The French directory publishers PagesJaunes has made a significant move by acquiring 100 percent of the Austrian people search site 123People, which has a global audience of more than 40 million unique visitors in 11 countries, according to the PagesJaunes announcement. Terms were not disclosed.

Here is how Pages Jaunes CEO Jean-Pierre Remy describes the deal.

“We are delighted to have acquired 123people, which fits perfectly with our growth strategy and reinforces our leadership in people search on the Internet. 123people is a genuine Internet success story and will enable us to accelerate the growth of our audiences and offer advertisers additional visibility and traffic. With this acquisition, PagesJaunes Groupe will significantly increase its total audience, strengthen its expertise in natural listing and benefit from new synergies between 123people and the Group’s sites in France and Spain.”

123People acts like a personal reputation management tool. It aggregates all the places where an individual appears online. I did a search on myself and found various photos of me, as well as of others who share my name, links to blogs I’ve written, videos I’ve posted, pages online where my name appears and so on.  It’s a useful site to find and learn about other people, and to track the various ways in which you appear online.

Quietly, SuperMedia is rolling out a new approach to online search. If you look on Swtichboard.com today, you’ll notice that search results are presented differently than before. Now, Switchboard’s top results based on relevancy are plotted on a map (this might look familiar), with the remaining results pushed further down the page.

This represents the beginning of a shift from inclusion-based results to relevancy results across SuperMedia’s properties.

SuperMedia’s Robyn Rose told us earlier this week that Switchboard and LocalSearch.com often act as test beds for the SuperPages IYP mothership, so we won’t see SuperMedia switch over to relevancy until any kinks are worked out on the secondary properties. Rose didn’t commit to a timetable for launching the new approach on SuperPages.

Here is how results used to look.

And here is how they appear now.

Leaders of the U.S. independent directory publishing industry were passionate in their defense of print media at this morning’s opening session of the Association of Directory Publishers meeting outside Houston, Texas. Jim Hail, the outgoing chair and head of Idaho-based Hagadone Directories, declared “Print is not dead!” He argued that the industry has become too apologetic about print and should take a much bolder posture in defending it in the media, where it continues to take a pretty vicious beating.

To bolster his point, Hail held up a recent Wall Street Journal article that details an effort by the magazine industry to embrace the “power of print.” Rather than accept its demise to digital, the magazine industry decided to run a campaign that basically says, at least where magazines are concerned, the print experience is superior. One tagline example, “The Internet is fleeting. Magazines are immersive.”

Hail was not impressed so much by the “esoteric” messaging but by the gumption the magazine industry has shown by saying, in effect, our old product is awesome, so deal with it. He wants the Yellow Pages industry to do the same thing.

“We need a consortium of publishers for an ad campaign … to tout the inherent strength of our medium,” Hail said.

Of course, Hail is aware that this call has been made many times before and never executed successfully. Joe Walsh, speaking after Hail, offered a somewhat different take. He said that while he has always favored a Yellow Pages version of the “Got Milk” campaign, he thinks it is “too late now” for any such effort to be effective.

He says the sense of print Yellow Pages as a passe medium has been fully baked into the public consciousness, “and we may not be able to reverse it.” Plus, he says there is no appetite among the major publishers to fund any such effort.

That said, Walsh sees some modest signs of improvement in the performance of Yellow Pages. He says his internal metrics show growing print usage, which he ascribes to an improving economy.

I finally got around to viewing Yellowbook CEO Joe Walsh’s recent appearance on FoxBusinessNetwork. The line of questioning presumed the obsolescence of print, which Walsh certainly anticipated. He made a few assertions that one might expect — that people still use phone books, despite what you might think, and that Yellowbook has been responsive to environmental concerns, with smaller books and opt out and so on.

He also said a couple of things that were kind of interesting. He made a distinction not based on big versus small markets, but rather coastal versus heartland. Asked if phone books would still be around in five years, he said “Yes,” but added that in some coastal markets, the migration from print to digital usage might be completed within five years. In smaller markets in South Dakota, Mississippi and so on, print is strong today and will likely still be strong in five years. And when asked what his biggest seller is today, his answer without hesitation was “Web sites.” Click here or on the image below to watch the interview in its entirety.

It’s nearing the end of earnings season for the global Yellow Pages industry, and my program, The Kelsey Report, will soon issue a detailed roundup of 2009 results across all the companies that report publicly.

In general, the news has been grim for print Yellow Pages, though some publishers have given faint glimmers of hope that print will stabilize this year, meaning a slowing rate of decline. Others are projecting an accelerating decline.

A recent (unscientific) Kelsey Report online survey of global YP industry insiders suggests that most in the industry see a strong secular component in recent revenue performance. Probably the most telling messages that has come out of some recent conversations I have had with leaders in the industry is that the continuing, if waning, effectiveness of print is an increasingly irrelevant point. The energy it takes to overcome objections to print can be more effectively directed to selling digital or a product bundle that emphasizes digital.

Ironically, I am hearing more and more that print may be necessary to making the bundle effective because it still drives leads, but it is poisonous to the messaging because no one believes it works. I am hearing more and more about strategies that essentially engineer a faster print-to-online shift because the investment story for a company focused on the local online opportunity is so much more compelling than a traditional media story.

So the big question is, does the industry have a viable plan to become a growing, profitable business in a post-print world? And how will organizations need to change to make economic sense in a world where the product mix is substantially different from what it is today?

These are some of the questions we’ll take a whack at in a workshop we’ll be conducting at the Yellow Pages Association’s conference next month in Las Vegas, and in much greater depth at BIA/Kelsey’s Directional Media Strategies conference in Dallas, Sept. 14-16. The workshop at the YPA event is titled, perhaps hopefully, “Built to Last: The new Yellow Pages Organization.”

My colleague Mike Boland will also have a prominent role at the YPA event, moderating a panel on “Monetizing Mobile Yellow Pages,” which is also the topic of an upcoming joint report from BIA/Kelsey’s Mobile Local Media and Kelsey Report advisory services. Mobile is increasingly seen as key to the future of the business, and arguably, because of its inherent emphasis on calls over clicks as the currency of leads, a place where directories have a more level playing field.

Next week I will be traveling to the Association of Directory Publishers meeting in Houston, where I’ll be very interested in talking to smaller market publishers about the environment they are experiencing. At the last ADP event I attended, it was clear the economy had taken a toll on many publishers, but there wasn’t much talk of a secular decline. I’ll be interested in hearing how the mood and message have changed since the last gathering.

On Thursday’s earnings call, DexOne (ex-R.H. Donnelley) leaders cautiously projected that the rate of decline in ad sales would improve in 2010, from being down 20 percent in 2009 to down between 12 percent and 15 percent this year. The company made the case to financial analysts that its performance in 2009, while dire, was in line with the overall media landscape.

Most critically, DexOne leaders tried to sell the story line that it has emerged from bankruptcy as a stronger, healthier company that is well-positioned to succeed in the local marketplace. Along with other leading publishers, DexOne is offering its take on the “one stop” model where SMBs can go for a simplified solution that delivers leads from multiple channels, including a mix of proprietary and third-party sources. DexOne CEO Dave Swanson doesn’t even like to refer to the business as a Yellow Pages company, even though the core product remains the primary, if diminishing, source of revenues and leads.

“We have evolved far beyond our Yellow Pages roots,” Swanson said. “Yellow Pages is only one of seven platforms we are using today to drive leads for our customers and revenues for the company.”

For the full year 2009, DexOne posted net revenues of US$2.2 billion, down from US$2.6 billion in 2008, a 16 percent drop. Ad sales reflect the value of ads sold for books published during the year, while net revenues account for dollars amortized during the year, since directory revenues are recorded over a 12-month period to reflect the lifespan of a directory. Ad sales are generally considered a better indicator of how the business is performing.

DexOne CFO Steve Blondy, echoing other industry leaders, described the third and fourth quarters of 2009 as the “bottom” in terms of ad sales declines. Ad sales were down 21.9 percent in Q4 2009.

He added that the company is being cautious in its 2010 guidance because the small-business advertiser is not bouncing back as quickly as larger and national advertisers. And that recovery will continue to lag. “Small businesses are not participating in the recovery consistent with [advertisers in] major media.”

Some other earnings call highlights:

• Swanson described the company as following a “merchant centric strategy.” Essentially this means it is all about aggregating the kind of traffic that drives quality leads to advertisers.
• DexOne reported losing 110,000 advertisers in 2009. Blondy said about two-thirds of the loss was the result of companies going under or being locked out for credit reasons.
• Swanson reiterated the recent announcement that DexOne is aggregating Yelp reviews into its DexKnows platform. BIA/Kelsey originally reported this on the Local Media Blog on Feb. 1.
• There was some back and forth on EBITDA margins. DexOne reported a 52 percent 2009 margin, and margins are expected to decline further in 2010. Pressed on this, Blondy shot back that it is a “business decision” to invest in the customer value proposition. “We are getting a diminishing return from cost savings,” Blondy said. “We can’t save our way to success. Our focus is on growing the top line.”

Philadelphia-based 7Mainstreet cofounder Andy Leff got the idea for his company about four years ago while driving to the grocery store. “I was listening to something on the radio about the success MySpace was having with helping rock bands promote themselves, and I thought no company is doing anything like that for small businesses.”

Leff and his father, Ron, have since worked together to build 7Mainstreet into a platform for small businesses to establish a presence online that doesn’t just present listings content but enables them to sell inventory, interact with customers via social tools like blogs, post video, visual images and so on.

It’s kind of like the old storefront concept married with the modern Internet Yellow Pages. Rather than a business listing or info page, the standard offering for a small-business advertising is a commerce-enabled micro site. Andy Leff says one point to emphasize is that advertisers using a microsite can have total control over their environment, where on some sites, their presence can be cluttered by banner ads for competing or even conflicting messages.

The Leffs are currently trying to convince directory publishers, newspapers, catalogs and business-to-business publishers, among others, to white label their solution as a platform for selling online advertising and services to their small-business customers. In particular they’ve focused on the independent publisher space and to date have announced one client, Illinois-based Eagle Publications.

This is a crowded space, but the Leffs believe they have a key point of difference in their emphasis on enabling commerce, rather than just establishing presence.

We asked how 7Mainstreet drives traffic, which is the main challenge facing any independent publisher trying to build an online presence. The answer is a combination of things — all the sites are listed in a common database so all customers benefit from wider exposure than just the publishers that sold them the microsite. Plus 7Mainstreet is active in link building and other efforts to drive traffic.

Andy Leff also says it’s important to level with small businesses about the role they play in the performance of the site.

“You can buy a gym membership, but to get the muscles you need to show up and do bench presses,” Andy says. “If [SMBs] do not use [the microsites], they will not get full benefit. They need to put as much information in there as possible in order to improve their search ranking.”

We’ve been listening to earnings webcasts for the major global directory publishers over the past days, trying to pick up any clues for how publishers see 2010 developing. Most publishers have shortened their guidance horizon or have stopped giving it altogether. In many cases, the banks and hedge fund analysts on the calls are pressing CEOs and CFOs pretty hard for any indication absent of formal guidance of how the year is shaping up.

What we are hearing on these calls is a hint of cautious optimism that the rate of decline in print revenues has bottomed out and in some cases the rate of decline may be slowing.

For example, here is what SuperMedia CFO Dee Jones said on last week’s earnings call:

“From an ad sales perspective we feel that we are in the valley. Our ad sales for the fourth quarter, on top of what we did in the third quarter, indicate to us that we are in the valley. It is too early to tell when we get out of the valley.”

Jones later clarified that he was referring to the rate of decline in ad sales. For the full year 2009, SuperMedia’s ad sales were down by 18.7 percent. SuperMedia, which emerged from bankruptcy on December 31, has stopped breaking out its revenue performance by segment (print, online and other), which it had done through the third quarter of last year.

Here is what Yell Group CEO John Condron said on his company’s Feb. 4 call announcing its third quarter and year to date earnings (the company’s financial year ends March 31):

“We are still experiencing revenue pressure. However, the rate of decline is stabilizing, and there is a significant increase in confidence.”

Through three quarters, Yell Group posted a group revenue decline of 13.3 percent at a constant exchange rate.

Pressed on this point during the questions and answers session, Yell CFO John Davis conceded that “We have a Long way to go. The rates of decline are still in double digits.”

Still, both Condron and Davis continue to argue that the negative performance of directories, print in particular, is largely the result of the brutal 2008-2009 economic environment, and not a long-term secular shift. A recent (unscientific) BIA/Kelsey online survey of industry insiders suggests that many if not most in the industry believe the declines are the result of a combination of secular and cyclical forces.

At this stage of the year at most directory companies, the (calendar) first quarter and much of the second quarter revenue has already been sold.

These comments suggest essentially that the business is stabilizing and no further deterioration from the abyss that was 2009 is expected. Perhaps there may even be a modest improvement in the rate of decline as the year progresses.

BIA/Kelsey expects 2010 to be a year where the directories business stabilizes. The degree to which things improve in 2011 and beyond will be driven in part by the performance of the economy, but perhaps even more so by the directory companies themselves.

SuperMedia has announced a new program that extends its SuperGuarantee idea into the autos vertical. The SuperGuarantee Autos program gives anyone who buys a car on SuperMedia’s EveryCarListed.com automotive vertical a free limited powertrain warranty good for up to $3,000.

SuperMedia acquired EveryCarListed last February and has since made its comprehensive video inventory a key point of difference from other car sites.

SuperMedia seems to be making a huge bet that it can clearly differentiate its brands by making its SuperGuarantee concept central to everything it does. The SuperGuarantee was introduced last year originally as a program that stands behind the work of contractors sourced through the SuperMedia (previously Idearc) Yellow Pages. The idea behind the guarantee is to instill consumer confidence in the SuperPages brand.

In an interview with BIA/Kelsey at the end of 2009, SuperMedia CEO Scott Klein made it very clear that the guarantee will be at the heart of SuperMedia efforts to revive itself in 2010. The company went into bankruptcy in March 2009 as Idearc Media, and exited court protection on New Year’s Eve with $7 billion in debt gone from its balance sheet.

In that conversation, Klein said the SuperGuarantee provides SuperMedia with a much needed point of differentiation.That insight appears to be guiding SuperMedia’s initiatives in 2010.

EveryScape, a Massachusetts-based company that offers an immersive local search experience, has secured a new $6 million funding round. We see this as a sign of confidence that the model EveryScape is pursuing — creating a virtual local search experience where you can find a local business, walk in the door and virtually browse and purchase inventory — is a significant and immediate opportunity.

The lead investor in this round (EveryScape has raised $16 million to date) is SK Telecom Co., South Korea’s primary carrier and a major Web portal. The venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson also participated.

EveryScape operates in a space that is increasingly on the radar of local search and directory players. In Europe, publishers that include PagesJaunes, European Directories and Seat all offer various flavors of immersive search, often using internally developed solutions.

EveryScape has deployed its solution with a number of partners to date, including such local search or tourist destination sites as Philly.com, HarvardSquare.com and others.