Yellow Pages Trash Talking: The SEO Dog in the Google Local Fight
It is not surprising that Search Engine Land would go the route of sensationalist Yellow Pages extinction headlining, on the eve of its “Local” conference.After all, the conference Danny Sullivan hopes to compete against–The Kesley Group–addressed “Why Yellow Pages Still Matter” just last week.
They apparently don’t, though, for Chris Smith: He is a “lead strategist” at search marketing firm Netconcepts, but takes to the Search Engine Land blog to make a (convoluted) case for “the demise of traditional Yellow Pages sites,” in favor of search engines! Google, in particular.
BUT, what is Smith’s dog in the Yellow Pages fight? He is said to work “primarily upon development” of a product claiming ‘near turn-key SEO application’:
Which helps businesses with non-optimal, dynamic sites to become search engine optimized nearly overnight.
In other who needs Yellow Pages Smith words: “market share and business foundations erode to search engine competition,” when there is Google SEO on the case:
It is my opinion that Google’s innovations in local search combined with increasing inclusion of business listing data in the search engine results pages is causing users’ behavior to change. Users are finding more and more of the information they’re seeking directly in SERPs, negating the need to find Internet Yellow Pages.
Smith neglects to mention, of course, that SEO firms, such as his own Netconcepts, seek to spur LOCAL MERCHANTS to CHANGE their behaviors online, touting “free” Google traffic over “paid” Yellow Pages listings.
Netconcepts hails a “very large” company that it is not allowed “to name publicly” has used its services to “rank well in Google.”
The Smith Search Engine Land death cry to Yellow Pages, but long live enhanced for local Google SERPs, dove tails nicely with the sales proposition of the SEO firm for which he is “lead strategist.”
Astute readers will note from the get go that the headling no more Yellow Pages call is also a Google-centric, Google serving one: the Search Engine Land Smith piece heralds: ”Google Trends: Yellow Pages will be toast in four years.”
Smith’s seemingly endless circular post can actually be understood by its headline alone: The world’s number one search engine self-reports that the Yellow Pages it competes against will be irrelevant going forward because Google itself will drive more and more of the world’s look ups.
The Smith headline can actually also be used to discount the validity of the entire Search Engine Land post, as Google self-reports, as well, on the non-data that is Google Trends:
Several approximations are used. Please keep this in mind: Google Trends may contain inaccuracies for a number of reasons. We hope you find this service entertaining, but you probably don’t want to write your PhD dissertation based on this information.
Also, you probably don’t want to write a Yellow Pages extinction, in favor of Google, story based on Google Trends information!
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