Tag Archives: yellow pages

My Yellow Pages Career by the Numbers

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Action shot speaking to Yellow Pages sales reps.

Reflecting back on my career with Yellow Pages Canada (YP), it has been an incredible ride. I have met so many incredible people and made so many friendships that will last a lifetime.

In the Canadian tech space, it is not often you get to play a critical role in helping a company go from $90M in digital revenues (2006) to $556M in digital revenues (2017), build products that are used by hundreds of thousands of SMB’s and get to spend countless hours with the leading digital companies and people around the globe.

This article is not about predicting the future of YP or the state of the industry, rather its to briefly reflect on the past.

Read the rest of the article on LinkedIn

or

Read the rest of the article on Medium

[SCREENSHOTS] Evolution of YellowPages.ca Mobile (2009-2011)

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Did you know that 30% of YellowPages.ca traffic comes from mobile? Source: YPG.com. This news actually was announced during YPGs 1st quarter results and today, Greg Sterling did a post on his blog regarding this as well, see “YPG: 30% of Our Searches Come from Mobile“. This number is pretty impressive when you consider that only 2-years ago that number represented well less than 1%.

Another piece of news today is that the new YellowPages.ca application is a featured application in the iTunes store – this is pretty big news as you can’t buy your way to this placement, your application has to be deemed pretty good for the Apple editorial team to pick up.

YellowPages.ca Application Featured in the iTunes Store

YellowPages.ca Application Featured in the iTunes Store

For this blog post I thought it would be great to take a look back.

Having been with YPG since 2006, as an employee (actually been working with the company since 2001), I managed the team that launched YPG into the world of iPhone applications. Back in 2009 there was not a lot of focus on mobile, but since then the mobile team has expanded and is now under the leadership of Matthieu Houle, a colleague and friend of mine who as we say at YPG, is “rocking da house”. Under his leadership there have been 2 more releases of the YellowPages.ca iPhone application with the most recent only 1 month old.

Here is the evolution of the home page of the iPhone Application for YellowPages.ca

2009 (features included basic search for business, people and reverse, display ads, photos and videos)  

YellowPages.ca iPhone Application From 2009
YellowPages.ca iPhone Application From 2009

2010 (features included hot links to popular categories, streamlined and more intuitive interface, all YP.ca content including videos and photos)

YellowPages.ca iPhone Application 2010
YellowPages.ca iPhone Application 2010 Search Results Page

2011 (features include ratings and reviews, type ahead for categories and locations and customizable popular buttons)

YellowPages.ca iPhone Application 2011
YellowPages.ca iPhone Application 2011 Search Results Page

Download the latest application here in the iTunes store.

On November 8, 2009, I did a blog post, “Canada’s Yellow Pages(TM) Mobile App, over 1/2 Million Downloads and 3 Reasons for its Success” which in terms of the number of downloads is no longer accurate (we are over a couple of million) but the 3 reasons why I believe Canadians love this application hold.

If you don’t want to read the full article, let me summarize the 3 reasons why back then Canadians loved this app and why it holds true today –

1) Simplicity,
2) Content (even more so today) and
3) Usability (which gets better with every release).

The Eco-System of YellowPages.ca Business Data in Canada

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Two questions:

How important is it for a local business to ensure that its basic listing data (name, phone number and address) is included in the YellowPages.ca database?

How important is it for a local business to ensure that its enhanced content (hours of operations, products, services, etc) are also included in the YellowPages.ca database?

Ultimately the above questions boil down to, “what’s in in for the SMB”. To help answer this, I have created the following eco-system slide that shows how/who the data from yellowpages.ca gets distributed across the consumer eco-system in Canada. NOTE: This is a representative sample of partnerships of companies that use portions or all of the yellowpages.ca database to offer a local connection to its audience.

For an SMB this boils down to two main reasons why this is important:

1) Time Saving – by having a central distribution of basic + enhanced listing data a SMB does not have to spend time to manage their data in multiple locations.

2) Consistency of Information – having the same information appear in a consistent manner across this eco-system allows a SMB to manage and control their message in a more manageable way.

If it is true that the users will continue to splinter into more consumer platforms it will become more and more critical for a centralized hub that can distribute that information.

In Canada, YellowPages.ca is a very important hub for the SMB market.

What do you think?

Eco-System – Connecting SMBs to Canadians

Real Estate and Local Search – A Good Combo – Some Canadian Examples

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My last post taked about Weather and Local Search and how we completed an integration with The Weather Network and Yellow Pages Group. If you are interested in integrating local search powered by YellowPages.ca in your Canadian property; at the bottom of this post I have connection points – I would be happy to discuss options with you.

For this post I wanted to focus on a couple of integrations on Real Estate websites and Local Search. Both of these categories are completely complimentary and when you combine local search to a real estate offering you provide a more complete user experience.

Integration Example #1 – HomeTrader.ca

About Home Trader (from their website) – homeTRADER.ca – Canada’s Real Estate Search Engine – It’s a one-stop destination with listings and information on homes for sales, apartments for rent, house rentals, condos for sale across Canada.

Here is a quick walking tour of their site:

Home Page (from the home page, it will default you to your IP location, or you can simply enter your location – here is an example of Toronto)

homeTrader.ca Home Page With Toronto Map

From the home page I selected downtown Toronto and as you can see it will plot all the locations that are available:

Downtown Toronto Rentals Available on homeTrader.ca

When you click on a particular location it will provide you with pop-up summary of the location and give you the option to find more details on the property. I decided to click on a rental property on Nelson Street.

Downtown Toronto Rental Property

Once you click on the property that you are interesting in finding more details, you have the option of plotting around you some popular local categories (powered by YellowPages.ca). I clicked on a bank icon to see what banks are around this particular location:

Local Search by YellowPages.ca integrated on homeTrader.ca

The following popular categories you can find around any location on homeTrader.ca – Grocers, Shopping Centres, Schools, Churches, Restaurants, Gas Stations, Clinics, Childcare and Banks.

These are all extremely popular urban market categories that anybody is looking for when moving to a new location in a city. Since each category is toggle on/off makes it very easy for any user to find exactly what is important to them.

Integration Example #2 – ByTheOwner.ca and DuProPrio.com

About ByTheOwner – from their website – Our mission is to give consumers a complete real estate service through the Internet so they can sell, buy or rent a property privately, without an agent and with no commission. Together, ByTheOwner and its French counterpart DuProprio constitute the largest and most visited For Sale By Owner network in Canada.

Home Page – starting with the home page you are presented with a number of hot properties that are available as well as a number of search functions.

ByTheOwner Home Page with For Sale By Owner Properties

If you select a property – you end up going to the properties detail page. On the detail page you are presented with all the details on the property.

ByTheOwner Details of a Property

Notice at the bottom of the property you are presented with a local search area (powered by YellowPages.ca) that gives a potential new home owner with access to popular search categories and the ability to conduct a local search.

YellowPages.ca Search Area on ByTheOwner.com

One very nice feature with this implementation is that all the one-click categories are pre-populated based on the location of the address in which you are looking at. The user does not have to think about whether the search is locally relevant or not, all searches are automatically targeted to the properties location – very cool.

From the example above on homeTrader.ca, which is more targeted towards condos, apartments and rentals on ByTheOwner, the categories are move geared towards home owners. Categories such as; Insurance, Banks, Loans, Mortgages, Inspections, Appraisers, Movers, Storage, Lawyers, Building Contractors

This integration is also part of DuProPrio.com, the french language counterpart to the ByTheOwner.com.

YellowPages.ca Search on DuProPrio.com

So what do you think about the following integrations – is this something that is useful for end users? If you are interested in integrating Canadian local search, powered by YellowPages.ca, in your properties, please feel free to contact me via my LinkedIn.com profile or my Twitter account and I will provide you with my work email address and one of my business development team will connect with you regarding integration options.

Revisiting my Yellow Pages Answers Interview on CP24

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I was updating my personal profile within Google today and adding links to the various videos that I have been part of lately. One in particular was my interview with Omar Sachedina of CP24 on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 for the Yellow Pages Answers services, business category data provided by YellowPages.ca. Here is a replay of my video interview with Omar Sachedina:

Related to the answers service, I also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight just how easy it is to get started using Yellow Pages Answers. Before are some screenshots:

First – you will want to visit Answers.YellowPages.ca or if you are french speaking, you will want to visit Reponses.PagesJaunes.ca.

You will notice that the service starts with welcoming you and immediately gives you access to the Answers Help along with a box to post your first question. Before you can start posting a question, look to your right under “Options” and select join.

Yellow Pages Answers Join

Second – you have two options to join the answers service, using your Facebook Account or signing up for a new account.

Yellow Pages Answers Join Screen via Facebook or Set-up a New Account

Most users select the signin using your facebook account. If you select this option, you will be presented with the following:

Yellow Pages Answers Facebook Connect Login

If you don’t already have a facebook account, to set-up your own account on Answers is simply. Fill in email, username and password and agree to the terms of use. From there you will get an email confirmation, click on that and you are finished.

Yellow Pages Answers Sign Up for a New Account

Third – you are finished. Now you can start to post and respond to questions within Answers

This service is a great way to solicit recommendations from your social network or people with the answers network. I did a post back in July on the most unique questions asked using Answers service, many of which now have answers to them.

If you have used the answers service and would like to comment or have suggestions, please post to my comments section or send me an email directly to dsieben … @ … gmail … .com ….

The 8 Most Unusual or Out of the Ordinary Local Business Questions on Answers.YellowPages.ca

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The YellowPages.ca Answer Service has been running for over 1-month now and the numbers of local questions being asked and answered is increasing steadily. There are a lot of questions around plumbers, mechanics, electricians, restaurants, etc, however, I wanted to highlight some questions that don’t really fall into the traditional categories of what people are looking for.

Here is my list of the 8 most usual or out of the ordinary local business questions asked by users:

I will continue to monitor and update this list later in the year with more unique questions that are being asked.


From a business perspective the Answer service can be used to increase sales and leads to your business. Here are 3-Steps on how a local businesses can take advantage of this service?

1) Create an account and if your business uses Twitter, connect it to your twitter feed
2) Monitor the questions
3) If a user is asking for a recommendation on your business category or you think you can help them out, provide a recommendation. I suggest that you disclose that you are recommending your own business. In the comments field give some insight into why that person should do business with you.

What this does for a local business is gives them direct access to users who might be interested in their products or services and opens a dialogue with users.