The Yellow Pages Association released the results of a study with comScore that supports the idea that despite lower traffic volumes, IYP users are more "ready to buy" and spend more than their Web search counterparts.

We haven't independently looked at the spending claims, but the findings confirm what we've been saying about the quality of traffic on IYPs vs. search sites.

IYPs benefit from what might be called the "legacy" of print Yellow Pages usage — consumers coming to IYP sites at a point in the buying cycle when they're "ready to buy."

As we know from consumer search behavior, search is more broadly used than IYP and at much earlier stages in the buying cycle. In other words, it's used much less precisely by consumers. Here's a statement from the release:

"IYP users spend more in specific categories – Local searchers who use IYP spend 4 to 22 percent more per buyer than local search engine users in the automotive, home and garden, health and beauty and general services categories. IYP users also spend 4 to 17 percent more per buyer for offline purchases in the drugstore, automotive, restaurants, and home and garden categories than do local search engine consumers."

I'm sure that's an accurate statement because it goes to purchase intent and where the consumer is in the buying cycle.

I recently had a major IYP publisher tell me that in the search and non-YP traffic the company was buying, it was finding surprising differences (negatively speaking) in the quality of traffic — perhaps a better word would be "reliability." In other words, the non-IYP users weren't as far along in the buying cycle and thus not as ready to buy.

The challenge for IYP, as the report indicates — two-thirds of traffic was on search engines compared to IYP sites — is to maintain and grow usage to deliver ad inventory to local and national advertisers. That same major IYP publisher I referred to said it could sell many more ads if it had more traffic.

The Kelsey Group's recent consumer survey data reflect modest IYP usage growth but considerable search engine growth, in terms of reach, for local lookups.

I got back late Saturday night from a week visiting family on the East Coast to discover I was on the eve of our Drilling Down event without enough shirts, etc. for the conference — I had neglected to take in my dry cleaning/laundry prior to leaving the previous week.

(This isn't gratuitous self-disclosure, there's a point to the story.)

I'm sorry to say that since today was Sunday and most dry cleaners (strangely) aren't open on Sunday I struck out. But it wasn't for lack of trying — both the printed Yellow Pages and the Internet failed me.

I first went to my local printed Yellow Pages and looked under "Dry Cleaners," but the heading didn't exist. Funny. I then looked under "Cleaners" and found ads for local dry cleaners. However, most of the ads were bold listings with only thin contact information (not very helpful).

It became clear to me that I was going to spend a lot of time calling dry cleaners to ask if they were open, plus I had no way of really judging which ones were closest to me, except in a very general sense.

I then fired up the Internet and went to Google and plugged in "dry cleaner open Sunday Oakland, CA." There were lots of results but after clicking several of them it was clear that I wasn't going to get a link to a listing for a dry cleaner that was in my area and actually open on Sunday. (One thing that was very interesting was Google's own promotion of mobile.google.com.)

I then went to Google Local and plugged in the same search in the appropriate boxes with even less satisfactory results.

I repeated the entire process with SuperPages, Yahoo!, Citysearch and AOL with similar frustration. I even called directory assistance (411) and tried to get the information that way.

The operator didn't know what to make of my request. "This is a category search," I said. "I need to find a dry cleaner open today." She was totally confounded. My bitter retort was: "You guys better figure out a way to answer that kind of question or DA is done." (She must have thought I was psychotic.)

While it is possible that no dry cleaner is in fact open Sunday, this is the sort of local search that should be readily answered by the engines/IYPs. Why can't they do it? (Remember that the physical Yellow Pages did little for me as well, except for those few display advertisers whose hours were printed.)

They can't do it because the information isn't yet there. (This is why Yahoo!'s free Web hosting offer is very compelling — it solicits more content from local merchants and offers something they want in return: to be found.)

"Dry cleaner open Sunday Oakland, CA" can't effectively be answered by algorithmic search today. Structured data is at the core of local search and it's what's required to provide a satisfactory answer to my query.

The IYPs and the search engines need to provide incentives to local businesses (Yahoo! and SuperPages, for example, are trying to do that) to get more content online. Meanwhile, the printed Yellow Pages equally have to do the same thing — figure out a way to get more content in the book to make it more useful to consumers (with a more intuitive heading structure).

In the end, I called the conference hotel and asked them if they had a service, which they did — in by 9 back by 5.

Whew!

Speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, Ruppert Murdoch faulted the industry for having been "remarkably, accountably complacent" about new technologies, including the Internet. In Frank Barnako's Internet Daily Report in MarketWatch, Murdoch is quoted as saying, "I suspect many of you in this room were quietly hoping this thing called the digital revolution would just limp along. Well it hasn't, and it won't." (The question that I have to ask is when did Mr. Murdoch see the light? Last week, last year or last millennium?) His suggestion is that newspapers should experiment with putting bloggers' comments and reporting on newspapers' Web sites to supplement their news coverage.

On Saturday, I saw a different approach being taken by the Wall Street Journal. When I checked out of my local supermarket, the cash register receipt contained a coupon saying "get four weeks of The Wall Street Journal free!" This is the same Wall Street Journal that not all that long ago had the largest subscriber base and readership in the country. Now when non-subscribers purchase a quart of non-fat peach frozen yogurt, they can get 20 free issues.

It will be interesting to see which of these two approaches generates more readers. In fairness, WSJ Online is the most successful subscription-based electronic newspaper site. But I haven't seen a coupon for the WSJ Online at my grocery store.

Right on the heels of Google's My Search History, Yahoo! Launches a better, simplified version of its earlier Web search personalization tool "My Search" — now called My Web.

Here's the official release.

A considerable advance over Yahoo!'s previous "My Search," it's more "robust" (I hate using that term) than Google's simpler My Search History tool. But as good as this is, it's probably still too involved for mass adoption.

My Web records users' search history and allows them to save individual Web pages found in search results or any Web site in a browser with a single click — a "save to My Web" icon can be loaded into the Yahoo! toolbar or browser toolbars. My Web saves both the link and an image of the page so that if the page ultimately disappears, users still retain an image of the page.

Pages and folders can be easily organized and emailed or shared via RSS feed (and soon on Yahoo! 360).

This is really like an alternative desktop for the Internet, though it's not desktop search, which should be integrated into this. (All the privacy concerns with Google's My Search History equally pertain to this, although, as with Google's tool, history may be cleared.)

Back to my comment that it is too "involved" (meaning complex) for the mainstream user. Don't get me wrong, this is a big big advancement over what Yahoo! was offering before and I will be using this going forward — I had no interest in the earlier version. But as improved as it is, it's still not quite mainstream.

Maybe Yahoo! should have a segmented personalization strategy: My Yahoo for the masses and My Web for those who want more capabilities.

We've got My Web, Yahoo! 360, My Yahoo!, IM, Mail, and more. One might ask: where is all this headed?

Maybe Yahoo! is ultimately closing in on a meta Internet-dashboard of sorts. While hints of that concept appear to be behind Yahoo! 360, that ambition may be a kind of Platonic ideal that cannot be realized in practice. Even so, Yahoo! is very busy developing some pretty interesting tools and will figure out ways to integrate many of them in compelling ways for users.

eBay grows 44% and its stock sees a big decline. Huh?

Now InfoSpace, whose profits tripled and generally beat analysts' estimates, lost nearly 19% of its stock value. What?

Google and Yahoo! have performed so well over the past several quarters that their remarkable growth has become a kind of benchmark for other Internet stocks. But these kinds of expectations are wildly inflated and this kind of performance is probably unsustainable over the long term.

Reading some of the recent Kelsey Group blogs reinforces this concern. Companies declare strong earnings but plummet because their guidance does not meet Wall Street expectations. Yahoo! and Google are offering evermore sophisticated search opportunities, and only industry experts can figure out how to take advantage of the new services. You wonder whether these behemoths are adding new applications for users or for Wall Street.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, I believe the majority of cellphone users in the U.S. are stumped by their inherent complexity and only use a few of the phone's capabilities. The same is true for computers and most of what Mossberg talks about in his WSJ technology column every Thursday.

In order for local search to really take off, both consumers and advertisers have to understand the economic benefit of changing what they are doing today to buy or sell products and services. Every consumer and business can have access to super-fast broadband, but if the economic benefit is not clear, the concept will take a long time to catch on. It seems to me that the technology is racing way ahead of understanding and ease of use. The stock market seems to reward potential more than reality.

No wonder people have such a poor understanding of basic economics.

Modeled on BellSouth’s "Real Search Engine Solutions," which offers simplified search-engine marketing (SEM) to local businesses based on subscription pricing, SBC Yellow Pages and YellowPages.com are introducing the same product in their respective markets. Called "SBC Search Engine Solutions" and "YPclicks!" respectively, the search traffic packages are supported and facilitated by TrafficLeader technology. TrafficLeader is behind BellSouth's product as well.

Later this year, both the BellSouth and SBC online brands will be merged into YellowPages.com. But for now they remain distinct.

We've been told that the BellSouth product is easy to sell and now, in its second year, renewing at high levels. That suggests that local merchants are eager to have someone else take care of SEM for them, which they probably wouldn't be able to adopt (en masse at least) in the absence of these products.

Despite the reportedly high renewal rates, there is a question over time about whether the local SMEs will understand and be able to convert search-engine traffic (which is not of the same quality level as IYP destination traffic) into sales.

Ultimately, these products will probably need to bundle calls or call tracking into the product mix. Also, given that they're based on an arbitrage model, there's a question about whether the margins can be sustained in the longer term.

But for now, this type of product solves many problems for the IYPs (delivering more traffic to local advertisers), the search engines (the channel problem) and the local merchants (how to get in front of consumers using search engines to find local products and services).

At AD-TECH in San Francisco, I spoke with IMPAQT CEO Richard Hagerty, who demonstrated for me the company's "Intelligent Landing Page."

It can sit behind any paid search ad (both a strength and a weakness). When users click through, they go to this landing page, which can be loaded with rich media and other potential functionality, such as maps, related contextual ads, email forms, etc.

The press release (link above) doesn't really reflect how impressive this page is.

Local targeting, behavioral targeting and demographic targeting are built into the capabilities. Many applications come to mind: travel, autos, real estate, professional (legal, medical, financial) services—it's a marriage of rich media and targeted search. And I would think it's a brand marketer's dream.

Hagerty and I talked about how the advanced functionality can help generate more qualified leads or potentially move people closer to purchase decisions based on the material/video that's loaded onto this page and how the page (and its content) adapts in real time to user behavior. It was amazingly sophisticated.

One could also plug in a phone number for tracking or added monetization.

The only problem, from my point of view, was the fact that this rich experience depends on a tiny text ad that doesn't give any indication of what's behind it.

Yahoo! has established a partnership with Corel, the maker of MS Office Alternative WordPerfect. Yahoo! has added several pieces of functionality to the software and Corel will help Yahoo! market services (e.g., domain registration and Web hosting) to its SME customer base.

This is interesting as one more channel for Yahoo! into the small business market.

My Web records users' search history and allows them to save individual Web pages found in search results or any Web site in a browser with a single click—a "save to My Web" icon can be loaded into the Yahoo! toolbar or browser toolbars. My Web saves both the link and an image of the page so that if the page ultimately disappears, users still retain an image of the page.

Pages and folders can be easily organized and emailed or shared via RSS feed (and soon on Yahoo! 360).

This is really like an alternative desktop for the Internet, though it's not desktop search, which should be integrated into this. (All the privacy concerns with Google's My Search History equally pertain to this, although, as with Google's tool, history may be cleared.)

Back to my comment that it is too "involved" (meaning complex) for the mainstream user. Don't get me wrong, this is a big big advancement over what Yahoo! was offering before and I will be using this going forward—I had no interest in the earlier version. But as improved as it is, it's still not quite mainstream.

Maybe Yahoo! should have a segmented personalization strategy: My Yahoo for the masses and My Web for those who want more capabilities.

We've got My Web, Yahoo! 360, My Yahoo!, IM, Mail, and more. One might ask: where is all this headed?

Maybe Yahoo! is ultimately closing in on a meta Internet-dashboard of sorts. While hints of that concept appear to be behind Yahoo! 360, that ambition may be a kind of Platonic ideal that cannot be realized in practice. Even so, Yahoo! is very busy developing some pretty interesting tools and will figure out ways to integrate many of them in compelling ways for users.

At AD-TECH in San Francisco, I spoke with IMPAQT CEO Richard Hagerty, who demonstrated for me the company's "Intelligent Landing Page."

It can sit behind any paid search ad (both a strength and a weakness). When users click through, they go to this landing page, which can be loaded with rich media and other potential functionality, such as maps, related contextual ads, email forms, etc.

The press release (link above) doesn't really reflect how impressive this page is.

Local targeting, behavioral targeting and demographic targeting are built into the capabilities. Many applications come to mind: travel, autos, real estate, professional (legal, medical, financial) services — it's a marriage of rich media and targeted search. And I would think it's a brand marketer's dream.

Hagerty and I talked about how the advanced functionality can help generate more qualified leads or potentially move people closer to purchase decisions based on the material/video that's loaded onto this page and how the page (and its content) adapts in real time to user behavior. It was amazingly sophisticated.

One could also plug in a phone number for tracking or added monetization.

The only problem, from my point of view, was the fact that this rich experience depends on a tiny text ad that doesn't give any indication of what's behind it.