. I’m not yet convinced they ALWAYS have the advertiser’s best interests at heart.

What continues to blow my mind is the reach publisher’s have that they’re unable to leverage. The feet on the street and the client list that many publishers would kill for is a powerful 1-2 punch. And yet, numbers of contracted SMBs continues to decline. Yes, SMBs go out of business. And, yes, SMBs are taking a closer look at their marketing/ad budgets and deciding they don’t get what they used to from the Yellow Pages.

With the long history the publishers have with SMBs – isn’t it going to be easier to KEEP a valued long time advertiser than it will be to get them back after they’re gone? Across today’s local search competitive landscape – if you snooze, you’ll lose.

Again, thanks for the great post from DMS ’08!