Internet Yellow Pages Flex Local Search Muscle

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.

–IYP represented 35 percent of total local commercial searches in 2006, up from 34 percent 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.