5 Reasons Yellow Pages Is Better Than Google

By simon | 07 September

Okay. So this is going to be controversial. I mentioned I was going to be writing this to a group of business people last week and I got a big 'ooooo' from them. So here we go.

To test this out, I'm going to focus on searching for an electrician in Brisbane. I do appreciate that certain trades are going to be more prone to be found this way - people don't look for advertising agencies via the Yellow Pages - but we'll use this one as an example.

Speed

Sure Google delivers the results quick: 56,900,000 results in 0.06 seconds apparently. But then the Yellow Pages is only 3 seconds away from me on a book shelf. Time saved? 10 seconds maybe. I'm sure that's not going to effect my daily routine that much.

But the difference in time starts to occur when I move in from the search results and start clicking on links. Sometimes we have fast loading sites, sometimes we have basic HTML sites, sometimes we have Flash sites, sometimes they just grind and grind. If I want to flick through 10 electricians, I could be here a while. I'm also going into some of the sites and trying to find contact pages - more time taken.

But this isn't the case with the Yellow Pages. Within seconds I'm flicking through dozens and dozens of pages of electricians. See an advert I like? Yep. Contact details right there. No more searching needed.

Clarity of results

The first results I get with Google include the following: Home Builders Australia, an electrician's directory, Wikipedia's definition of an electrician, a home improvement page telling me what electrician's do, and also career guidance about me becoming an electrician.

I open Yellow Pages on electricians and I get, well, electricians. Didn't take me long. One of two books and in alphabetical order. There's no electrician schools. No definitions of electricians. Just electricians who fix stuff.

Advertising

Google are trying to flog me things whilst I'm searching. Sponsored links and the like. If you've got the cash, you can interrupt my search with things that may or may not be relevant to my original search. Yellow Pages doesn't do that. Other than that lawyer advert on the back that I always seem to remember, you're not sitting there looking through the electricians with someone else's advert overwriting every page.

Design

Let's be honest. It's a lot easier to make a half-arsed job of a web page than it is a Yellow Pages advert. I'm not going to suggest there aren't some shockingly bad Yellow Pages adverts out there - I saw one last week done by Yellow Pages internal design team themselves that looked like they must have been asleep when they dreamt it up - but when you look at a bad electrician's website, you're pretty confident that you won't be trusting with them re-wiring your plugs.

Duplicity

If you DO want to go digital with Yellow Pages, you can. It's not a half-bad interface. There's 2 million local businesses on there too and you can really drill it down to your city. Sure you can do that with Google but, well, where's your Google directory on your book shelf? Or under your stairs? Or going mouldy in the garage?

Doors

Let's be honest, you can't prop a door open with Google.

Okay. We know Yellow Pages are declining in sales and circulation and we know that all these arguments are tenuous in certain circumstances, and with certain industries. But will Google ever kill the Yellow Pages? No. Google won't kill books. They won't kill maps. They won't kill people writing things down and printing them out on a piece of paper. We'll never be over-run by trees due to Google's electronicification of the world. And I suspect that the Yellow Pages will always have its little place in the world helping us find electricians. Or eating our dinner off.