Chevrolet hasn’t always been seen as the most environmentally friendly company. But it hopes to rectify the situation with a helpful “gas-friendly to gas-free” advertising insert in the print edition of Wired Magazine. The insert is printed “using 35% post-consumer waste, utilizing 100% hydroelectricity, eliminating 100,000 pounds of greenhouse gases.”

The insert touts five things Chevy is “doing right now to help us all do more and use less.” It also includes “some things we can all do right now to help the planet.” For instance, you can pump up your tires. You can also “Lose the phone book.”

“You’re probably using an online directory anyway. So call to stop the delivery of your traditional paper phone book. Telephone books make up almost 10 percent of waste at dump sites.”

This … from the maker of Chevy Suburbans.

After two years in operation, CitySquares hasn’t necessarily broken out of the box. But Beantown’s neighborhood-centric directory of local businesses has got about $1 million in venture funding; almost 400 advertisers paying roughly $600 a year, mostly for “deluxe” business profiles; and an 88 percent renewal rate.

In mid-October, CitySquares is going to re-launch using new neighborhood slicing-and-dicing capabilities from Urban Mapping and Localeze, all based on an open-source Drupal platform. The site is also confidently planning to expand beyond Boston, with another northeast city set for Q2 2008, and a third one for Q3.

Cofounder Ben Saren says the site’s re-do reflects a key truism: Hyperlocal is about neighborhoods, but the reality is that neighborhoods are often “in between” other neighborhoods. The new version of the site is going to present searchers with the five closest neighborhoods, as well as proximity options. “They can be five miles or 10 blocks,” he says. That’s the Localeze part of it.

It will also identify neighborhoods within neighborhoods, such as Observatory Hill, which is a section of Cambridge. That’s the Urban Mapping part of it. The ability to sell across neighborhoods will help sell ads for the many small businesses “in between.”

As for existing advertisers, Saren is steadfastly proud of CitySquares’ renewal rate. The 40 or so dropouts either went out of business or “weren’t sold properly.” A few were miffed at bad reviews that appeared on the site, he says.

In a way, then, it is a good thing CitySquares hasn’t done a better job attracting reviews. It only has about 400 or so reviews at this point, and they’re hard to get. “They’re a nice additive but not a real priority,” concedes Saren. “It’s not a focus for us as it is for a site like Yelp.”

But Saren has high hopes for a new feature that is rolling out shortly: a system that enables businesses to contact reviewers via CitySquares’ messaging system. “It will be like eBay’s system and help rectify reviews.”

For the past several months, advertisers have been coming on board at a higher rate, with average spends now approaching $600 per year. Saren attributes the increase to the efforts of head sales guy Phillip Dias, a former Citysearch salesperson who probably knows where the “gets” are in Beantown. There are now eight employees at the company.

Coming up, Saren says he expects more community awareness to be generated as the result of a “Comuni-tees” promotion with JP Licks, a Boston ice cream chain. The promotion is a contest in which community members vote for favorite T-shirts depicting various artists’ interpretations of their communities. Winning shirts will be sold at neighborhood merchants, with proceeds going to a school arts program.

For those who weren’t able to attend DDC last week, you can see the recap of coverage here on the blog. There is also my quick take on one of the show’s main themes on the YPA’s Local Search Guide reproduced below and a longer recap on Search Engine Watch earlier this week.

Of Yellow Pages, Sales Reps, and Alphabet Soup: The Report from DDC

While print medium doomsday predictions continue, there have been optimistic mainstays at recent industry conferences such as the Kelsey Group’s annual Directory Driven Commerce (DDC) show. The rally cry at last week’s DDC show was the need to repurpose existing print strengths to take advantage of the growth in online advertising and search.

These strengths are exemplified most by the sales channel – directory publishers’ biggest competitive advantage against the Googles and Yahoo!s of the world.

The thought is that there will always be a large segment of SMBs that will not self provision online advertising, but will continue to be served by Yellow Pages sales representatives. For this sizeable segment, local advertising isn’t something that is bought; it is sold.

So how do publishers reposition the sales channel for online opportunities? More effective cross selling is one place to start, according to Scott Pomeroy, CEO of Local Insight Media. We’ve heard this message before, and the cannibalization concerns that rebut it; but Pomeroy asserts that cross selling can be accomplished if executed at the street level.

This means recruiting and training sales representatives that are more digitally savvy, spreading a holistic sales message and reversing incentives to push higher-margin print ad sales.

“We must see ourselves as lead generators with many tools to get there,” Pomeroy says, stressing the consultative role sales reps should develop.

This means bringing advertisers leads through print as well as IYP, SEM, SEO, PPC and the rest of the online alphabet soup, for which SMBs need direction buying, understanding and managing. Directory publishers are uniquely positioned to play this role, and stake a considerably larger claim of the local online ad pie.

These conversations will be picked up with further emphasis on online opportunities at The Kelsey Group’s Interactive Local Media ’07, November 28-30, in Los Angeles.

With all the hype around local social search sites, particularly Yelp, Chowhound has largely flown under the radar, starting as a bubble-era jaunt for food enthusiasts to share tips on little-known gems throughout San Francisco.

Sound familiar? Yelp started in late 2004 to do basically the same thing and is now the darling of the local search community, with additional cities, more than a million reviews, and about 4 million monthly uniques. The inception of the “foodie” (or at least its online manifestation) has driven Yelp’s growth, while Yelp has arguably fueled it.

Also give credit to Scripps’ Food Network for pushing new food icons — in the form of obnoxious personalities — to popularize food as a new form of reality TV (Bravo’s Top Chef gets nod here), and a centerpiece of online social interactions.

All this has driven the popularity of local social search and the integration of consumer review features by Google Maps, Citysearch, Yellowpages.com, DexKnows and a growing list of others that are convinced user reviews and social interaction are things people are coming to expect in local search experiences.

Cue Chow.com, CNet’s rollup of Chow magazine and Chowhound. The improved version of the original foodie stop (Chowhound) is taking a page from Yelp in playing to the egos of the foodie set: twenty- and thirty-something urbanites who want to speak out in a social networking format. This includes user profiles and a ‘my chow’ section (here’s an example). Add the Editorial Chops of Chow Magazine and it has all the makings for a foodie favorite.

In other words, Chow could do a lot with this, given good branding, Chowhound’s legacy as an underground authority of local flavor, and Chow Magazine’s national appeal. Combine these with the cultural affinity for social networking (and food!), and it seems user reviews could become a way to localize the experience that is otherwise built around Chow magazine’s national scope, and its features on food culture and chic recipes.

Most of the social interaction now takes form in topical and regional discussion boards, but this could be more structured around individual restaurant listings, to drive traffic there and bring local ad dollars more into focus, a la Citysearch. Nonetheless, it’s on my list of companies to chase down and find out more about what it’s up to. In the meantime, check out USC Annenberg’s OJR interview with Chow editor-in-chief Jane Goldman.

Today I attended the R.H. Donnelley “analyst workshop” in Denver. Much ground was covered, so we’ll offer a few quick takeaways here and follow up with more detail in an upcoming TKR Advisory.

One key objective of the meeting appeared to be for RHD’s leadership team to introduce its newest asset, Jake Winebaum, to the investor community. Winebaum did not disappoint, coming across as knowledgeable and confident, despite having all of one month of Yellow Pages experience under his belt.

RHD seemed to do a better job of explaining the Business.com acquisition, which was essentially about buying the technology to enable a more robust search experience and more efficient monetization. Plus the deal brought with it Business.com’s A-list management team, which includes Chief Science and Strategy Officer Paul Dagum, the former founder and CTO of Rapt, and Brian Barnum, the former CFO of Rent.com.

One of the clearest impressions I came away with from the meeting was that RHD has a cogent vision of where it wants to go, from a business that was largely print-centric to one that is all about selling leads fulfilled across multiple platforms. The publisher is aggressively training up its sales channel on its “triple play” model, which includes print Yellow Pages, online Yellow Pages (DexKnows) and “the rest of the Internet” or SEM.

Ultimately, the model seems to be moving toward one in which the advertiser is sold on a package of leads, with the triple-play components being the sources of fulfilling those leads. Depending on category, geography and so on, the leads are drawn to varying degrees from print, IYP, search and potentially voice. This will be transparent to the advertiser, which cares only about driving enough new business to more than pay for its advertising spend.

This doesn’t yet fully describe RHD’s model, but that is the clear direction, and it is a vision TKG believes will be key to sustaining the core product over the longer term.

We’ll have more to say about the meeting later. One thing is apparent. At least some of the analysts present were not impressed by what they heard today. RHD’s stock declined by about 2 percent today, on a day when the Dow rose 0.25 percent, and rival Idearc Media was up almost 2 percent.

I don’t know if I like DEMO’s whole concept of “all demos, all the time” … and that companies pay to be on the podium — apparently, $18,500 for three tickets and six minutes, per Jason Calacanis, who runs the competitive show, TechCrunch40. Jason makes the salient point that only funded companies can afford to pay the freight at DEMO. But … DEMO apparently really delivers the audience, and the press. Companies that show up think it is a good investment.

DEMO’s Fall program took place in San Diego and was well produced. At least, it looked like it was from the Website“>Web site. If you go to the site, you can see presentations from a host of companies, some of them with direct relevance to the local space.

Richard Rosen’s FastCall411 is one of them. It is a service that calls the first available vendor (taxis, et al). In the demo, I got a kick out of Richard’s longtime associate, Amy Rabinovitz, doing the Vanna White thing with the phones.

AgendiZe also appeared on the podium. CEO Alex Rambaud has just relocated from France to Texas, and shows up in a big 10 gallon hat. Pretty funny. And then Alex and Fred Bowen, his VP of Sales, go through the whole process of how they’d use AgendiZe to cut and paste info from listings and ads on a host of platforms so they’d be able to buy another 10 gallon hat. Both demos really show the advantages of their respective services.

R.H. Donnelley today announced the integration of user ratings and reviews to its flagship IYP, DexKnows. Although this is the official launch, reviews have been live on the site for a few weeks now.

The integration, metrics and lessons learned in the first few weeks, were discussed in depth by RHD head of competitive strategies and innovation Jill Hammond during a consumer review-focused panel at last week’s DDC conference (see blog post).

We’re seeing many such integrations by IYPs and local search destinations (Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, Google Maps). And through this, many users are coming to expect user reviews as a part of the local search experience.

At the same time, many challenges still await, such as motivating participation in more obscure categories and locales. The fact that reviews aren’t yet a big enough cultural phenomenon to garner the levels of participation that would make a consistent and worthwhile product across categories is one reason why the timing isn’t right yet for some IYPs such as Yellowbook.com.

Alfred Chow, Yellow Book senior manager, Internet, made a strong case why the timing isn’t right yet for his company, both on the DDC panel and in comments to a blog post last week.

Many of these underlying issues are also examined in past blog coverage, my Search Engine Watch column this month and in a TKG Advisory to be released later this week. Stay tuned.

Don’t shoot me, but I’ve got to say: “search” is just the end result. The essential building block is “cataloging.”

To this end, David Weinberger (The Cluetrain Manifesto), has published “Everything is Miscellaneous.” It is the best book I’ve read about how we find, classify and prioritize information about information (meta data).

The book takes readers from the organization of a Staples store; to Darwin; to the revolutionary but ultimately flawed Dewey Decimal system; to our present day, miscellaneous “third order” cataloging via Flickr, Amazon, iTunes and De.lic.ious.

I was congratulating myself yesterday when talking with Matthew Berk at Marchex and knowledgeably discussing “Decision Trees.” Now, I am looking forward to also matching wits with Gib Olander at Localeze. Thanks to the book, feel free to also ask me about such arcane topics as “Smart Leaves” and “the Semantic Web.”

Note: A lot of us are participating on Facebook’s virtual bookshelf. We’ve got to get one going just for “Local Search.” In the meantime, why not add the bookshelf, and books you’ve recently read?

It’s sometimes useful to track search terms as an indication of demand and popularity of products, both online and off, as Chris Smith has done in his column referenced yesterday by John Kelsey.

In the case of Yellow Pages, however, I don’t think this method lands you in an accurate measure of real world metrics. Smith admits it’s not perfect and I appreciate his effort; it is an interesting look. But for “yellow pages” I don’t think there is a significant link (no pun) between how often the search term is used and some of the unique metrics (lookups, traffic, quality traffic, calls, conversions, etc.) by which value in this medium is measured.

First, a considerable amount of IYP traffic is direct navigation (a possibility Smith acknowledges). You either go to an IYP — via direct navigation or bookmark — to do a local search; or you go to Google to type in the business or category you are looking for. What most people don’t do (I believe) is go to Google and type in “yellow pages” as a first step in an online local search process.

Some might do this, but it’s convoluted, and I imagine it’s a small segment of non-savvy searchers. And evidence suggests that searchers are getting more and more sophisticated with how they enter terms (i.e., enter a ZIP code with a search term) when engaged in local search.

It should also be noted that Smith’s analysis looks at quantity of searches, which is a few steps away from accurate measurements of traffic and, more importantly, quality of traffic. IYPs receive, on average, much more qualified traffic than Google Maps or Google searches with “local intent.”

It’s also interesting to see “google maps” as a search term map against “yellow pages” — although again this may be apples to oranges, given the differing levels of direct navigation traffic for each.

Smith nonetheless makes an interesting case, while qualifying that search terms aren’t a perfect measure of actual traffic. We’ll take the analysis with the appropriately sized grain of salt.

What About Print?

The analysis also makes one wonder where else these search term data apply to the Yellow Pages. Being that it’s sometimes useful to track demand or cultural awareness of any product or phenomenon by looking at the prevalence of search terms, does this say anything about the print Yellow Pages?

Probably not. Here’s why:

1. Print lookups are based on a certain use case that is not tied to search engines. This would be different if a Google search for “yellow pages” told you where in your house you keep your print book. Otherwise there isn’t much reason to type the words “yellow pages” into Google, nor is there much of a correlation — rather a physical disconnect — between search and print lookups.

2. Though the Yellow Pages is a product, it is not something that is bought. Therefore its use, popularity, or demand shouldn’t be implicated in the same vein as other types of products (i.e., “flat screen tv”) for which people may conduct Google searches.

3. The Yellow Pages is a staple of many households and some might say a cultural phenomenon — but is more of a utility than other phenomena for which people will search (i.e., “Paris Hilton,” “Mojito recipe,” “Halo 3,” etc.) The Yellow Pages, in other words, ain’t sexy.

Some of these may be more obvious reasons than others. But is it useful to look at search terms as an indication of use, demand and popularity for IYPs or print Yellow Pages? And are some of the assumptions above correct? Your thoughts encouraged.

At first, there was no news coverage for the 15,000 residents of a central coastal New Hampshire area including the little villages of Deerfield, Candia, Northwoods and Nottingham. Manchester’s Union Leader, a family-owned paper that is fairly notorious for its politically charged, NH primary coverage every four years, basically ignored the area.

But then three years ago, the residents started their own news site and called it The Forum. Today, the site, a recipient of the 2007 Knight Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism has 240 contributors, sells ads to local businesses and even publishes an occasional print edition on special occasions.

More importantly, the site has prompted the Union Leader to provide local coverage in two of its four communities. The site’s founder’s attitude, however, is “too little, too late.”

“If they had this three years ago, we wouldn’t exist, says Managing Editor Maureen Mann, who spoke last week at Knight Batten’s Awards Symposium at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “But now we know how to do this.”

Mann feels that the typical voice of a citizen far surpasses the Union Leader’s professional journalism. “It took people a couple of years to realize that we don’t send reporters when a news event occurs. They are the reporters.” But now, the site has 1.6 “reporters” for every 100 residents. That’s going to be hard to overcome.