Yesterday I got a call from the Yellow Page rep. If you're a business owner, you get these twice a year, maybe more. The rep was trying to sell me on online advertising with Yellowpages.com, and as he was running through his script, he rattled off a unbelievable statistic. He said 32% of all searches in the Triangle were done on Yellowpages.com.
I had to laugh. 32%?, I said, You've got to be kidding. No, he said, and then continued by saying that it was an independent statistic, not one taken by Bell South. He said the name of the surveying company, but I don't remember. Not that it matters; I'm pretty sure whoever came up with that statistic had to do some serious massaging to get a number like 32%. I told him that I keep stats on all my websites, and if I saw that 32% of the referring links on my clients sites came from Yellowpages.com, I'd be calling him.
This isn't the first time that I've heard crazy statistics from Bell South reps. I get calls all the time from them promising me a ridiculous amount of traffic and search engine optimization if I pay $70 a month for a link from Yellowpages.com. Everytime, I tell them that Yellowpages.com is linear directory, and that a link isn't going to give me any points from Google. It certainly isn't worth $70 a month to set up a hyperlink that I know takes 5 seconds to do. I've come to distrust everything they say, and after weighing the amount of calls I get from the phone vs. how much I'm paying per month, I've decided not to continue my phonebook ads next year. When I first started my business 6 years ago, my phone books ads brought me business. As the years have rolled on, I get less and less calls from people who looked me up in the phone book and my ads kept going up in price.I'd be really interested in hearing feedback from other businesses on their phone book advertisements and the promises made by their salespersons. Have you been promised a ridiculous amount of exposure or traffic? Let me know, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
