Mountainous Reactions

Yellow Page Group should be aiming for digital...

We proudly report that exactly one month has passed since we built the Yellow Page Mountain and the societal impact and transmission of our stunt continues.  So far, our video has nearly 24 000 views on YouTube and nearly 500 eco-conscious members have joined our Facebook Fan Page.

Since launching our campaign to hasten the discontinuation of the paper phone directory, we have been featured in six major Canadian news media outlets in French and English, and been discussed in over a dozen popular blogs:

News media:

Globe and Mail (Siri Agrell)
La Presse/ Cyberpresse (Tristan Péloquin)
Cyberpresse Finances (Richard DuFour)
The Montreal Gazette (Andy Riga)
CTV.ca (Amy Chung)
LCN (TVA Nouvelles)

Blogs:

Proper Propaganda (Jackson Wightman)
PR Daily
Fait Ici (Lindsay Davis)
Unconsumption (Molly Block)
Good.is (Andrew Price)
Montreal City Weblog (Makaera Vir)
Reddit.com
Big Fat Marketing Blog (Brian Quinton)
Branchez-Vous (Marie-Andrée Chalifour)
DavidPainchaud.com (David Painchaud)

Yellow Page Mountain is overjoyed to be a social media catalyst for environmental change.  We believe we can retire the paper phone book (or vastly decrease its distribution) by promoting environmentally friendly digital alternatives.  Yellow Page Mountain now considers part of its mission to educate both individuals and businesses in digital literacy, online marketing and paperless directory solutions.

Another important announcement, if any individual from any city in the world wishes to volunteer for the next Yellow Page Mountain guerilla initiative, please send an e-mail to Yellow Page Mountain @ gmail.com.

If you haven't already done so, please OPT-OUT IN CANADA, OPT-OUT IN THE U.S. or OPT-OUT IN FRANCE today.  Links to opt-out programs in any other countries are greatly appreciated on the Yellow Page Mountain Facebook Page or in the comments.

Inspired by the PureAirSystems blog, we suggest that the old yellow pages slogan, "Let your fingers do the walking" should be permanently changed to, "Let your fingers do the typing."


Aimee

The Confirmation Arrives

Finally, after lamenting the no-show of the YPG opt-out confirmation e-mail on my Twitter to @yellowpages_ca, I was sent two e-mails in English and in French opting me out of delivery for the next two years.  I wish I could opt-out permanently.

Another positive development: today, our project was featured on the front page of PR Daily.  My thanks to PR specialist Jackson Wightman for promoting our cause.

A final way to continue to support our initiative: we are trying to prove via Facebook the Yellow Page Group's statistic wrong that only 1% of Canadians want to opt-out of delivery.  However bold, we need to obtain at least 400 000 likes on Facebook to prove our case.  Let's oust the paper mountain with a digital mountain of support!

Please follow the #yellowpagemountain on Twitter or our Facebook page for the latest updates,

Aimee

No Confirmation for Opt-out?

The response to the first Yellow Page Mountain video has been great and we are very pleased that so many people share in our belief to opt-out of paper phone books!

However, it would appear that the opt-out process on the Yellow Page's website never sends an e-mail confirming the choice to opt-out.  Is this yet another empty gesture from YPG's "eco-initiatives"?  If you ever receive a confirmation e-mail, please let us know in the comments.

We also received a report by Dana Ditomaso about Yellow Page Group's deceptive sales tactics and misrepresentation of the listing's effect on Internet site rankings:

"The Yellow Pages reps always tell my clients the same stories but they’re getting more insistent in recent years. 

1. We are the only authorized Google AdWords reseller in Canada.
There’s two parts to this. First, it implies that being a Google AdWords reseller is better than a consultant who works with AdWords. That’s absolutely not true. You do not receive better rates by working with a reseller – if anything, it costs more and they provide you with less reporting. Secondly, they are not the only authorized Google AdWords reseller in Canada.

2. Having a listing on the Yellow Pages will improve your rank on Google.
Nope. Check out a Yellow Pages listing. You’ll see that the link to the website is actually something like http://www.yellowpages.ca/gourl/http://www.yourcompany.com – that means that the link actually is a redirect from the Yellow Pages site, not a true link to your site. It may pass along some link value but it’s of low value.

3. The Yellow Pages website gets more traffic than Google!
Absolutely not. I think the below chart (from Alexa, a well-regarded provider of competitive website statistics) will paint the real picture. I’ve included canpages.ca for comparison purposes.

4. We have special ways of making your site show up on Google – no one else can do that.
They’re talking about pay-per-click advertising here. I’ll tell you their secret – they’re using the local business options available to any AdWords advertiser. Nothing secret there, just knowing what boxes to click.

And worst of all…

5. If you cancel your ad with us, your ranking will go down on Google.
An absolute lie. Ask them for proof – how will this happen? Ask for specific examples. In my experience, I have not seen any detrimental ranking effects when a client has canceled or downgraded their Yellow Pages listing. If anything, they can improve their reach because of the money they saved!

I’ve been discussing these issues with other web developers on Twitter for a couple of weeks and if the folks at Yellow Pages even noticed, they haven’t said anything. If Yellow Pages was as web-savvy as they claim, they would have picked up on the Twitter mentions by now and gotten in touch.

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Our sincere thanks again for all of your support and please continue to spread the word and share your Yellow Page stories and media,

Aimee

Yellow Page Mountain: The Video

Your Yellow Media

I'd like to send out an open invite to anyone who wishes to contribute a Yellow Page STORY or PHOTO to the blog.  Just send your media to yellowpagemountain@gmail.com or post it to the Yellow Page Mountain Fan Page.

Here is a story from Kathryn in Montreal, Quebec:

The phone rang. My normally confident client sounded frazzled.

"I just got of the phone with a Yellow Pages sales rep and I'm so confused. I told him we decided not to renew our print and online Yellow Pages advertising and he told me we'd better not do that or our site's rankings would drop in Google. Is that true?"

I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing, but I reassured my client that one thing had nothing to do with the other, and that his company's very well-optimized and well-ranked site should perform just as well for its keywords in Google even without his online Yellow Pages listing. In fact, the company's online Yellow Pages listing itself wasn't even coming up high in Google results for their keywords, so how could it possibly have a positive effect!

My client seemed somewhat reassured, but the Yellow Pages rep had sounded so certain of the connection - it was hard for him to digest.

A few days went by. The phone rang again. My unflappable client was unusually flapped.

"Kathryn, my head is spinning - I'm so confused!"

And then he told me something that I found shocking. Two Yellow Pages reps had come down to his office in person to try to talk him into renewing his ad. They repeated their claim that his site's ranking would sink like a stone in Google if he didn't renew the ad.

My client told the YP reps that he did not want to continue paying what he was starting to feel was an exorbitant sum of money for the amount of business it brought in. Meanwhile, the one-time organic search engine optimization that had been done on his site was continuing to reap great benefits in the form of first-page Google rankings for all of his keyword phrases, resulting in lots of new business coming his way.

The Yellow Pages reps would have none of it, and steadfastly repeated their claim that No Online YP Listing = Search Engine Marketing Disaster.

Stunned by the story, I contacted a local journalist who asked a Yellow Pages official whether reps were in the habit of telling customers that their search-engine rankings will drop if they don't renew their ads. The official claimed that this "didn't sound like something we would do." Hmm.

Kathryn.
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Does a dishonest product lend itself to dishonest sales practises?


Aimee

Technological Change Trumps Yellow Pages

Josh Freed wrote a humorous opinion piece in the Saturday Montreal Gazette, "Technological change leaves lots of litter", echoing the sentiment that technological change leaves little room for environmentally wasteful old technology like the Yellow Pages.

We have collectively abandoned Phonographs, 8-Tracks, cassette players and VCRs, so why not continue to evolve technologically and store and search for our contact data online?


Aimee