Monday, January 24, 2011

Did you buy your website from the yellow pages group?

Did you hire the Yellow Pages to create your website? Yes you did... and your website looks like this. On first glance, that's OK, you have to have somebody create your website...but be advised-- This kind of website isn't going to supply endless leads the way the Yellow Pages did 20 years ago. You will be lucky to get a couple of calls a year in most areas.



You will notice that there are many thousands of websites that all look like they were created by 1940's Germany. different colors, but all the same.That means that they will all be clustered together in a glut of under-performing websites.

 


How do I know?  Did I hire Bell Canada-er- Yellow Pages Group to build my website? 
No, I discovered this when I started seeing a lot of ads showing up on our website. You see, Bell Canada - Yellow Pages Group doesn't get much traffic to their on-line directory (website). They either can't figure out how to do it, or they are penalized because they are competing with Google.

So these days, since the Yellow Pages don't have eyes and they want to continue making the same money they did before the decline of their media, the game has changed. 
So, you hire Bell - BCE- Er, Yellow Pages Group.

They Pay Google for Advertising

Google pays us for Advertising--and I block the ads if they compete with our people.

The trouble with this arrangement is that you have a great big middleman in the picture... Yellow Pages. 

The point of the story here is that the Yellow Pages Group is incredibly expensive for what you get. They have no natural traffic so they have to pay for traffic. What they create for you is poor quality and won't get you the traffic you want or need to get for the money you pay them. (The most you can expect is to find your name in Google if you type that in with the Town you live in--not sure about City, depends on competition and your chosen name).

The point is that if you have done this you can always change your phone numbers and shut it down, however don't trust me. Go right now to google. Type in Google Analytics and follow the instructions to generate code.

Now get that to your webmaster (Bell Canada - Yellow Pages Group), or whatever webmaster you can find that they will grant editing access to the yellow pages created site. Without accurate statistics you are driving blind. You need to know how many VISITS, where they came from and how they found you. (For more about Website Traffic Terms like Visits, Hits and Page views...click here)

Install the code from Google and very soon you will find out how much the wonderful website by the "Yellow Pages" is doing for you.

You will quickly discover that ALL of your traffic is coming from Google and most is from Adwords.
Google has a wonderful system for buying advertising called Adwords. 

Now, if you are in the Deck and Fence, Landscape Architecture or Design or Landscaping Business... you can go right to the source and get a listing on our site. Because we see 1,000,000 eyes every year, we get targeted traffic that is looking for what you sell. For about the price of a dinner out you can get listed on GardenStructure.com. (click for info). 

We don't charge per click and being part of a large high quality web presence means legitimacy. 
We will make your phone ring. You can even upgrade to being one of our "Accredited" Builders or designers and have an exclusive area without any other competition.

There was a time when the Yellow Pages were the only game in town.

If you had a business that sold to customers of any kind, you could get a Yellow Pages listing and be immediately in the game. With the advent of the internet that has changed in a horrific way for the Yellow Pages. They went from supplying 77% of the home improvement prospective customers or better, to roughly 5% and mostly retired.



I personally don't know where our phone book is--When is the last time you used yours?

On-Line Yellow Pages.ca simply are not a factor. There are 30,000,000 people in Canada, 100,000 visits to Yellow Pages website a month (and traffic is sinking fast). At minimum, 50,000 of those visits would be from advertisers checking their sites/ads... That leaves 50,000 eyes a month. For perspective, from March till August GardenStructure.com gets 100,000 to 150,000 unique visitors per month and we are just one company in a niche market. Our humble little company gets more visitors than YellowPages.ca gets

Google is the new Yellow Pages, and GardenStructure.com supplies thousands of targeted referrals because
Google sees us as a source of good information and inspiring photos.

Get in touch with Lawrence to find out more about getting involved!

888 293 8938


8 comments:

Unknown said...

Just got a scathing review of this article in comment form--quite obviously by an employee of Yellow Pages Group! He signed it anonymous and out of principal I just won't post anything without a name. Too shady.

He disputes the traffic figures quoted in the article by Compete. I know they are 200% off in our case, so they may well be inaccurate for Yellow Pages... but whether they have 100,000 monthly visits, or 400,000, it is tiny traffic for any site servicing thousands of businesses with leads. He did give a link that lead me to this page...

http://getfound.yellowpages.ca/en/pricing/overview

OMG... they are charging people $250.00 a month for those hideous pages!!!

There is a sucker born every minute!

I would invite Anonymous to write a legitimate comment with a signature.

L

Unknown said...

Couple of interesting links I did find. http://www.yellowpagessuck.ca/ Don't be put off by the name of the site. He gives interesting information.

Also, check out Alexa's information on yellowpages.ca

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yellowpages.ca#

yellowpages.ca is visited more frequently by females who are in the age range 55-64 and have no college education.

53% of visitors to the site bounce... that means they display 1 page and leave.

Anonymous said...

The traffic from compete.com is very misleading because compete uses US based ISP to track the visits to sites. Since not too many Americans will use yellowpages.ca hence the number is very low.

Unknown said...

That is hooey... absolute BS.

There are 300 million Americans--and 30 million Canadians. 1/10 of the population.

The fact is that the pages they create on behalf of their clients and their web listings don't rank for anything. I can't remember the last time I saw any of their listings come up on in the organic listings for Google. I do however block their ugly paid page ads any time I find them--about 10 per day.

You cannot count visits from clients to check their pages or stats as visits.

If yellowpages.ca had any traffic... they would give actual numbers through an independent third party. They can easily register with Compete.com and share their statistics--but that will never happen because they don't want their clients to know how abysmal the odds of them actually getting visits through their system.

If you have traffic... you brag about it--if you are faking it you buy more TV ads.

L

Unknown said...

Here is how silly their claim of traffic is.

Search for "Website from the Yellow Pages Group" in Google.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=website+from+the+yellow+pages+group&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS355US355&ie=UTF-8

Not only does this page outrank theirs--but so does YP New Zealand.

Bob said...

Comscore Media Metrix ranks the yellow pages network as number 7 in Canada. I believe yellowpages.ca by itself has 11.5 million UV's per month. http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2008/04/Top_Canadian_Web_Sites
(I cant find the one for 2010 but comscore definitely ranks YLO as number 7)

Unknown said...

Here is what Comscore says...

9.7 million uniques among all their sites, the actual yellow page listings will be far less.

"Yellow Pages Group (YPG) owns and operates Canada’s leading properties YellowPages.ca™, Canada411.ca™, CanadaTollFree.ca and CanadaSansFrais.ca. These sites contain 12 million residential and 2.4 million business listings. Yellow Pages Group also manages CanadaPlus.ca, a network of seven local city sites.

Over 24 million¹ Canadians use the Internet, and of those, 44%¹ access the Yellow Pages Group's sites. "

So, Canada 411 is lumped into searches which has nothing to do with yellow pages for the majority of searches.

So, this means that if yellow pages actually generates a few million visits a month--Being Generous with the numbers, your average business that pays them for a listing on line will see 2 visits a month, and possibly 24 page views a year.

These are very poor odds considering they want to charge you $250+ per month for their on-line service.

Simply Scandalous. I can't believe there are so many stupid people in business.

L

Unknown said...

Ohh, and those numbers are from 2008, and lets consider that anyone that will actually pay for on-line yellow page ads will likely dial up their site once a month to make sure it is still there--especially since their phone doesn't ring from the ad.

That means the average customer will get 12 site views... Since one in 100 may call for information, they can potentially pay yellow pages for 10 years before they even get the chance to convert a potential sale.

WOW... that is a compelling reason to pay the yellow pages group!