« Minding The Gap Between The UK & US Search Markets | Main | SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 7, 2007 »
May. 7, 2007 at 1:13pm Eastern by Greg Sterling
SuperPages Cleans Up Its Act
SuperPages cleans up its act? What I mean by that is the new site design is a great deal cleaner and easier to navigate than the old site.
Some awkward elements remain, such as old style "disambiguation" pages. But the new results pages are more user friendly and less cluttered.
There are also more refinement capabilities and a new emphasis on dynamic maps. SuperPages has also beefed up personalization features and location-specific recommendations based on registration information.
Here's the release, which details the new enhancements.
The new design comes amid a host of changes and upgrades at SuperPages, including new sponsored search rankings based in part on click-through rates.
Interestingly, Microsoft has emerged as the mapping vendor of choice for the large yellow pages sites. SuperPages uses Virtual Earth, as does YellowPages.com.
|
Like The Story? Vote For It On Yahoo Buzz!
Send me the monthly search newsletter too! (Learn more about our newsletters and feeds) |
Subscribe To Our Search Feed!         
|
| Share & Bookmark This Story! |
By Greg Sterling
Permalink
Jump To Comments
See Related Stories In: Microsoft: Live Search Local, Microsoft: Partnerships, Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines
Reader Comments
SuperPages has some other cleaning up to do as far as I am concerned. I had set up an account with them for a client who decided he wanted to drop all PPC advertising due to a health situation. I tried numerous times to cancel the account and continued to get call after call from clueless SuperPages reps trying to get the account up and running.
To make a long story short, even after enduring through their red tape B.S. of going through a rep who had to get a manager on the line, etc., etc., the account has still not been closed as requested.
My client has recovered from his cancer surgery and has decided to do PPC again, but I've kept the SuperPages account to a bare minimum just because we could never get them to close the darned thing.
If you are considering advertising with SuperPages, be aware that you are likely to be deluged with calls from SuperPages reps.
Give me AdWords or Yahoo PPC any day.
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://searchengineland.com/nav-commenters.gif)
WebOptimist is correct. In worked for a company that advertised with them once and they wouldn't leave us alone. Then we had 3rd party people trying to resell us SuperPages ads as their own service. It was double bombardment. But regardless of the calls, the service did not lead to additional sales. That's why we pulled it.
Things can change though. I suppose.
I agree with the post above - to cancel an account is like impossible. I had to wait for my cc to run out of date before I got a reply....
Never again.
Interesting reading others accounts of SuperPages follies. One client who we removed from SuperPages PPC 4 months ago is still showing top sponsored spot on MSN live.localsearch. The reps were persistant but polite, not tricky like the Yellowpages.com reps.
Concerning relevancy I agree most local results are filled with national advertisers. Who needs all that junk at the top when you are looking for simple local services. Try plumber, Bozeman MT, the first local result is below the fold.
As for the redesign it reminds me now of Local.com, a site I use more often lately.
So I just clicked some links in the new interface for "Hotels" (link from their homepage) then "Denver Hotels" and the top 15 results were not geo-targeted - chain homepages and the top 3 results were in Aspen, about 4 hrs from Denver. Looks like now that they have the look they need to work on the "relevance"
It will be interesting to watch.
Thanks for the heads-up
~Carrie