As has now been pretty widely reported, YellowBook was one of comScore’s “top gainers” of 2007, with 10.4 million users/vistors in December, 2007. Traffic to the “YellowBook Network” increased 137% vs. December, 2006. Last week the company rolled out a new website, which is much cleaner but lacks content depth at this point:
Here’s a search results for attorneys in San Francisco:
Here’s a profile page:
The redesign is a good start but yellowbook will need to ad more content “depth” to be competitive over time.
Screenwerk 
February 6, 2008 at 4:22 pm
They just switched their maps to Virtual Earth, too.
http://www.digitalearthblog.com/2008/02/05/two-big-customers-move-to-virtual-earth/
I like the new look.
February 6, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Wouldn’t their traffic surge be the result of their David Caradine television campaign driving visits to the site vs consumers suddenly discovering the site en masse?
February 6, 2008 at 7:47 pm
You’re probably right.
February 7, 2008 at 12:00 am
Kung Fu might be helping but I bet SEO is the #1 driver. The last time I looked at Yellow Book the site was not very well optimized. It still has a way to go but their SEO stuff is much improved.
February 7, 2008 at 12:30 am
No you’re probably right.
February 7, 2008 at 3:18 am
Compared to other similar type of sites, Yellowbook seems to have the cleanist layout without a bunch of distracting advertising like Google type advertising on the side. They seem to be more about providing you with what you are looking for than trying to sell you something else. I trust them more because of that.
February 7, 2008 at 3:49 am
I often see Superpages and other similar yellow page sites in the local search results over here but I don’t recall seeing Yellowbook directory results for my city. I don’t look for local results elsewhere.
A grasshopper’s thoughts about Kung Fu: I realized my Yellowbook.com posts receive increased search traffic when Yellowbook.com’s television ads air advertising Yellowbook.com the brand- not Yellowbook.com’s advertisers.
Yellowbook.com’s optimizing 800,000+ pages indeed would have increased their traffic as reported.
February 8, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Five years ago while other IYPs were forging online distribution relationships, YellowBook was clinging to their old business model. Their more aggressive approach of late and the investment in talented, experienced personnel will help them make up the gap.
February 8, 2008 at 8:02 pm
[…] Sterling in YellowBook Redesigns Amid Traffic Surge talks about the new look for YellowBook and how they have experienced a tremendous growth in […]
February 20, 2008 at 6:38 pm
The “distracting” Google or Yahoo sponsored link is an essential element of some IYP’s business model.
A big part of their revenue depends on their traffic arbitrage
February 20, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Not a long-term strategy
March 1, 2008 at 2:03 am
wow, i dont know what is up the san francisco searches, but if you have done much searching elsewhere, but the results page looks alot different than that. Here in dayton we have 45 paid ads out of the dayton area on yellowbook.com I am a sales rep. for the company and sales of the product has been phenomonal.
April 6, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Yellow Book does not publish a directory in San Francisco thus they haven’t penetrated the market. Try some of the other major cities and you will see much deeper content and video!