The Yellow Pages Association put out a press release, supported by comScore data, that shows very healthy growth and usage of online yellow pages sites. Previously TMP Directional Marketing released findings from a consumer study that showed, among other things, that local search and yellow pages sites have some of the most qualified traffic on the Internet: 82 percent of users made a contact and 61 percent went on to make an in-store purchase.

Among the data from the YPA release were the following:

–Average # of monthly IYP searchers up 46 percent: 63.1 million IYP searchers per month in 2006, compared to 43.2 million IYP searchers per month in 2005.

–2007 IYP search queries up 14 percent: consumers conducted more than 1.85 billion IYP search queries in the first six months of 2007 compared to 1.62 billion in the first six months of 2006.

I have more on the YPA data on my personal blog Screenwerk.

Related Topics: Search Engines: Maps & Local Search Engines | Stats: General

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling