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
Mohamed Salah: Product Management, Entrepreneurship, Digital Marketing, & Local Search 
احصائيات مفيدة جدا
انا كنت عاوزها فعلا
🙂
شكرا جدااا
العفو يا أنس…. أحنا دايماً بننشر أحصائيات يلوبيدجز فى مصر كل سنة و ديه بتوضح الناس مهتمة بأيف منتجات و أية علامات تجارية و أنشطة أكثر من غيرها.
لو عايز أى تفاصيل عن أحصائيات بحث المستهلكين و المشترين فى مصر لا تتردد فى الأتصال بنا
شكراً
Do you have any info on the growth (or decline) of paper directories versus online in Egypt?
Mark, There is no question that online penetration is growing very fast in Egypt specially after the revolution and increased usage of social media tools such as facebook and twitter.
That said, there is no drop on the printed directory industry, it is still growing but much slower than the growth in online Yellow Pages. However, the directory structure itself has changed a lot in the past few years, it became more hip, lighter, smaller, easier to handle and it you hit someone in the face with one of the directories he won’t die anymore!
In my opinion, the lifetime of the printed directories in Egypt has not come yet to an end and i don’t expect this to happen soon either.
Thanks for your commentary, it is interesting to know what is happening in Egypt.
I also suspect the books don’t make good helmets either! (glad to see you have a sense of humour in light of the events). Respect and Peace to the people of Egypt.
That’s reassuring to hear! (that paper directories still have a real purpose in Egypt).
I have been a consultant to several directory production companies in Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Norway. As well as advising on production in the US and Singapore.
Are you directly involved in directory production in Egypt?
Thanks for the nice words Jonathan. You know life goes on with its ups and downs, economy is facing hard times because of tourism and lack of foreign investment at the moment but I trust we will have a great economy one day after we establish democracy and start working harder and smarter than ever.
I’m Egyptian & Proud 🙂
Mark, not really i’m rather involved in the electronic products. You sounded relieved from the fact that the directory is still doing well in Egypt.What’s the situation in North Europe and other parts of the world were you consult?
Probably not “relieved” – more like reassured that paper directories are alive and well in the world. Finland – having invented the cell phone – is without major circulation paper directories. Sweden and Norway are gradually winding down the paper products with Denmark probably following in the next few years. Poland is still doing well with paper products.
My personal opinion is that online directories favour the website owners. The advertisers and the end-user gets the worst deal. Online publishers don’t display every listing in a given category – that would be like publishing their database for their competitors to use. So a selection is filtered and displayed for the end-user. This limits their choice. Advertisers paying more get more frequent appearances in the search results.
In paper products an end-user can see every advert and listing in a given category. They also see both large and small advertisers and those companies who have only subscribed with a listing and no advert.
So, I think there is a place for both online and paper directories – not one or the other.
And, as a consultant, I’m always interested in opportunities to work with companies to improve their efficiency and, therefore, profit. Everyone wins!! 🙂
Interesting to hear these statistics about northern Europe, but i don’t think the same pattern will apply soon to eastern Europe or middle east.
I think that in today’s open online world you can’t hide any listings from the users or just display a selection for them. User experience is not the only reason for this but the main reason is rather SEO, you have to keep everything available to Google and the other search Engines, organic traffic is main stream for all the Yellow Pages and Online directory publishers. You can’t risk that
Mohamed,
Is there a digitized version of your directory available online like http://www.realpageslive.com? If so, what’s the URL?
David Federico
770 552.2000
Hi David, no we don’t have something similar to this…. but it looks pretty neat
Hey Mohamed,
The company that digitizes many publishers’ books is called Dirixon. Mark Thomas mark.thomas@dirxion.com: (636-717-2358–Forwards To Cell) is my contact there. It’s a great way to be able to say to your print advertisers that when you buy your ad in the print yellow pages, it also appears online at no extra cost. We have a Yellow Pages Advertising agency Ad Ventures (www.adventuresinc.net) so I’m always looking for ways to add value to our client’s ad spends. I’m also developing a website that is designed to help people find all the print directories online in the world though a single URL http://www.webiyp.com (Web Internet Yellow Pages .com). The site is under construction now so what you see is really rough. It will be optimized with 200 landing pages of the most used headings, with click-able logos and a list of all publishers with digitized versions of their books in the end. Let me know if decide to digitize your books.
David Federico
770 552.2000