The Yellow Pages misunderstand the internet

After over 18 months of trying (and failing) to get my free business listing in the Yellow Pages I have had one last crack and find that they have changed the rules!  I always thought that in the internet age Google had replaced the Yellow Pages and the value of a listing was marginal anyway but hey, if it's free it can't hurt and may be of some benefit.

So today I have yet another telephone conversation with customer service and they tell me
that they no longer provide free listings for B2B businesses as their strategy is now to only print local versions of the Yellow Pages and B2B businesses usually have a state or national coverage.  

So their business strategy is defined by their print strategy?  Do they not understand the universal model of the internet: build an audience with free and sell premium to the few?  This was always the Yellow Pages model before the internet when it was the source for customers to find businesses.  Now the management just wants to make business pay.  Quite frankly they no longer have the market power for this to be an effective strategy.

The Yellow Pages only has value if everyone is in it and the information is up to date and accurate.  In my experience the information in the Yellow Pages has contained inaccurate old listings for some time now.  No doubt the new policy will help clear these out as they will be deleted if they are not paid for.  So over time the Yellow Pages will have less and less businesses listed in it and will be less and less of an authoritative site.

So sites like True Local, Hot Frog and Dlook will take over for businesses looking for valuable free listing services with extended functionality way beyond a free name and address in a Yellow Pages directory declining in importance.

What should the Yellow Pages be doing?  They should have a look at their competition and provide even more free value to attract the mass and develop new ways of providing premium listings that rank on the search engines and mobile apps.  At the moment all they are doing is squandering brand equity in rapidly changing times.  No-one can afford to do this.

OK so this rant was not really about logistics at all. Sorry for going off topic, I hope it was at least a little bit interesting.  

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