Raise Your Hand…

if you’ve done anything with a “Yellow Pages” or one of its clone phone books in the last five years other than put it in the trash (hopefully the recycling bin).

I read an article today (and for the life of me, I can’t remember where) that talked about a move in a few areas of the country to allow people to easily “opt out” of receiving phone books. Did you know that there is a phone book lobby? It is predictably against such laws. Why you ask. It seems the phone book biz grosses something like $15 billion a year.

Another hand raising exercise. Does your employer (or if you’re self-employed, do you) advertise in the Yellow Pages or one of its competitors? Who are all of these businesses that spend $15 billion a year?

How do you find the people with whom you do business? My bet is that it isn’t by letting “your fingers do the walking” unless they are tapping on a keyboard. Even there, I don’t very often use the “Bellsouth Real Pages” which is in my Favorites (I just clicked it and found out that it is now Whitepages.com, with no reference to Bellsouth or AT&T, which shows how long it’s been since I used it).

The best “phone book” is Google. Type the name of the business or the type of the business. Add an area and there on the first page of the results you will find what you want, with a map, hours of business and their offered products and services. Oh, and a phone number.

I wonder if they have categories for smoke signal companies, buggy makers and flintlock rifles in the “Yellow Pages.”