Also http://www.madefromnewzealand.com is a great new site which is all about promoting New Zealand businesses and getting Google love to their sites. There is no cost to be on the site.

With the power vacuum and switchover of finda, it will be interesting who comes out on top. I have to say, yellow doesn’t look that nimble.

I have wondered why more people don’t use the direct listing on google maps when looking for directories to list with. However with finda supplying listings to Google then it makes sense to list with finda and kill 2 birds with one stone.

I like finda, but find it limiting, I dislike yellow as I find their search response to be generally irrelevant (especially if using a site search from google). Yellow’s issues may come from a lack of optimisation as this is the only reason I can think of as to why their results would be so poor.

The key issue i have with Yellow is the cost of listing online and the very poor effort they have made at optimising their site. To see how far off the point Yellow are just google for a business you are looking for and then if a Yellow google ad pops up you will clearly see the lack of relevance they have to search terms.

Yellow pages have changed tact recently and started to advertise for SEO and SEM staff in December while at the same time Yellow laid off graphic designers. So it would appear that Yellow are moving to improve the search results of their service online and focus less on their print ads.

I have always thought Yellow was in the best position in NZ to take advantage of the under utilised text ad space focused on a regional (local) approach. Using the same concept as google ad words Yellow could use their own listings to offer the service to NZ focused websites and target based on demographic and location. Yellow must have the most comprehensive database of business information in NZ so why not expand their service? It would seem like the obvious choice to me and with the already massive number of paying clients they could focus on delivering a real service rather than a continuing to deliver a very average directory. Surely Yellow could find plenty of sites (even their own advertisers) to use this service and with a NZ focused company in the market I think the results would easily outstrip googles.

food for thought. I look forward to the next post.

“Business listings provided by Finda™”

Take one smart ambitious entrepreneurial Aucklandler, let’s for the sake of example call him Shane.

He sees a gaping hole in the market for business profiling online as Telecom seems to be ignoring online and focusing on paper based directories and a new online investment called Ferrit. Shane thinks if I am smart and make a smart site some greedy media company will buy it off me!

Low and behold 2 years later as the media companies jostle for advantage in the new media space following Fairfax’s jaw dropping $700m for Trade me, APN thinks – here is a goldmine called Finda – that will fit well with our wises business and is a good advertising base to add to our portfolio now we realise we really need more online than just NZ Herald. So they offer to buy 50% of Shane’s business as long as he keep running it and by the way can he also help us with our online strategy as we cannot seem to find anyone who really understands it.

So another 2 years pass in which APN buys up all the shares in Finda and Telecom divests in Yellow pages to a rich and somewhat naive private equity fund for a seriously over valued price. The new management of Yellow seeking to demonstrate to their new owners that they can make the yellow site the #1 search online as the print book is (strange ambition given Google’s unassailable lead) seek out whatever partnership they can as well as investing heavily in traditional advertising offline in an effort to build traffic.

Finding the going tough given the APN leveraged media profile of finda (seen a few finda ads on NZ Herald lately or on outdoor billboards owned by APN media?) Yellow finally decide that the only solution is to take out the competitor.

End result – happy Shane, happy APN, challenged Yellow – I wish them luck!

On the bright side, both list ‘Kiwi Pole Fitness’. If I join there I’ll be sure to vlog my workouts.