Dex Emerges As Leading Local Destination

According to this press release, put out this morning, “DexOnline.com generated the most local online searches, almost twice as many as the next closest competitor” in the company’s 14-state region. Dex cites comScore data, which it says shows Yahoo! (incl. YP and Local), SuperPages, Google Local and Yellowpages.com as the next consumer destinations, in that order, after Dex.

A former comScore employee told me the other day that he thought comScore’s data was the best of an imperfect bunch. But let’s take the data at face value. What this means is a YP destination can be quite competitive with larger search players for local visits. In Dex’s particular case that’s partly about leveraging brand, partly about user experience and partly about aggressive marketing. (I don’t believe the Dex product is the best of the bunch, although it’s good.)

Dex has had a major upgrade/redesign slated for rollout for a long time (courtesy of Local Matters). I’ve been waiting eagerly to see it for some time. The release alludes to it:

Later this year, the company will launch the next generation of DexOnline.com, which will include new features such as draggable maps and map-based search, comparison-shopping pages, user-generated itineraries for multi-stop shopping, and personal contact lists to help consumers build personalized online yellow pages. This new site will also serve as the foundation for a next-generation site that will begin rolling out across the remaining R.H. Donnelley footprint in the first quarter of next year.

Note that Dex has recently introduced video advertising.

One of the reasons RHD bought Dex was for its online assets/strategy. RHD is the third largest print YP publisher in the US, after AT&T and Verizon (soon to be not a YP publisher).

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