The print yellow pages has been the defacto source for local information for as long as many can remember. Those days are quickly changing now that local search, via mobile and web-based, are taking over the market.
TMP Directional Marketing and comScore lead a study on local search consumer usage that found that print Yellow Pages has been overtaken by search engines as the first place people turn to when looking for local businesses. In fact, about 30% of local business searchers now spend the majority of their time searching online instead of offline, up from 26% in 2007.
This shows a rather significant boost for local search, being that print yellow pages held the number one spot just last year at 33% of searches, followed by search engines at 30%. This year, by a small margin, search engines rank first with 31%, closely followed by print Yellow/White Pages at 30%, online Yellow Page-type websites at 19% and local search sites at11%.
Being that it only took a few years for online local search to overtake yellow pages, it’s only a matter of time before mobile-based local search via mobile applications, etc. become the number one source of local searches and information. The location-aware aspect of mobile devices makes local search a no-brainer, and will one day make traditional yellow pages completely obsolete.
