Cities propose outlawing telephone books
It started in 2010 when the City of Seattle proposed charging telephone companies a per book fee, an annual licensing fee, and large fines for delivering unwanted phone books (specifically the yellow pages) to residents. Then in February of 2011, the City of San Francisco took up the mission. Under consideration is a plan to disallow delivering yellow pages without advance permission from area residents.
Nothing appears to be settled as of yet, but it’s a fair bet that sometime in the future, the yellow pages as we know them now will no longer exist. Between the rise of the smart phone and the green movement, yellow pages are becoming obsolete. How many children today even use the phone book? They can look up whatever they want by typing in a keyword on a search engine home page. There’s no reason to expect that they’ll take up using phone books when they’re older.
What does this imply for your business? Online advertising is the trend, and wise business owners will get listed in as many online directories as possible. Optimized listings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing are a great start and will help new customers find you quickly and easily.
