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November 2006 - Strategy Magazine
What Next

Yellow Pages offers online merchant profiles

by Annette Bourdeau
page 35

No website? Montreal-based Yellow Pages Group (YPG) can help

you out. It now offers merchant profiles on its online directory site, yellowpages.ca, using repurposed info from ads in its hard copy edition and online ads. The pages each have unique URLs based on the merchant's phone number.

"The majority of our advertisers don't have a website yet," explains Jean-Pascal Lion, YPG's VP marketing, adding that the more ad space you buy in the book, the more info you'll get on your merchant's page. "The beauty of the page is that it's static, so it's easy to be indexed in search engines."

And, since late August, yellowpages.ca has featured a new, simpler home interface with just two search boxes (instead of having to fill out various search fields), to better appeal to users who have grown accustomed to searching for things with über-simple Google. The ad campaign supporting the relaunch positions the site as "the find engine."

Lion says web traffic has gone up since the redesign by Montreal-based interactive agency Revolver 3.

YPG is now working on developing a keyword-buy system that's very similar to Google's AdSense. Lion says that will likely be offered within the next year.

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