SuperMedia + Dex One = SuperDex
I was recently speculating about a possible SuperMedia – Dex One merger which could be hinted-at by the two companies cross-distribution agreement. If the two companies do merge, what might be their combined product or company brand name? Here’s a portmanteau brandname logo I came up with:
+ 
= 
Actually, I since discovered that “SuperDex” is the trademarked name of a chromatography product, so that potential brand name is in-use and not available!
Perhaps some other brand name could result from the theoretic union of yellow pages companies, like “SuperKnows” or “DexMedia”. Maybe even “DexPages” or “SuperOne”!
It would probably be ultimately least expensive to keep one dominant brand name — I think Superpages has more brand equity overall, so that’s what I would vote towards.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/10/2010
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Filed under: brand names, Domain Names, Yellow Pages brand names, brand naming, brandnames, Dex One, dexknows, directories, Directory, Internet-Yellow-Pages, iyp, logo design, Logos, Mergers, SuperMedia, superpages, Yellow Pages
Google Maps Should Consider A Canonical Phone Number Tag
Google Maps, local search engines, internet yellow pages and other online business directories often receive biz listing info from a great many sources and must merge it together (see my description of this in Eric Enge’s interview with me). When this happens, loads of variations in the business’s name, address and even phone number can cause listing data to fail to be merged. All this makes me think we might need a “Canonical Tag” for phone numbers! Read on, and I’ll elaborate… (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/28/2009
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Filed under: Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Maps, Online Directories, Research and Development, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Yellow Pages canonical phone number tag, canonical phone tag, canonical tag, Google-Maps, hCard, hcard microformat, local-search-engine-optimization, local-SEO, microformats, phone number, phone numbers, phones, proposed microformat, Yellow Pages
Local Store Inventories Might Help Yellow Pages SEO
In an article posted on Search Engine Land this morning, I outline how Google Maps are increasingly appearing for keyword searches, reducing referral traffic to internet yellow pages. In a brief companion piece, I also mention how embattled yellow pages should step-up their SEO game. If Google Trends is truly indicative of a sea-change that is hitting online yellow pages sites, then they must do something about it:
Natural Search Performance of Top Yellow Pages Sites in Google
(Click to enlarge) (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/14/2009
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Filed under: Content Optimization, Marketing, Online Directories, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Yellow Pages Internet-Yellow-Pages, inventories, inventory, iyp, Local Search, local store inventories, local-search-engine-optimization, local-SEO, NearbyNow, Online-Yellow-Pages, ShopLocal, store inventory sites, superpages, Where2GetIt, Yellow Pages, yellow pages seo
WSJ Comments On Idearc Bankruptcy & Verizon Culpability
A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal’s Dennis Berman commented in his column entitled “The Two Sides of Verizon’s Deal Making” on whether Verizon might have some responsibility for the bankruptcies of Idearc, Hawaiian Telecom and FairPoint Communications. As you may recall, I posted an op-ed piece on the subject, Idearc’s Bankruptcy – Who’s Really Responsible? at Search Engine Land not long back, and now Berman’s take on the issue appears to hold a lot of sympathy for my position that Verizon caused the yellow pages company to fail shortly after it was spun off by requiring it to do so with an unreasonably high debt load.
Berman states that while the market in 2006 may’ve allowed Verizon to take billions in the deal divesting itself of its directories corporation, Idearc, he further states:
“It took too much.”
Will there be any consequences for Verizon’s throwing off these companies with unserviceably high debt loads? Burman reports:
“These things matter greatly to how state and federal regulators perceive the company. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Hawaii each are in an uproar over the FairPoint divestiture, with much of the ire directed at Verizon.”
In a brief video piece, David Berman debates the issue with Evan Newmark, who takes the opposite viewpoint that Verizon should not be held responsible for the performance of its divested companies. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 08/18/2009
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Filed under: General, Market Data, Worst Practices, Yellow Pages bankruptcies, bankruptcy, divestments, FairPoint Communications, FairPoint Communications Bankruptcy, Hawaiian Telecom, Hawaiian Telecom Bankruptcy, idearc, idearc bankruptcy, M&A, mergers and acquisitions, spinoffs, Verizon
Is Verizon Responsible for Idearc’s Bankruptcy?
My op-ed piece, “Idearc’s Chapter 11 Bankruptcy: Who’s Really Responsible?” published today on Search Engine Land, and in it I put forth my position that Verizon is responsible for spinning off the company with an unreasonably huge debt load, and the people ultimately paying the bill are the stockholders.
I describe in the article how Verizon spun off Idearc Media (division which publishes print phone books and operates Superpages.com among other online yellow pages), and set that company up to pay back some billions of dollars for its worth. Verizon then turned around and resold those debt instruments to other companies, fully divesting itself of ownership in the new, standalone company.
This sequence in of itself isn’t remarkable – it’s the normal process a company might go through when spinning-off part of itself to form a new company.
But, my contention is that it was done so in a highly irresponsible manner. Verizon had to know beforehand that print directory business was going into shrinkage mode, and that the debt repayment structure would simply be too much for the new company to be reasonably expected to be able to handle. If so, then this could be expected to be a form of fraudulent conveyance, and Verizon could be culpable.
Is my contention outrageous?
Well, even Idearc’s Chief Executive, Scott Klein, has been paraphrased by the Wall Street Journal as saying “Everyone was aware that ‘$9 billion was really more debt than this business could bear'”. So, Idearc was spun off with a majority of this debt from Verizon from the start – clearly set up to fail.
So far, I’ve seen maybe three different law firms filing class-action lawsuits against Idearc and its executives, based on the premise that the stock tanked due to them secretly changing policies, resulting in inflated-looking sales on the books for businesses with higher likelihoods of not paying for contracted advertising. But, I think the real culprit in all this is likely Verizon – they pushed off a part of the company with an untenable debt load, in large part to pay off debts incurred by Verizon FiOS (Verizon’s fiber optic network) expansion.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/22/2009
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Filed under: General, Local Search, Market Data, News, Online Directories, Yellow Pages bankruptcy, chapter 11, directories, idearc, idearc bankruptcy, idearc chapter 11, Idearc-Media, iyp, Phone-Books, superpages, telco, telecomm, Verizon, Yellow Pages
AT&T Acquires YP.com for $3.85 Million
AT&T has acquired YP.com for $3.85 Million. I distinctly recall back when AT&T previously bought YellowPages.com in for $100 million in 2004. Does this make sense?!?
Back in 2004, I laughed and laughed and laughed, and I told coworkers that it was a huge waste of money, because, I said, “they won’t be able to buy themselves into the top position for searches for ‘Yellow Pages'”. SuperPages.com long held that distinction under my SEO direction, and I knew that purchasing the term in a domain name alone would not depose all the work we’d done to rank tops for it. As time passed, however, yellowpages.com has indeed deposed the Superpages forerunner. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/14/2009
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Filed under: brand names, Domain Names, Online Directories, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, URLs, Yellow Pages AT&T, Domain Names, Yellow Pages, yellowpages.com
New Print Yellow Pages Usage Stats from comScore-TMP Study
TMP Directional Marketing and comScore announced their annual joint “Local Search Usage Study” today, and there were some interesting statistics:
- Following online local searches, consumers most often contact a business over the telephone (39%), visit the business in-person (32%) or contact the business online (12%).
- 1 out of 5 local business searchers with an Internet-accessible cell phone have conducted a local search via the mobile Web.
- Those that own wifi devices (such as the iPhone) are the most likely to conduct local business search via the mobile Web, with more than half of these respondents reporting mobile local business searching.
- 30 percent of respondents still rely on directories as their primary local business research source, despite a 3 percent decline from 2007 to 2008.
- Traditional IYP sites such as Superpages.com, YELLOWPAGES.COM, Yahoo! Yellowpages.com, etc. account for 60 percent of local IYP business searches.
- Local Search sites such as Google Maps, MapQuest, Yahoo! Local, etc. account for 40 percent of local IYP business searches. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 10/09/2008
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Filed under: Local Search, Market Data, Yellow Pages Phone-Books, print-yellow-pages, yellow pages usage, YP
Yellow Pages & Blog Payola
Ed Kohler, outspoken critic of YP industry, “outed” DexKnows.com for using Pay-Per-Post to increase links and associated PageRank for their site.
As you may know, Pay-Per-Post involves paying bloggers to write articles endorsing products, services or companies, and in this flavor it also involves using those posts to link back to the company’s site in order to help build PageRank.
The blog post is very thinly disguised payola – as Kohler points out, the blog is purportedly belonging to someone in Arkansas, while this post appears to be all oriented around providing keyworded links involving Pizza in Minneapolis through DexKnows. The blog has a large “payperpost” ad badge on it, too, and if you read through the articles, every single one seems to be engineered to sound like someone writing about random daily life incidents, but always with a couple of injected keyword links.
In context, it’s glaringly obvious that the blog is a paid posting. Kohler posts a comment below it, asking if it’s a paid post for Dex, and the author replies that she doesn’t “know who’s Dex”.
Kohler further pokes fun at Ken Clark, a yellow pages industry advocate, (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 10/03/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, Blog Optimization, Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Worst Practices, Yellow Pages dexknows, paid blogging, pay per post, Yellow Pages
Decider Enters Local Search
Humorous faux-newspaper, The Onion, has launched a new local directory site called Decider in beta. While The Onion is famous for its satirical “news” articles, Decider is a decidedly serious guide intended to complement their other offerings like serious classifieds and the A.V. Club (The Onion’s arts and entertainment site).
Decider brings local business listings for bars, restaurants, music venues, events, and reviews. It appears to be targeted to the college-to-early-thirties demographic, and sports advertisements on the pages.
When I heard about Decider, I immediately though, “oh, yet another business directory site among the many others,” — a thought apparently shared to some degree by Andrew Shotland. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 08/28/2008
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Filed under: Local Search, Local Search Optimization, News, Online Directories, Yellow Pages business directory, Decider, local directory, Local Search
Print Yellow Pages Usage On Decline Or Not?
My article on how the “Yellow Pages Usage Stats Are Likely Wrong” went up earlier at Search Engine Land, and the details I highlight in it provide some strong circumstantial evidence that this year’s earlier industry statistics stating that print YP book usage hadn’t dropped over the year previous are likely incorrect.
As I point out, those statistics were all based on telephone polling, and those polls missed having representative samples of cell phone only households, according to their published methodology. Various research groups and government agencies have been saying that this is a significant chunk of the population — anywhere from 13.6%, growing to as much as 25% by the end of this year. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/29/2008
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Filed under: Advertising, Local Search, Market Data, Yellow Pages cell phone usage, polling, polls, Yellow Pages, YP
