I submitted my latest site, a review site called CEviews.org, to blogcatalog.com after moving some reviews from this site to it. It was rejected with the following email:
Dear Ash Nallawalla,
Thank you for submitting your blog CEviews (http://www.ceviews.org) to BlogCatalog.
Unfortunately upon reviewing your blog we are unable to grant it access to the directory.
Continue reading…
Saw via the Kelsey Group blog that the New Zealand Yellow™ publishers have asked Tradesmen Direct (TD) to remove a claim on their website that it is the largest directory of tradespersons in NZ.
TD claims to have 18,000 trades listings, whereas Yellow claims to have more than 10,000 listings for builders alone, never mind electricians, plasterers and other tradespeople.
Details: Nelson Mail
It appears that TD has removed that claim from the website, or it’s well hidden, but I was surprised that Yellow even bothered to contact TD. It probably gave free publicity to TD.
Speaking from an SEO perspective, Yellow™ has nothing to worry about from TD. Barely 1000 pages have been indexed and none of my test searches (google.co.nz, pages from NZ, but done in Australia) had TD above Yellow.
The search for Manukau car valet was great, with four Yellow results in the top 20. TD had a valid result but it was at #67.
Yellow fared well with Lower Hutt pest control, with five results. TD had none in the top 100.
I next tried a couple of heartland searches, for TD is based in Nelson and Tahunanui is nearby, hence Tahunanui plumber. Yellow had six results (!) in the top 20 – two from its main www domain, two from a duplicate www2 subdomain and two from its maps domain. If you can accept that gasfitters are usually qualified plumbers (?) then all its results were on target. A TD result was much lower but it was the home page and thus not a relevant page.
Nelson plasterer would surely be a cinch for TD, I thought. No cigar for the first 100 results. Yellow and its three subdomains (www, www2 and maps) were there.
Nelson carpenter was a disappointment for both. Yellow had a result at #90, but TD had none.
The search for East Tamaki carpenter was interesting. Google picked two results for Yellow for unrelated businesses (Steel processing and Industrial fasteners) located on Carpenter Road, East Tamaki, not actual carpenters. TD didn’t show in the first 100 results. However, on the TD site, the same search produced two results for unrelated headings (Sheet metal engineers and Forwarders):
The Yellow site had no problem in finding five real carpenters in East Tamaki.
Of course, TD’s PHPMyDirectory script is no match for Yellow’s industrial strength platform powered by Local Matters.
Christchurch fencing contractor had the usual six results for Yellow but none for TD. I had had enough of testing by this stage.
Businesses contemplating advertising in an Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) or business directory should take the time to search for their own category (heading) in Google and a few other related categories to see if pages from the IYP rank in the top 20 results. New IYPs need to get SEO right from the get go if they are to get anywhere. I use the PHPMyDirectory script for a couple of free directories and can vouch that it is not optimised out of the box. It needs tweaks.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9815bvJrKw[/youtube]
It’s also about apples and oranges. Mature businesses such as Yellow can provide wider reach than just the website channel – print, voice, mobile and now the Sheep Launcher-beating Yellow iPhone app!
Greg Sterling’s blog has a guest post by Alex Algard, CEO of whitepages.com, which begins with a thought-provoking statement:
The Right Course: Opt-In for White Pages and Opt-Out for Yellow Pages
His website has launched BanThePhoneBook.org, because:
We at WhitePages are passionate about building awareness of the waste created by the white pages books and providing them only on an opt-in basis, but I think it would be a mistake to draw similar conclusions for the yellow pages.
Call me cynical, but people who are passionate about the environment tackle the core issues, not specific products. They chain themselves to logging equipment or camp atop tall trees that are about to be felled. They join GreenPeace and similar bodies. Perhaps Alex does all that as well. 
The whitepages.com blog contains statements such as:
The environmental impact and economic costs are mind-boggling: WhitePages estimates that 5M trees need to be harvested each year to print ~147M white pages phone books. And the costs to recycle these books each year costs taxpayers an estimated $17M. (Are you kidding? Any way you look at it these estimates, the numbers are absolutely staggering.)
and
Consumers are unaware of the environmental waste of printing the WPPB: When asked if they knew that millions of trees are cut down each year to print the WPPB each year, 74% of survey respondents answered ‘No’. And Less than 16% recycle their old books (that’s nuts).
Quite rightly, one of the comments came from Ken Clark, a consultant to the Yellow Pages industry in the US. He questioned the above figures and pointed to an eye-opening, well-illustrated article about how paper used for US directories is made by NPI – no trees are cut down expressly to make directories. Ken says that the paper is made from four ingredients:
It’s great to support online services (it pays my bills), but singling out specific print products to “ban” and setting up a website to that end only fools the gullible or the ignorant. If I surveyed consumers and asked questions based on made-up facts, of course I will get the answers I want. Not everyone uses the Internet for everything, even if the stats show that almost every home is connected to the Internet.
Many directory company websites have information about recycling and links to authoritative sites on the subject. My employer’s site is no exception and I was a bit surprised to see them mention that some people use the directories to prop up monitors. It’s no wonder that the spine also carries advertising!
In many First World countries, the printed White Pages are delivered to every household because the law requires it. These books contain essential information that citizens may need in an emergency, such as poisons, first aid, life lines, etc — at least in Australia. Check yours before you chuck it out and blog about it.
It’s fairly easy to check that I work at the Yellow Pages® or that I am not their public spokesperson, so this is just my opinion, FWIW.
Being a search marketer, I use Google/Yahoo/Live much of my working day. I have Google and SocialMention alerts for “yellow pages” and “Sensis” to see what is happening or being said about my industry.
Most days, I get alerts about some American who feels the need to blog or tweet about receiving a stack of unwanted directories. They make the mental leap that just because *they* don’t use them, *everybody* must surely think the same way. Many take interesting photos of the directories and share them with the world. Here is the usual one about using them as a door stop. OK, a few US publishers are in strife, but Australia’s an exception.
I can’t justify a data plan on my Nokia N95 mobile, so I don’t just pull it out to Google something or tweet about my emotions while standing in line at Starbucks. OK, the work mobile has a data plan, but anyone who uses a Nokia 6120 to type a URL or SMS deserves a medal.
I frequently travel to the US through my volunteer activities and always look for the local Yellow Pages directory in my hotel room, as I’m looking for the nearest mall or restaurant. I’m not paying some crazy 24-hour wireless Internet fee to use a browser for five minutes! At home, we care for the environment and don’t have a PC left switched on 24/7, so the directory comes out when I can’t be bothered to walk to the other end of the house to turn on my PC.
Although I seem to use less than 50 pages in the directory, it seems that other Aussies are using other pages and enough advertisers clearly see an ROI. This might not be the case forever, but it’s working at the moment, so please don’t put me on the dole queue yet.
So what prompted me to write this?
Earlier last week, two ex-colleagues from another company were pitching their own PPC and SEO services in the news media while rubbishing the Yellow Pages. Now I know it’s a mistake to pull out of the Yellow Pages.
Next, another SEO tweeted:
Now google AU gives Sensis listings priority over LBC listings. What gives?
Sheesh. I’m trying hard not to wear a sales hat, but Yellow ads are retweeted, er, syndicated to Google Maps, so advertisers get found in Google Maps, Google Search via good old SEO, Google Mobile, Yellow Mobile, assorted city council pages, via other search engines etc.
Probably why advertisers still advertise in the Yellow Pages.
Then it was a tweet by a fellow Aussie (link added by me):
Sensis just won best new entrant in the corporate responsibilty awards – what? – they still pump out millions of hardcopy yellowpages!
Later, she tweeted (typo hers):
apperently 96% of yellowpages are recycled – this is good – but still why produce them in the first place…?
Er, because enough Aussies still use them and because enough advertisers think it is a good use of their money? And some of us hang on to them for a full year, use them, then recycle them.
On Thursday there was a tweet by someone else:
As seen in an email sig: “Sensis cares for the environment – think before you print.” Says the biggest paper spam company in Australia.
which was followed up by my colleague Jeremy Mawson:
it couldn’t possibly be anywhere near the paper wastage of http://www.salmat.com.au/
The OP didn’t give up:
@Synesso Salmat too, but no sig hypocrisy there. Also, many people DO read shop specials, a lot more than paper phone books I’d wager.
So I am working for a spammer?
Now the suburban newspapers I get are surely spam :^) (tongue firmly in cheek) because *I* don’t read them (yes, therefore nobody else does). Stacked up, I estimate at least one, perhaps two directory books’ worth turfed each month. Surely they will be extinct soon. But Rupert, another American, does not agree. Thank god for Rupert.
To opt out of the Sensis print directories, see this page.
Added: Here are links to later articles at other sites. I will keep adding below as I find them:
WebProNews writer Chris Crum has responded to an earlier post about the eBusiness Directory. Thanks, all understood and best wishes, like I originally said. We do need good directories.
An update on my experience: I received six, yes, six acknowledgments for my two submissions (or was it for just one of them – can’t tell from the generic response). No, I did not make multiple submissions, so there must have been a glitch somewhere.
Thank you for confirming your recent submission to webpronews.
If approved, your listing will be live within 3 to 5 business days.
Either my sites did not make the grade, or there is a dmoz-like queue of sites waiting to be approved. I’ll try submitting some top-tier sites (that I do not own) and see if they show up. You should do likewise and help make it a terrific directory!
In what must be an unintended way to piss off readers who happen to own directories or other websites, WebProNews has launched its own eBusiness Directory. In a newsletter article entitled, “Some Directories Are Still Useful”, writer Chris Crum opines,
A web directory should be just that. A directory. A directory is meant to be helpful for finding information. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case with many of the directories that are out there on the web. The vast majority are just endless pits of links with maybe some good ones, but they are usually thrown in with less than stellar ones, which tend to be quite prevalent.
Human-edited directories tend to be more useful, but are still usually aimed more at the submitter promoting their business than they really are towards the user who is there to find information. Often times these directories offer paid links, further proving that they are really there for promotional purposes.
Take a moment to explore the nascent WebProNews eBusiness Directory. What do you think of the sites in it? These are early days, so we don’t know if the humans at WebProNews will list “only sites that we feel will be truly beneficial to you – the user”. For good measure, Crum adds, “We are dedicated to keeping this thing as useful as possible, and not cluttered with a bunch of junk.”
I submitted two sites: this blog and my SEO Training site. I looked for accepted submissions and found one for my friend’s company. The description reads
Search engine optimization company based in New York & India. 24 hours Support. Cost $11 – $15 / Hour. Get a Free SEO report worth US $150. Apply now. Our SEO work is resold by more than 100 agencies across United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia…
(A link to a screenshot in case the text gets edited) Good on my friend for being accepted, but is this the type of description you expect to see in a quality directory that has no paid links? That should not surprise anyone, as human editors are human. Crum continues, “Some directories, like the old Yahoo! Directory for example, are often useful at first, but become less useful as they are bombarded with submissions”.
Useful: It is a loaded word. Like beauty, usefulness is in the eye of the beholder (or user, in this case). The eBusiness Directory has quite a few entries in it, so try some searches using the search box that invites you to search the directory:
The description for Jaankanellis.com is precious (screenshot link):
We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for / on this server. An invalid request was received from your browser. This may be caused by a malfunctioning proxy server or browser privacy software. Your technical support key is: 421c-8b5f-1756-6707
Is this something you’d see in a quality, human-edited directory?
In my day job at a multi-billion-dollar directory company I am privileged to work with usability experts and others who are part of UX (user experience). In the mid 1990s my work at Unisys included what was then known as “human factors”. I video-taped typical users of our software while they tried out one of our software prototypes. We do this at my current employer all the time. We analyse this feedback and use it to improve our directories. Asking real users for feedback eliminates guesswork and personal bias in determining what is “useful”. WebProNews asks for feedback, so you should give it.
We should applaud WebProNews for launching a directory that they hope will be “better” than others. I don’t think it will be any better or worse than the hundreds of other directories they disparage. Why? The existing submissions include some great sites, but the examples here suggest that it won’t be much different.
This “directory” begins with a directory metaphor. There are 18 categories that you can browse to a second sub-category level. So far, so good. If you hit a category that is split over many pages, you could be turning pages where the listings seem to be in submission order. Sooner or later you will try the search box, as I did.
The search function is limited. Numerous SEO listings exist, but they can’t be found when you type “seo” or “SEO” but you get them when you spell the acronym in full. The earlier example of searching for a search specialist gives one unexpected result – of a software download service that has “Specialist” in its title. This is not useful to end users.
SEOs will submit to this directory over the next few weeks and I also expect to see no Toolbar PR on these pages in due course, as the links are clean. If you look closer at the links, many end in /index.php. Any good SEO will tell you that this is bad linking practice as it dilutes the link love for the recipient. Therefore, I don’t think this directory is particularly useful for search engine optimising purposes. On the other hand, the Yahoo directory is still very good value for link love. I don’t have an account at Yahoo, but I have seen some backlink experiments where the test sites with a Yahoo backlink did better than equivalent sites that did not.
It is early days for WebProNews’ directory. I wish it well.
