We had an interesting article get submitted to our site that is pushing for a movement to stop unsolicited delivery of Yellow Pages. I have blogged a couple of times over the last year or two making the point that the Yellow Pages of the 21^st century are the Search Engines. This post showed how this is the year when searches on local businesses were done more via the Search Engines than even print yellow pages — Marketing experts: “Reallocate at least 50% of your Yellow Pages budget”

I also posted one where the end of Yellow Pages was predicted -  Bill Gates on local advertising: Yellow Pages gone in 5 years. Despite being well aware of these stats, I was stunned with one datapoint from the 3^rd party research we commissioned on our audience. That is, with the SunValleyOnline audience which makes up a healthy chunk of the valley’s populace plus many 2^nd homeowners they stated that huge majority of them didn’t use the print yellow pages at all.

The reality is that the yellow pages industry is facing the most formidable competition possible. If it weren’t enough that Google was out to eat their lunch but Yahoo and Microsoft are investing massive sums of money to compete with Google. The yellow pages industry is simply collateral damage. The convenience and effectiveness of the search engines is improving dramatically. Call 800-GOOG411 (800-466-4411) and check it out yourself. It’s free and will connect you to the business and/or text message the details including a map of the businesses location. As phones such as the iPhone become ubiquitous and have GPS built in, this only accelerates the trend. I hardly know a person over 15 who doesn’t have a mobile phone on them at all times.

The local ordinances this movement is recommending (see article link above) sound pretty onerous. I wonder if they’ve gotten any traction. Has anyone heard about this movement and know if they are having any success? I have a hard time seeing too many cities taking this on right now with the other challenges facing cities but maybe I’m wrong. What do you think is the yellow pages future? I’m curious what business owners think.