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The Mayor of San Francisco acknowledged that many people “use yellow pages” but signed into law a bill that will require residents to opt-in to receive the phone book.

The logic being that those folks who still use it can opt-in and receive it. This is one of those weird logic things that makes you wonder if the world has gotten too complicated for politicians.

Where they will go to opt-in? How will they be informed of this?

And here is the big question? Is the City of San Francisco going to take on the expense of publishing the book? Certainly, creating this law will remove the profit from creating and distributing a phone book. So, if not the city, who? I genuinely believe, many people believe there will be a phone book to opt into following this law. Obviously, you can’t pass a law that sucks the profit out of a business and expect the business to continue to operate. There are likely many who have that expectation, probably even the mayor.

It’s ok for you and me to fail to recognize things like that, but not for elected officials. Again, it makes me wonder if the world is too complicated for politicians.

I am an interested party. I am a partner in an agency that sells internet advertising and yellow pages. Our yellow page business is in decline and will continue to decline, likely to Zero. The only question is when. Our internet marketing business is growing rapidly. As our clients spend less on yellow pages they will likely spend more on internet. It’s heads my client wins, and tails my client wins. As long as, and here is the major point, the decline happens naturally. If it doesn’t happen at a pace dictated by the free market system, there will be consequences for the local economy.

Let’s Look at it from the point of view of a small business that I am familiar with in the the bay area. This business has a sophisticated internet marketing program and a 6 figure yellow page spend. The yellow page spend represents hundreds of calls from new customers each month and the largest portion of the advertising budget.

If this law takes effect, he will have to cancel his yellow pages. Although, yellow pages provides a high volume of calls, the cost per call is much higher than on the internet and I can’t see how it could remain profitable with the drop in usage an opt-in program would cause.

With the volume of new customers reduced so much, he would be forced to lay workers off. I guess he would see a bump in internet calls but not nearly enough to offset the loss in call volume. My guess would 5-7 guys would be laid off.

I think most other small businesses in the area that advertise in those books would make similar decisions. Which means more layoffs from small business.

Now I’m going to guess and say yellow pages in the bay area is a 20 million dollar industry, give or take 10 million. Does it make sense to just take this money out of the economy. What does it mean to the people who sell the ads?, deliver the books?, recycle the paper?, sell recycled paper? and on and on. It means lost jobs, lost revenue etc.

All of this will happen eventually, as progress slowly and steadily advances. There is no need for government to interfere. They’re not selling crack, their selling ads that contribute millions to the local economy. I understand why the casual observer thinks this is a good idea. They don’t have access to the data one would need to make an informed decision. Elected officials do have access to the numbers and should be able to make better decisions.

In a post related to the Seattle law, Treehugger.com asks “Whether Yellow Pages are a right?.”

And the answer is of course! Do I not have the right to sell a legal product and earn a living? Do my clients have the right to advertise their business in a medium that is effective and helps them grow? Do people have the right to access local business information in way they find most convenient?

I think this decision is being made a group of people who think they are smarter than other people and either have never looked at the numbers or have chosen to ignore them.

The yellow page industry filed a lawsuit last month. Scary how quickly a government decision can force a business to start paying big money to lawyers.

The likely result of San Francisco’s Yellow Page Law? Everyone loses but the lawyers. What else is new? (For those wondering, being relieved of the burden of having to recycle your yellow pages doesn’t qualify as a win. Not when the stakes are this high. )

One possible future:

Joe looked up from his paperwork and thought out loud that the phone hadn’t been ringing much in the last few days. He finished the estimate he had been working on and emailed it to the old couple he met with last week.

Still thinking it had been unusually slow, Joe logged into his Google Analytics account. The Dashboard indicated that traffic had slowed in the last 5 days or so. He clicked on ‘Traffic Sources’ and found the decline in traffic was pretty evenly distributed throughout his organic and paid advertising. The beginnings of a frustration that can only be caused by internet advertising began as Joe started wading through the links in GA’s main navigation one at a time.

Joe Highley is a roofing contractor. A former bond trader, he had grown tired of building a book of business that lasted only as long as the economic cycle. Owning his own business would not make him immune to the economy but it would put him in control of his own fate. That difficult decision proved to be a good one and Joe is proud of the ‘Since 1994′ that appears in all his ads.

Joe relied on his courage and salesmanship when he started out. He mortgaged his home, hired 2 guys, and purchased $43,575 in yellow pages advertising. He spread it across multiple counties so the monthly payment would be staggered. His phone bill would not bear the full weight of the $4,000 plus until October. The first book would drop in March, the beginning of the season.

Joe focused the ad copy on repair, thinking that would get him busy faster and make the sales a little easier. Maybe convenience and service would be more important than price and experience on the repair end of the business. Luck struck in the form of a wicked storm in early April, Joe’s phone started to ring and it kept on ringing as Joe’s yellow page budget swelled to 6 figures over the next 10 years.

That’s when it started to fall apart. As the advertising bills swelled competition from multiple publishers and the internet made the spend less effective. Combined with a soft economy, Joe was in real trouble for the first time since starting the business.

Staring at bills that had no chance of getting paid out of cash flow, Joe started to work out a plan. Over the next 2 years, he became a sophisticated internet marketer. His cost per lead on the net was far lower than yellow pages and the volume of calls was good enough to get him back to profitability. The stress level was, well, manageable. The best a small business owner could hope for.

Ultimately, Joe’s sophistication on the internet allowed him to cut his yellow pages spending in half. That was now providing a significant chunk of what Joe was able to bring home each month.

Getting impatient going through the links in Google Analytics and finding no answers to his problem, he skipped ‘Browser Capabilities’ and clicked on Mobile devices. There it was. His mobile traffic had gone down by half at the end of last week and was now nearly flatlined.

Android, Iphone, Ipad each one looked dead. As if all at once, everyone decided to throw their handhelds in a river. 8 Years after the first Iphone, mobile traffic to Joe’s site had swelled to 65% of the total volume.

A sophisticated internet advertiser, he realized a lot of that was due to tablet sales and that ‘mobile’ referred more to the operating system than it did the user’s place on earth. In reality, the searcher had only moved from the desk chair to the couch. However, after he bought an Ipad, switched on the w-fi and sat in a more comfortable spot, the world started calling the traffic mobile and Google Analytics was no different. The change seemed semantic.

Joe pulled out his own phone, touched the screen so the image would display on the flat panel hanging in his office and spoke the name of his business to Google’s search box, the list loaded and speaking to Google once more he said “one” and waited for the top result to load.

The normal pride Joe felt when his mobile site loaded quickly, was replaced by a combination of fear and anger that can only happen when know you something bad is about to happen and there is nothing you can do about it. Rather than seeing his own site, Joe was presented with a page containing the Verizon logo and a headline that read “Stay Informed And Empowered.”

Following that was a paragraph that started like a history lesson, detailing how the network had began charging subscribers for downloading more than 5 gigabytes of data back in December 2010 and now it was time the owners of that content being downloaded shared the burden of the cost.

They made it sound more than just palatable, they made you feel like you should be asking, How did those darn content providers get away without paying for so long?

Touching the number on the screen led to a conversation with a Verizon sales rep that filled in the remaining answers to the original traffic problem. According to Verizon, there is no charge for your website to be on the internet. Only if someone downloads it while on their network. It started a couple of weeks ago but didn’t cause a problem until the 100 free downloads were used up.

The Verizon rep walked Joe through all the available plans. He asked Joe about his Analytics data and in the end recommended a plan that would provide Joe with the best opportunity “to be available” on Verizon’s network 100% of the time. Next, Joe had these conversations with At&t, Sprint and several cable companies who had all started similar plans when Net Neutrality rules were officially vacated for mobile devices.

The cable companies surprised Joe, after all, these weren’t “mobile networks”, how come up he had to pay them. Turns out mobility is determined by the device, the operating system, not the network. Not just semantic anymore, Joe thought as he pictured some guy leaning back back on his sofa and pecking away at his tablet as the wi-fi delivered the same signal to his wife paying bills on the laptop on the dining room table.

Joe stared at the 7 contracts lined up side by side filling the entirety of the panel on his wall and decided whether or not to sign an annual contract in order to get the discount. It had been nearly 2 decades since he faced a decision like this one. Then the yellow page contracts had been printed out and lined up on his desk but ironically the logos on many of the contracts had not changed.

Whether you have to write a check to your internet provider when you search on Google, connect on Facebook or send an email will be decided today when the FCC votes on Free-Internet.

Verizon, At&t and other internet providers insist they should have the ability to block internet content. Many believe they want this ability so they can charge you to view websites that have always been available for free.

Strong evidence for this was provided to wired magazine this week when a presentation delivered by a 3rd party to Vodaphone was leaked to wire by a “trusted source.” The presentation was about a product that will meter your internet use like the gas company meters your electricity; complete with sample prices for popular websites such as Google, Facebook, Youtube and many others.

The FCC has defended Free-Internet in the past and maintained a policy of net-neutrality. However, todays vote could lead to the FCC giving the ok for pricing models based on usage and give wireless networks the ability to block content.

Here are some of the potential implications of the vote for consumers and publishers, especially as it applies to wireless.

Verizon and At&t will decide what email providers are available to you, how many emails you can send and how much each will cost.

They will decide how many searches you can do on Google each month and how much each search will cost.

They will decide on which website you can connect with your friends, how long you may remain on that website, how many pictures you can view and/or upload and how much it will cost.

For web based businesses these companies could in theory deny access to your website unless you paid them. Just like a business has to pay to have an ad in the yellow pages.

In terms of tiered pricing, Verizon has already begun charging this way on their new 4g network released earlier this month. $50 for the first 5gb of usage and $10 for each additional gigabyte. Unless you don’t happen to use the entire 5gb in a month, in which case you will be charged $50 because the calender changed. It is murky whether this represents a monthly plan or a data usage plan. It’s basically heads I win, tails you lose.

This is like the second line for rides at Disney World for people who pay more. In stark contrast to past policy which guaranteed equal access.

Wireless companies would have you believe that charging this way is no different from how a utility company charges for electricity or water.

But water companies do not have pricing plans for high quality and low quality water supplies. They do not provide 2 lines, where those who pay more are delivered water faster. They do not block access to water supplies.

Also, it is expected that the discrimination and content blocking rules applied to wired networks will not be applied to wireless carriers. This will allow Verizon, At&t and others to block access to Google or Facebook or any other site. Or more likely to charge for it.

The ability to block content and block access to content will allow wireless providers to control how information is shared over the internet on a wireless network. When you consider that Verizon 4g is already as fast as standard wired connection, it is easy to imagine that this is the way most of us will access the internet in the not to distant future. Just like we went from Dial-up to Broadband. Only this time our access will be carefully monitored, metered and in some cases denied.

Whether information wants to be free or wants to be expensive will be decided today.

If you take a look at the image above at a Google Maps result you will find listings for 4 companies that don’t really exist, at least not with that name or at the address listed. I called and asked if they were licensed, they said no. All 4 phone numbers were answered by a person whose voice sounded remarkably similar to the others. The address doesn’t exist; And they dominate the search result for Garage Doors Danbury CT.

What’s amazing is that similar listings dominate the Maps’ search results for this query in the cities that surround Danbury as well; Plus hundreds of cities in Connecticut, New Jersey, California and their now moving into Pennsylvania.

With location being such an important factor how could a company rank in the Local 7-pack in so many cities across the country. Here’s how it works.

1. Set up a listing in Google Maps at an address that does not currently exist. For example, where there is a 60 Main St., Anytown and a 64 Main St, Anytown and these represent real addresses. Set up your listing at 62 Main St.

2. Name your business USKeyword-City, or Keyword-Pro-city or Ficticious name of person plus keyword for the personal touch.

3. Build citations to your listing. These listings contain citations from Yahoo Local, Hotfrog, Guidespot, local.newstimelive.com.

4. Create a blog on one of the sites for the purpose of creating a perfect citation for thousands of listings.

5. Link build

6. Give your new listing a sparkling review

7. Now find an adjacent town and repeat. Again and again and again again.

A search in Hotfrog for Overhead Garage Door CT turned up 88 separate listings belonging to this ring.

A search in Yahoo local for garage doors in Danbury returns their listings 16 times out of the first 30 results.

In Google Maps they take 4 spots in the Lucky 7-pack, and in the Other Places You Might Like on their Places Page their other listings show up as your only choices. Dominant.

Why Does It Work?

Because location is such a big part of the ranking algorithm in Maps the key to their success is the fact that they have a “location” in each of the cities.

They are obviously creating new listings which Google will allow you to verify by phone most of the time. Theoretically, they could be using the bulk upload system. I don’t use the bulk upload system so I’m not sure whether that’s possible or not. If you are… please let us know in the comments.

Once established, these “locations” need only trust to start ranking in Google Maps. This trust is established with citations and backlinks. As mentioned earlier they have only a few citations on each listing, so it got me wondering… Does it help that they use made up addresses?

Addresses that have never pointed at any other listing or place on the web? Is that why they chose a non-existent address, rather than a business park or an office building like many spammers of the past? Is their a sort of “citation-certainty” in the algorithm that takes into account not only the volume of citations but the percentage that point at a single listing.

Perhaps an 11th extreme local search optimization technique: New Construction.

Most studies I’ve read regarding mobile seem to focus on statistics that may lead to conclusions that overstate the importance of mobile. I wanted to put together a study that would show the actual traffic from mobile devices to a local website in an industry that was traditionally driven by yellow page advertising. My goal is to create a resource that a small business owner making the transition from yellow pages advertising could use to put mobile search in perspective. A change to Google Adwords platform helped.

Back in February, Google added a feature that allows you to segment Adwords traffic by “device.”
It’s an option on the segment drop down menu… here’s a screenshot:

I decided to study this to determine how important mobile was to my clients. I wanted to find the answer to 2 questions:

1. What percentage of traffic came from mobile?
2. Does the percentage of traffic from Mobile vary in different parts of the country?

All of the companies in the study are of the same type, garage door companies, which provides an almost unique opportunity to study mobile patterns across different parts of the country without having to factor in for the type of company.

Here is a map that shows the traffic from Adwords on a smart phone as a percentage of all Adwords traffic to each of 7 garage door companies from around the Country.



Mobile Traffic By City For Garage Door Companies

This data was taken from February 16, 2010 – April 16, 2010. Impressions, rather than clicks were used, to eliminate click thru rate as a variable. I felt like this made a better comparison and each of these businesses had at least 3,000 impressions during this time interval.

San Jose 3.27%
Chicago 2.63%
Denver 2.38%
Pittsburgh 2.13%
Nashville 1.84%
Akron 1.43%
Westchester 1.10%

Conclusions And Areas For Further Study

• Not a big surprise that San Jose, which falls in Silicon Valley is number 1
• The small data set follows the general pattern that people in bigger cities (more population) are going to use mobile devices a higher percentage of the time
• Westchester County NY surprised me. This is a high income area which I would thought would lead to higher mobile usage. Interestingly, Westchester County is the oldest population in this set. Could be that age trumps income when it comes to selecting a small business on a mobile handset.
• For different types of businesses Mobile is going to be more or less important but overall it’s likely to be less than 5% of overall traffic. Again, this is a small study but Adwords and Google Analytics both provide easy segmentation of mobile traffic. Look in your analytics or call your PPC provider to see what percentage of your traffic is mobile.
• Tip: Ask your PPC provider what your average position is when segmented for Mobile. I shoot for top 3 in computer devices and top 2 in Mobile (Google shows 2 ads on top on Mobil devices)

Pay Per Call brings about a conversation like no other in local advertising. Small business owners, who normally deal in broad strokes, all of sudden are fighting tooth and nail each time their phone rings. And Yext, a technology that was created to alleviate this, by using transcription technology, may have amplified it judging by the comment section of Local Seo Guide’s old post on Yext which has spontaneously transformed into a Yext Review portal.

I would suggest heading over there and reading this if you have considered buying or selling advertising on a pay per call basis. It could save you lots of time and aggravation later on.

At Christmas I got a Droid. That’s good.

I had 10 months left on my T-mobile contract. That’s good for you.

Here’s the offer. You get the G1 for free. You need to agree to take over my contract.

What’s in it for you:

• Free G1
• Contract Expires in October, so you are only locked in for 10 mos., NOT 2 years like me!
• The phone is awesome, only slightly less awesome than the droid

What’s in it for me:

• I get my $200 T-mobile penalty back

Contract Details:

The contract is $49.00/mo for 400 minutes on T-Mobile. With that you have access to the internet on wifi, phone, music player. Kind’ve like an ipod touch with Gmail and a phone.
Optional: Add $30 month for data plan to get on 3g.

If you need any addt’l info you can ask in the comments below. If you’re interested please use the contact form near the bottom of this page.

Last week Google formally launched its Click-to-Call functionality in Adwords. Greg Sterling spoke with Paul Feng, Google’s Group Product Manager for Mobile Ads, about this new feature. Feng said that some advertisers in Google’s Click-to-Call tests saw improvement in CTR’s up to 30%, compared to ads on the PC. Sterling goes on to hypothesis that the local number provides additional credibility, making the user more inclined to click or call.

I share Sterling’s theory about the power of a local number in CTR. We’ve been including local numbers in service business ads for some time now, and they consistently outperform ads without numbers. Sure, with the numbers in we have less room for creative, but if CTR is better it’s a no brainer.

So after reading that Google made Click-to-Call functional we set it up for a garage door repair company in Fairfield County. We thought Click-to-Call would be a pretty good thing for them. Mobile users in Las Vegas looking to repair the garage door would be able to call for service right away, no need to go through the website.

So we followed Googles “2 Simple Steps” for setting this up:

1)Set up location extensions and add your business phone number. Customers will be able to click to call your business location nearest to them (as determined by the phone’s location awareness technologies, GPS, triangulation).
2)Check that you’ve chosen to show your ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers in your campaign settings.

After making these simple changes to your campaign settings, you should see something resembling the picture above.

Split Your Campaign Into PC and Mobile

We decided to split our campaigns into two groups: One for just mobile, and one for just Desktops.
This way we can tailor the content of the ad and their landing pages to the mobile user. Plus we want to see just how effective these ads are against the regular ones.

Anyway, we set everything up and then pulled out our iPhones and Droids to test it. Here’s what we saw.

The click to call number wasn’t displaying! The address was showing, so we knew we got it right. What happened?

How come my address shows in my ads, but my phone number is missing?

We double and triple checked our settings and ads. Everything was set up correctly, but why wasn’t the phone number displaying? The AdWords Help page wasn’t useful, offering only the advice to make sure you haven’t set up custom targeting to show an address with the ad. We hadn’t.

We finally threw in the towel and contacted AdWords support. Here’s the answer we got:

So if you’re having the same problem getting your Click-to-Call numbers displaying, don’t worry. Google just needs time to catch up.

Guest Post by Chris Keenan.
Chris Keenan is a PPC Account Manager at A2Opinion, a local search marketing agency.

Over the weekend I had my first sighting of the new Google Product Listing Ads.
Having missed all the write-ups last week I was shocked when they showed up in a search I was doing over the weekend.

Visually dominant and uber-relevant, these ads dominated my attention as a search marketer and someone looking for an above ground pool.

Screen cap of my first sighting and interaction with a Google Product Listing Ad.

Google continues to expand the types of searches for which it displays the 10-Pack. Today for the first time I found the 10 pack for a search with a county geography.