Perry Evans has a great post today on the opportunity and threat Yellow Pages publishers face from the verticalization of local search. We thank him for acknowledging TKG’s role in highlighting the emergence of vertical search at our Drilling Down on Local conference last week in Seattle.

In particular, Evans talks about the perilous position IYP operators are in as vertical content proliferates online. He also makes it clear that the publishers have assets to compete in verticals. Evans points out that Avvo may be positioned as a Yellow Pages killer (in the legal category anyway), but online Yellow Pages has the tools at hand to transform itself into an Avvo killer. Whether it does so is another matter.

This whole notion of how Yellow Pages companies can leverage the vertical opportunity will be on the agenda at The Kelsey Group’s Directory Driven Commerce conference, Sept. 15-17, in Atlanta. Check out our preliminary program.