Yahoo, Verizon Let Fingers Do the Walking

For instance, AT&T Interactive and Yahoo have a deal in which Yahoo's Yahoo Local division uses advertiser content from Yellowpages.com, and AT&T's ad salesforce sells Yahoo display space to local businesses. Yellow Pages Association member companies also are working on various ways to marry other companies' mapping applications with Yellow Pages directory information.

Hopping all over the social networking trend, Superpages now has a page on Twitter, which lets users receive addresses and phone numbers via Tweets, a helpful tool if you don't mind that everyone else on Twitter can see the information you've requested. YellowPages.com is readying a local social-search tool as well.

"In effect, we're becoming more like an agency, in that we're selling some of our own products, but we're selling with partners," Norton says, adding that many small businesses don't have the marketing savvy to determine the best course of online advertising.

In order for small businesses to gauge whether advertising in the Yellow Pages is still worth it, many small businesses take advantage of a feature that lets them publish a URL or phone number that appears only in the Yellow Pages or on a Yellow Pages Web site. If a customer dials the number (or visits the URL), the call (or Web address) is automatically forwarded to the company's actual business number (or Web site), but the company can tell that the call is coming from a Yellow Pages search.

-- Reported by Carmen Nobel in Boston.

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