Internet Yellow Pages Continues to Grow User Base

The number of searches conducted on Internet Yellow Page (IYP) sites increased by 27 percent in 2006 over the previous year. That’s according to research conducted by comScore for the Yellow Pages Association (YPA).

During the 2006 calendar year, users conducted 3.3 billion searches on IYP sites, up from 2.6 billion in 2005.

“Our Internet Yellow Pages usage increased robustly in 2006,” said Neg Norton, president of the Yellow Pages Association. “Additionally, the average number if Internet Yellow Pages searches was up. From a share perspective, our share of the local search market increased.”

The growth is attributed to “investments publishers have been making in their IYP sites to make it better for customers as well as for advertisers,” said Norton. Investments include better mapping, comparison shopping, increased personalization, and the introduction of video.

The average number monthly searchers on this class of sites increased 46 percent in a year’s time. IYP pages saw 43.2 million searchers per month in 2005, and 63.1 million searchers per month in 2006.

Usage of the Internet Yellow Pages continues to rise. In the first six months of 2007, consumers conducted over 1.85 billion search queries on IYP sites, compared to 1.62 billion in the first six months of the previous year. The continued growth accounts for a 14 percent increase in search queries for the first half of the year.

While the Internet Yellow Pages saw growth in 2006, usage of print Yellow Pages declined 7.6 percent to 13.4 billion references, defined as the number of times consumers turned to the printed Yellow Pages books to find a listing. The data on print directories were provided by Knowledge Networks/SRI for the YPA.

The data were released by comScore from its panel of users. More than 15 Internet Yellow Pages sites were examined in the comScore study including Superpages.com, Yellowpages.com, and DexKnows.com.