Mohamed Salah: Local Search, Yellow Pages and Web Technologies

Turkey Yellow Pages Partners with Navteq and Nokia

Turkey Yellow Pages signed a 5 year strategic deal to supply business listing information to NAVTEQ and Nokia global mapping platforms. This is the kind of partnerships that the giant mapping provider Navteq and Nokia are looking for. In these days, the mapping technologies have reached a new level, GPS became a major component in any mobile phone, not less important than a camera. Most new cars are already equipped with in-car navigation systems. Detailed maps are now available for almost anywhere in the planet. Without a detailed map a GPS would be useless.

So the equation that stood for some time was:

GPS + Detailed Maps = Know your way

Now this equation has totally changed, having access to hundreds of thousands of locations for hotels, restaurants, shops, gas stations, hospitals, …. definitely means much more. It means you do not need to worry any more about finding a place you want to go to.. All what you need is to decide what you want to do, and the where or how is not a problem anymore.

The new equations is

GPS + Detailed Maps + Business Listing Locations = Find your destination

It is so exciting now that Turkey Yellow Pages data will power up Nokia OviMaps which were offered for free a few days ago.  Nokia OviMaps is now one of the most convenient mobile maps that you could use, not only because it is free now, it’s technology has changed from raster images into vector maps so the application can be downloaded locally to your mobile from Ovi App Store, and it’s size is no more than 8 MB. This includes all the maps installed on your local mobile, no need to keep downloading images from the internet.

Back in late 2006, when we developed our Nokia Mobile Search plug-in for Egypt, UAE and KSA Yellow Pages we were so delighted about it, it was a breakthrough for the use of the mobiles in our daily life to find a restaurant or a hotel on the move. One and half years later Nokia decided to drop support for their Mobile Search applications. Their insights were toward mobile maps. Now here comes OviMaps, the new amazing free Nokia mobile mapping platform and again powered by Yellow Pages, the most trusted local search provider as always.

So stay tuned for the upcoming updates from OviMaps which Turkey Yellow Pages will power up its data soon…

Since Q4 2008 it is know that SMB’s use the traditional media and online media equally. Now things has changed. Many SMB’s use electronic media more than the traditional forms.

Very interesting numbers from Kelsey Group

So i took the 60$ credit i have as Google AdWords credit and decided to start a mini-campaign to see how the Pay Per Click advertising model works. Here is the story:

I created a campaign for the Egyptian stock market section that we launched at Yellow Pages, i thought it could use some more traffic. I followed the guidelines and chosen my words and the minimum bidding CPC that google recommends for each word to appear in a good place in the search results page and in the Google partner network websites that are relevant to that topic. After this i specified the daily budget that i want which was 2$ per day that i reduce later to 1$ when i was about to run out of credit later

Here are some words i have chosen that were approved by google as good traffic words: Egyptian stock market, Egyptian stock market news, Egyptian Bursa, EGX30 prices, Talaat Mostafa Stocks, Mobinil Stocks, ….

CPC was pretty cheap, $0.05 for Egyptain Stock Market, some words were cheaper other words were more expensive…. I’m just gonna focus here on this word…

So everything was set and i got around 80 hits on the first day of campaign July 16th 2009.. The larger portion was coming from Google network website not from Google search results page but it doesn’t matter… very nice, i though i just put this to bed… but i was wrong.. look at the below:

On 17 July, hits dropped to 25, so i opened the control panel to see what was wrong, if found that google suggest me to change the CPC bid amount to $0.07 for Egyptain Stock Market instead of $0.05. I did that and here we go again, hits reached 80’s again.

On 21 July and 27 July, I had to re-adjust the CPC again and again until it reached $0.21 which seemed after this that it was not enough… I just started to give up, i can’t keep monitoring this way on aday to day basis… I have other more important stuff to do than adjusting some keywords CPC… I took a look after a while and i found that the CPC recommeneded by google Passed the $1.10 margin!!

I was paying 5 cents for a keyword and getting good traffic. Now i am paying 21 cents and hardly getting any traffic.. Then i was expected to pay one dollar for each click!! All the credit i have (60$) and was planning to use for one month would now evaporate in one day.

I don’t really understand the pattern, what happened during these 2 weeks that raised the bid amount for Egyptain Stock Market from 5 cents to 1 dollar?? is it really people paying more in that word suddenly, does it make any sense that no one was interested in this word at all and all in a sudden everyone wants it?? or was this some way Google AdWords drag their customers to invest more and more by offering words for a little price at the begining and then gradually increasing the value until it reaches the market amount? i don’t really know but i know 2 things for sure:

1.  I don’t like PPC model, too much complicated.
2. Normal end users and SME would find it extremely difficult to manage this on their own unless provided to them by an advertising agency that manages their account. Putting in mind also the special needs of customers in the middle east and that they would rather have someone do these things for them instead of doing it themselves because it is too “technical”. Self provisioning and PPC model might not be the best advertising solution for MEA region.

The Yellow Pages time-based contractual model is simple, efficient and easy. If you compare it to PPC model it is also much more cost-effective.

In Yellow Pages we are always trying to improve the services we are offering to advertisers by monitoring and analyzing the statistics, logs, impressions, and hits their different ads get. This is why our products are always changing from one canvass to another in the favour of the end user and the advertisers as well.

The advertising services that we offer are based on the contract time, which is one year. It does not depend on the number of impression or hits the investors get. This issue whether we should move to the model of Pay Per Click (PPC), Cost Per Click (CPC), and Pay Per Call (PPCall) are always under consideration.

So which model is better? which model suits the customers in our middle east region? what model would suit SME’s better which makes the greater proportion of the Yellow Pages advertisers in middle east and worldwide?

I will try to answer these questions..