I decided to take a much closer look at our marketing efforts. One of these efforts included the decision to try “Superpages.com.” I was given plenty of promises and even decided to have them produce a short video for our www/superpages.com ad. I never post reviews but this one might help others from making the same mistake.

My main contact rep was Eden Pond. This was nothing but a game to him. The culture at Supermedia (the entity that handles Superpages.com) is callous. Mr. Pond and Supermedia stole $700 from me. Looks like I have to file a claim or something.

I have since cancelled my account and I will spend those ad budget dollars at Google or Dex. I have spent 200 hours dealing with Superpages. Trust me - run. You don’t want to waste money and time here. And how many “clicks” to our website in the last 6 months? About 10. And it isn’t that they called us instead. Superpages.com didn’t even list our phone number!

I agree with your points. While I believe the local online marketing/advertising space is quite fragmented, Google is no doubt the driver of change and innovation. Wide adoption of “online” by SMB’s is gaining tremendous momentum. The more turn-key and targeted the solution, the easier it is for SMB’s to participate.

I think the local portals growth in marketshare (41 to 51% increase) has to do in large part to the changes Google has been making to how some of these local results appear in the SERPs. We saw a pretty significant increase when Google expanded the “one-box” area from 3 listings to 10 (which is now 7). Now with our recent study the surge seems to be attributed to Google’s ability to now show local results for general searches which seem to have local intent. No geo-modifier is necessary to see these local maps results now which in the past (just a year ago) this was necessary.

Regarding the trust factor of advertising, our study did not measure this. Gloribel’s article was referencing the Forrester study. I do agree with you though that you really can’t compare a lot of these as their methodologies and base audiences measured varied pretty dramatically.

Thank you for taking the time to comment and elaborating on some of the measurement details involved in the study. I am interested in the methodology used to determine local business search volume to bolster my comprehension.

What factors do you believe have catalyzed the recent trend towards Local Portal search (versus IYP search) increasing from 40% to 51% year-over-year?

I raise the point about IYP bias based upon TMP’s legacy as “the world’s largest yellow pages advertising agency,” and I understand your organization’s relationships with yellow page publishers and advertisers run far and wide. In addition, Greg Sterling recently cited various surveys which portend to establish conflicting data about the most trusted sources of advertising (I know print yellow pages were not referenced in the other surveys). I do believe the perception of trusted advertisers may swing erratically among various demo’s and depending upon how survey questions are posed.

It was Gloribel’s article that inspired me to append this post underscoring who I trust for local business search results (online) between Yelp and one of the IYP’s, SuperPages.

In the end I am searching for the most profitable local online advertising solutions for my clients and audience.

I would be happy to provide you with more information about the 2009 study and the methodology used if you are interested.

What I would like to understand, is how the TMP study determines that SuperPages had 7.5 X the local search share while garnering half the visits of Yelp.

Superpages is working to become “stickier”, but as long as end users continue searching it is still a necessary place for businesses to be listed.