Mohamed Salah: Local Search & Yellow Pages Blog » Egypt Yellow Pages

Linked in is down

mohsalah — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:50:05 +0000

I can’t believe linkedin is actually down, this is the first time i see it in my life.

They are also displaying an error id… i think that each http request that comes to them is represented by a new error ID..

a few refreshes gives the following:

Error Id: 133596971312596
Error Id: 133596977162041
Error Id: 133596979836852
Error Id: 133596990131215

On average about 1.5 million errors (or requests) in 10 seconds…
that’s 150,000 requests per second… WOW

This is what you see when linkedin is down

And now the service is coming back (4:50 PM Cairo time), but the feeds are still not working, you don’t see any feeds or new about your connections, you just see colleagues and alumni filter titles!

linkedin feeds are still down

Yellow Media and Google Enter Strategic Partnership to Support SMBs in Egypt

mohsalah — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:40:01 +0000

Yellow Media – Formerly known as Egypt Yellow Pages and Google Ireland have signed strategic partnership agreement that will make Yellow Media the first Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner in Egypt and the second one in North Africa.

The Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program enables strategic relationships between Google and companies that can deliver the power of Google AdWords to their local merchants. Small and medium-sized businesses working with a Premier SMB Partner receive professional, full-service AdWords account management, from account setup and activation to ongoing campaign monitoring and optimization.

The official announcement was made on April 22, 2012 in the Four Seasons Nile Plaza hotel with tens of attendees of technology reporters and journalists from major news papers and online news and technology portals in Egypt.

The event was held by: Marc Lambert – Managing Director of Yellow Media, Ahmed Hafez – Head of Sales in Google Egypt and North Africa, Lars Mourey – Director of Sales & Marketing in Yellow Media, and Mohamed Salah – Director of Digital Media in Yellow Media.

Marc Lambert, Ahmed Hafez and Mohamed Salah

Keynote of Ahmed Hafez - Head of Sales - Google Egypt and North Africa

Following the official launch event, a 2 day intensive training course was given to 200+ Yellow Media sales professionals by the Google Egypt team. Wael Fakharany - Regional Manager Egypt, and North Africa – Google gave a very insightful keynote speech about the success story of how he managed to transform Google Egypt from a country office that only had one individual (Wael Himself) to tens of millions of dollars in a few years.

Wael Fakharany - Regional Manager Egypt, and North Africa - Google: Keynote Speech to Yellow Media Sales Force

Yellow Media 200+ Media Solutions sales consultants attending Google AdWords training

To get a free consultation now, or to sign up for Google AdWords fully managed service by Yellow Media.

Egypt Yellow Pages Launches Yellow Media Brand in Egypt

mohsalah — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 06:12:23 +0000

We proudly announce that Egypt Yellow Pages is launching Yellow Media brand today and expanding from being a traditional directory services provider to empowering our customers with a proper representation of their business on social, local, and mobile platforms, arming them to not just compete in the online world, but succeed. Solutions for everything their businesses will require for online success in the years to come, which is encompassed in an effective SoLoMo, or social-local-mobile, presence.

The various range of Yellow Media SoLoMo offerings in Egypt include:

Social exposure over Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ and Dalili.com.eg (Egypt’s largest businesses and venues review site)
Local needs through Yellow.com.eg and Offeratak.com (Egypt’s leading daily deal aggregator)
Mobile platforms coverage though Yellow.com.eg mobile web, iPhone application and Blackberry application (Android and Nokia under development)

Egypt Yellow Pages Zeitgeist 2011

mohsalah — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 07:04:08 +0000

Year 2011 is about to end, many Egyptians are happy about the fact that this year is actually coming to an end and full of hope that the coming year will be better for everyone. Let’s take a look together about 2011 and see what Egyptians were looking for on online Egypt Yellow Pages during this year:

Arabic Search on the rise

Arabic continues to grow to reach 59% of the total searches done in 2011, not as fast as you might expect it to happen, that’s only a 4% increase over 2010. See 2010 Zeitgeist>>

Arabic is dominating the search phrases with 59%

One interesting fact is that many people were looking for Tahrir Square after the #Jan25 revolution! Although sounds to me like a Google search rather than a Yellow Pages search, you never know!

Searches for Tahrir Square on Egypt Yellow Pages after #Jan25 revolution

Top Categories For 2011

The following are the most searched keywords for 2011

1. Restaurant
2. Pharmacy
3. Hotel
4. Advertising
5. Bank
6. Nursery
7. Furniture
8. School
9. Hospital
10. Real Estate

You can see that advertising is going up the list while real estate is at the bottom of the top 10 list. This shows how advertising is so important to businesses in Egypt at these tough days. Real estate industry is not living its best days though.

Top Search Keywords on EYP for 2011

Most popular sectors and industries in Egypt in 2011

Banks

1. National Bank Of Egypt
2. HSBC
3. NSGB
4. CIB

Top Egyptian banks for 2011

Restaurants and Cafes:

1. Spectra
2. burger king
3. KFC
4. cilantro
5. Cook door
6. hardees
7. pizza hut
8. la poire
9. Mo’men
10. Roastery
11. gad

Top restaurants in Egypt for 2011

Telco:

1. Vodafone
2. Mobinil
3. Etisalat

Most searched mobile network operators in Egypt for 2011

Brands and stores:

1. Samsung
2. Xerox
3. Sony
4. Appliance
5. Raya
6. Toshiba
7. Egypt Air
8. Mobile Shop
9. Panasonic
10. Jotun
11. Habitat
12. Nokia

Top searched brands in Egypt for 2011

Goodbye 2011, enough is enough… Hopefully 2012 will be a glorious year and won’t see the end of the world according to Mayan calendar time prophecy

Egypt Yellow Pages Ecosystem

mohsalah — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 12:24:40 +0000

There is no question that local search is now one of the core services of many web and mobile applications offered today. Think about the big market players such as Google and Facebook, both of them offer “places”. Social media check-in apps such as Foursquare, verticals like hotel review sites (Tripadvisor), restaurant reviews sites, food delivery sites, map providers such as Navteq, or even directory assistance services offered by mobile operators, all their services are based on a venue database. If they don’t get it right there is very little point in offering their services.

Think about the effort and cost needed to maintain your own database. Thousands of businesses open, close, or relocate every month. This is the opportunity where what is offered by Yellow Pages is exactly the need of all these applications and services.

Egypt Yellow Pages is no exception, the integration between Egypt Yellow Pages database and their partners is becoming a key strength for many of these applications making use of the most complete business database in Egypt covering over 220,000 listings and 170,000 map locations.

Here is the ECO-SYSTEM of Egypt Yellow Pages

I’ll go through the details of each of these systems and partnerships in future posts.

Egypt Yellow Pages App Released on BlackBerry App World

mohsalah — Thu, 19 May 2011 20:31:29 +0000

One month after the launch of BlackBerry App World in Egypt, Egypt Yellow Pages have released the BB App on the App World. This is one of the first BlackBerry applications (perhaps the first one) that are submitted from Egypt. This application launch was a developed by a brilliant new Egyptian startup called Apptitude.

What makes our BlackBerry application unique is not only being one of the first Egyptian publishers to join the App World, it has also been developed based on the community demand on different social networking sites especially Twitter… Our twitter friends joined out application beta testing program and provided us with very useful feedback and many additional features to add. Also their ongoing support helps us to add more features and make the application better….

A big thank you to our list of honor beta testers:

Mostafa khaled Beige

Mahmoud Ahmed

Mahmoud Abdel Aziz

Ramy Temraz

Bassem Osoris

Gamal Omar

Abdou Omar

Islam Badr

Mohammad Mokhtar Eltrissi

You can download Egypt Yellow Pages BB App from App World here.

BlackBerry App World now in Egypt

mohsalah — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:59:07 +0000

BlackBerry App World

After waiting for it for a really long time, it has been confirmed today that BlackBerry App World is now available in Egypt. Although no official published news by RIM confirms this. Many users from Egypt have reported that they were able to access AppWorld and download application from it.

Many people wonder why did it take all this time to launch the store in Egypt. RIM has responded to this question saying that they do not launch the App World in a country unless they have signed an agreement with all the mobile operators to avail it for the users. Perhaps that could be the reason of the delay.

Egypt Yellow Pages BlackBerry Application

The launch of BB App World in Egypt must be good news for users, developers and application vendors. Distribution of BlackBerry apps is not a simple task specially with all the device and OS specific features available, which makes it harder for the application vendors to do the correct device and OS detection and avail the correct version of the application to the correct device and the appropriate OS version.

As a Yellow Pages publisher, we are very delighted about availing the Black Berry App World in Egypt which will enable us to distribute and deliver efficiently our free local search application for Egypt. Currently, you can download Egypt Yellow Pages BlackBerry application from here. It is available for Curve, Bold and Torch models. There are 2 versions of the application, one supports OS 4.6 and another one supports version 5.0 or higher which has more features and functionalities embedded.

Yellow Pages Partners Day Video

mohsalah — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:35:12 +0000

Here is the video from Egypt Yellow Pages partners day event that took place in Four Seasons Nile Plaza in garden city

What makes a good salesman in a struggling economy?

mohsalah — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 13:26:53 +0000

About 9 months ago i decided to setup a self insurance / retirement plan for myself. Not believing in the value of the government social insurance in Egypt which is a big lie you put yourself in, a false feeling of being secure and covered by the time you retire… Spend 25 years working and then when you retire you will get a big fat 600 EGP per month… that’s gotta be charity not social insurance…..

I knew nothing about insurance so i contacted one insurance agent, his name is Mahmoud, who can give me an advice on which kind insurance fits me, there are basically 3 kinds of insurance companies in Egypt: governmental, private and banks… Well, Mahmoud did a great job on teaching me the pros and cons of each kind of these companies, he got me offers with numbers from a bunch of them…. and he made his recommendation to me… of course i haven’t taken his words for granted but i did some more research by myself to reach the same conclusion that he recommended to me…

My final decision was to go with governmental insurance for a company that Mahmoud works for. Paying a yearly installment for the next 20 years… having chosen this installment to be small enough not to affect me under bad economy or whatsoever was a wise decision.

I have to pay my next installment on May, i only have 30 days to pay, if i’m late for 15 more days i pay a penalty, if i’m still late i my insurance is dropped and i have to re-active it again… Having know this i asked Mahmoud last year that i would like to pay my yearly installment on March of every year rather than May… why would i wait and put myself in this situation.

But now things are different right? the economy is not so good and people are afraid to spend money, so it is better to keep my cash until next May, perhaps until the end of may to utilize my time allowance until its end… Why would i pay now early 2 month in these current conditions? That’s probably what a typical sales guy would think. Right? Would he have the nerves to call me now and ask me to make my installment payment 2 month earlier? but guess what he did…

One day i came to the office and found that Mahmoud has left me his business card a couple of days ago when i was out of town and asked me to call him. When i called him he told me that he has lost all his contacts and he is trying to reach them by dropping off his business card to their work places… and he asked me whether i am still willing to pay my installment 2 months earlier as agreed… and guess what? i told him yes i am willing… there is no point in waiting, since i will have to make the payment anyway. He was a bit surprised himself… and he was happy of course, collections means bonus for him…

did he say “Why would i bother and call him now? the situation is not clear now… let’s wait until May” or “I lost his number, i am sure he is gonna call me back to pay at may or to cancel, i won’t bother myself finding his number again”

It is really small things that does matter… and in our struggling economy, good salesmen can have their companies economy rolling back again and in turn help the economy of their countries… People can just choose sit and assume and do the “WHAT-IF” analysis and do nothing… or they move and work hard to achieve their goals… Assumption is the mother of all screwups

This is one thing that makes the difference between a salesman and a good salesman…

Let’s work hard!

mohsalah — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 12:20:03 +0000

Let's boost Egypt's economy, together.

It has been one month since the Egyptian revolution which took place on the 25th of January 2011, which is believe I the biggest achievement for our great nation in the modern age. I’m Egyptian and proud… every Egyptian is proud…

I believe it’s our time now to work harder to bring back Egypt economy to the point where it was initially and then start building over it to boost our economy to put this country where it belongs to on the world economic map…

Egypt Yellow Pages Partners Day

mohsalah — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:11:49 +0000

I’m a little late to talk about this one, but last Sunday, January 16th 2011, was Egypt Yellow Pages first event for 2011, the best thing we thought we would do this year with, is to honor our partners and give them a big thank you for being so awesome through 2010… Our event title is Enhancing Local Search And Location-Based Services With Key Strategic Partnerships…

Hosted in the Four Seasons Nile Plaza in garden city, more than 40 communications media specialists, editors and journalists covered the event that was attended by Egypt Yellow Pages strategic partners: Ministry of state of administrative development – e-Government, Nokia/Navteq, Al Masry Al Youm and Akhbarak.net

The event started with the keynote from Marc Lambert, managing director of Egypt Yellow Pages. The speech was so insightful, Marc explained how our strategic partners will help us enhance the local search services on more platforms by making it available through our partners sites and in the same time focusing on offering location based services which is the future of the local search…

Marc Lambert giving his keynote in the event

I had the opportunity then to present some figures and insights about our achievements in 2010, which ended up with us having more than 175,000 business listing in our database out of which 115,000 are geocoded. At the time i am writing this blog post, we have about 180,000 listings and approaching 120,000 geocoded listings… 2010 was also a year that witnesses tripling our website traffic from 400,000 visits per month to over 1.2 million visits, a truly new milestone for local search in Egypt.

Mohamed Salah, Director Digital Media, Egypt Yellow Pages presentation about insights and search trends in Egypt for 2010

Our partners were the ones who presented our strategic partnership details to the media, the following were representatives of our partners:

Mathia Nalappan, General Manager – North Africa, Nokia
Phil McKinnon, Head Of Marketing – North Africa, Nokia
Mohamed Abd El-Jalil, Head Of Solutions Sales – North Africa, Nokia
Sahar Afia, Project Manager – Government Services Development Program, Ministry Of State For Administrative Development
Kismet EL-Sayed, Shareholder / Business Development Director, Al-Masry Al-Youm
Osman Ahmed Osman, Founder, Akhbarak.Net

Here are more photos from the event

Osman Ahmed Osman, Sahar Afia, Marc Lambert, Mohamed Abd El-Jalil, and Kismet El-Sayed

Lars Morey (Director Of Sales, Yellow Pages Egypt), Phil McKinnon (Head Of Marketing – North Africa, Nokia) and Mathia Nalappan (General Manager – North Africa, Nokia)

Journalists and reporters attending the Yellow Pages event

Kismet El-Sayed, Shareholder / Business Development Director, Al-Masry Al-Youm

: Osman Ahmed Osman, Founder – Akhbarak.net

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who attended the event and made it successful

Egypt Yellow Pages 2010 Zeitgeist

mohsalah — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:55:47 +0000

2010 was a year characterized as being the most successful year in the history of Egypt Yellow Pages. I am pleased to announce to you today the local search trends from Egypt’s number one local search site www.yellow.com.eg (if you want to see 2009 search trends click here)

One very interesting trend to start with is that the number of Arabic search queries super passed the English search queries for the first time on Egypt Yellow Pages. Arabic is now taking the lead with 55% of the search queries while English queries presents 45% of the total search.

Here are the top 10 searches for 2010:

Restaurant
Hotel
Company
Pharmacy
Bank
Real Estate
Advertising
Furniture
School
Factory

Restaurants are in the lead this year after switching places with hotels which comes in the second place. You can notice how consumers are searching through the site by looking for pharmacies (4th), banks (5th), furniture (8th) and schools (9th). Also increases B2B searches are noticed like company(3rd), Factory(10th), Real Estate (6th) and advertising (7th).

Most popular by category

Top Banks:

National Bank of Egypt ( El Bank El Ahly) comes first followed by HSBC then Commerical International Bank (CIB)

Top Telco Companies:

and the first places goes to… Vodafone, followed by Mobinil, then Raya and finally Etisalat in the 4th place.

Top Shipping Companies:

4 shipping companies show in the list of the top 100 searches on Yellow.com.eg, with DHL taking the lead searches, followed by Western Union, Aramex and then Fedex.

Top Car Manufacturers:

Toyota and Hyundai came on the top most searches car brands in Egypt

Top Restaurants & Cafes:

With restaurants being number one category for 2010, the top 100 most popular searches list contained 9 restaurants and cafes.

Cilantro the most popular local cafe in Egypt, followed by the restaurants Spectra which is very well known in the neighborhoods of Maadi and Mohandeseen, but it seems that nothing else can stand in the face of Egyptian cravings for fast food, you will find among the top list KFC, Cook Door, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Mo’men.

Finally Roastery, maadi and heliopolis favorite hangout comes in the list and finally La Poire, the most popular Egyptian patesserie.

Top Brands:

Many brands from consumer electronic, computer hardware industry and mobile phones where included in the list. This includes:

Samsung
Xerox
Sony
Toshiba
Panasonic
Apple
Nokia

Happy New Year to all Egyptians!

life-long donations to Palestinian refugees

mohsalah — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:36:18 +0000

Got the below email from Unrwa, you can make a donation with your credit card for the Palestinian refugees, and then they will send you a survey, when you fill it, they will honor you by planting an olive tree in Palestine, they will name it too with your name

Dear MOHAMED,

We are excited to share with you the good news about the olive tree planting you supported thanks to you and many more of our fantastic donors, the village of Burin has received 351 olive trees.

This new forest will change not only Burin’s landscape, but also the lives of this Palestinian community. Please accept our heartfelt thanks for this life-long donation.

We have 351 olive trees ready. What’s next?

While the olive trees are being pampered at a nursery, we are getting the terrain ready. The planting is scheduled for mid-January 2011. The very same day we plant the trees you will receive photos from us, along with a certificate.

On behalf of the Palestinian refugees living in difficult conditions in the village of Burin and the local workers hired to plant the olive tree you donated, thank you!

Chris Gunness
UNRWA spokesperson

Driving Directions on Bawaba

mohsalah — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:09:10 +0000

Now the driving directions are available on government maps service of Bawaba, it’s very easy and straight forward, once you find the government service provider that you want, you can specify your location and see the nearest route to this service provider.

You can try this out at http://egypt.gov.eg available also bilingual

This service is developed and managed by Egypt Yellow Pages. Using the geocoded content for Government service providers from the Yellow Pages database.

See the video below for a step-by-step walk through

Dr. Ahmed Darwish Signs an Agreement with Egypt Yellow Pages

mohsalah — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:44:24 +0000

Egypt Yellow Pages has finally signed the agreement with Dr. Ahmed Darwish – Minister of Administrative Development in a big event in the ministry head quarters. The Cermony was followed by a press conference which was attended by more than 50 journalist and TV reports covering the event.

This agreement empowers Bawaba (Egypt EGov Portal) with Maps that covers different governmental service providers in Egypt, which makes it easier to reach the service provider you want in Egypt without any hassles.

The service can be accessed from http://www.egypt.gov.eg or directly from http://www.egypt.gov.eg/services/LoadxtrServices.aspx?section=citizens&PgURL=73753

Below is the coverage by Mona El Shazly in the popular talk show “Al Ashera Masa’a” on Dream TV.

Event photos

: Minister Dr. Ahmed Darwish giving a speech about the partnership agreement

: Marc Lambert – Managing Director of Yellow Pages sign the agreement with Dr. Ahmed Samir – Deputy of the Minister. At the back Dr. Ahmed Darwish and Eng. Hossam Ragheb witness signing the agreement

After signing the agreement

From left to right: Dr. Darwish, Marc Lambert, Hossam Ragheb and Dr. Ahmed Samir

Marc Lambert, Loula Zaklama, Nemine Seif, Mohamed Salah, Taher Ali, Aliaa Fathy