DexKnows launches Mobile Platform

DexKnows rolled out their mobile platform yesterday, allowing consumers to add DexKnows People and Business search to a variety of mobile platforms, including traditional cel phones, a mobile browser, text message search and of course, an iPhone app (which is the only one I've tried). The iPhone app looks like it has all the basic functions and works fairly well, allowing you to easily search for businesses or people by name and providing a somewhat fun, wheel-based ability to select your category (within Food, Entertainment or Travel/Transportation), combine that with a geo location (of which you can save multiple, which I haven't seen before in an iPhone local app), and get results for that combination. It has the other standard features as well, like saving businesses and returning to previous profiles viewed. All in all, a fairly solid app that covers the basics. It would be great for them to add some interactivity to the next version, allowing users to upload business data, reviews and images, to really utilize the iPhone as a 2-way device.

Dex® Mobile

Business.com Goes Local

Over the weekend, Business.com rolled out a redesign of their site. As part of it, they've integrated listings from their sister site, DexKnows.com. Now, on pretty much every directory page on their site, they've added a "Local Search" widget, which allows you to take their national listings and filter them down to find local vendors.

Merchant Accounts | Business.com

Idearc Results Follow In Line with RHD's - What's Next?

Idearc has reported their results just days after RHD's, and the reports are very similar. They are both shrinking in revenues and profits (but both still with significant Operating Profits), but both have debt that will never be paid off at the current revenue and profit levels. As their businesses move online more and more, their Internet revenues are not making up for print revenue losses. They're both trapped in the space where they don't want to cannibalize their print revenue too much while they still have it, but are lagging on the Internet side for the same reason?

So what happens next? They have both mentioned bankruptcy, which is a realistic discussion because of the size of their debt and the current market for debt restructuring. The real question is will they really go bankrupt or is this a negotiating ploy? Or does it make a difference? In reality, neither of these companies is going to close the doors. The operating profits are still healthy and selling their assets will bring much less money to the debtholders than continued operation will. So, whether they go bankrupt or not, the only option seems to be for the debtholders to agree to forgive some of their debt, to allow the companies to continue to operate, and to be thankful they're getting paid whatever they get. Whether that happens in bankruptcy or not may be moot.

Of course, there's one more option too: Consolidation. YPC seems to be fairly healthy and could make an aggressive move to take an even larger lead, get national coverage, and try to take the dominant position in local, both on and offline. They already have a deal with Idearc to exchange listings. Could that be the first step?

Kelsey Group Blogs » Idearc Results Are Predictably Grim; Bankruptcy an Option

New DexKnows.com Site Goes Live

After a while in Beta, the new DexKnows.com site launched yesterday... It will be very interesting to see how this impacts their positioning in the marketplace and if they see significant traffic increases from the more SEO-friendly structure of the site...

Kelsey Group Blogs » New Dex IYP Goes Live

RHD's new DexKnows site is in Beta

RH Donnelly has launched the beta version of their new yellow pages site, DexKnows. Lots of simple improvements and looks like a good first step in making more progress online.

Kelsey Group Blogs » RHD in Beta with New IYP Platform

Can Newspapers Be Saved? Here Are Some Ideas...

Building on the Newspaper discussion begun the other day, Search Engine Land has an article asking the question Can Newspapers Be Saved and how? The gist of it is:

1. This is the standard one we always hear. Advertiser relationships are the biggest asset for newspapers (just as they as for yellow pages), so they must defend those relationships and extend them, acting as trusted resources to provide a broad base of advertising products.
2. Sell everything your advertisers want. Not just newspaper, but IYPs (YellowPages.com, SuperPages and Dexknows are mentioned) and other local Internet traffic sources like CitySearch.
3. Focus on phone calls. As we've discussed here, most advertisers are not focused on directing clicks and traffic to their websites, except as it drives phone calls. Their sites are typically not optimized for conversion and they are not set up to do rapid responses to emails, so just skip the middle man and send the phone calls directly.

Everything else in here has to do with sales. Invest in your team, keep it easy to sell (this is a key - package products together rather than making it a complicated sale that seems like you're nickle and diming them), and make sure your sales comp is aligned with the new product set.

Sounds like pretty good advice. Will newspapers take it? That's another story...


Can Newspapers Be Saved? Part 2: Potential Solutions

IYP Reach in the US (according to Google)

Via TechSoapBox:



IYP Reach in the US (according to Google) - Tech Soapbox

Women are more likely than men to be IYP users

I saw an interesting tool on another website today (it can be found at the link below). You activate this tool and it will go through your browser history, analyze the sites you've visited, and tell you if it thinks you're male or female. When I ran it, it said with 100% probability that I'm male (I am). But more interesting to me was the male/female ratios it displayed for various IYP/Local sites I've visited. Here they are:

• Yellowpages.com - 0.72 male/female (1.38 women per man on that site)
• Yelp - 0.77
• Yellowbook - 0.8
• ServiceMagic - 0.71
• DexKnows - 0.79
• Google - 0.98

As someone working in the local space online, this tells me that, across the board, 55-57% of our users are women. That's without any specific outreach effort to that group. Perhaps we should consider market more directly to them, or at least focus on the sites they're using, as they seem more predisposed to using us to start with.

Mike On Ads » Blog Archive » Using your browser URL history to estimate gender