Last week Website Magazine posted that
YellowPages.com would be replacing
SuperPages as Microsoft's source of local information and sponsored listings. On the heels of that development comes a Comscore study into national Internet Yellow
Pages search activity.
The study revealed shifts among the top sites in 2007 --
due in part to new strategic partnerships. While the information presented
by Comscore does not take into consideration activity on the main search engines
(which is where a bulk of the local query volume comes from) it does provide us
insights into the relative success of these networks when analyzed by
themselves.
From the release: Yellowpages.com Network (20.2 percent share) edged out
Superpages.com Network (20.0 percent share) in Q4 2007 to lead the IYP search
market. Like Yellowpages, Superpages’ new partnerships provided a boost to its
search activity, with the new Local.com relationship and the Infospace FindIt/Switchboard.com
acquisition contributing to its gains. However, Superpages discontinued its
affiliation with both 411.com and MSN Yellowpages, offsetting the positive
impact of the new relationships. Although Superpages saw an increased number of
total searches in 2007, it did not grow as fast as the market, and as a result
its share fell slightly.
