Sensis lets search engines index Yellow Pages content!

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 10:06

Home IT

Sensis has finally seen the 21st century light, letting search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search and others access “the biggest local business database” in Australia – for the first time.

Although Sensis doesn’t call it the “Yellow Pages” anymore, preferring to go by the shortened name of “Yellow”, its business database was previously only available by searching through the thick Yellow printed book, or by searching through the Yellow website. 

Despite spending lots of time and money on improving the directory search capabilities of the Yellow website in recent times, many people have still complained that, in essence, it sucked at delivering the results you wanted.

Of course there were cases of regular Yellow users that had indeed seen the improvements and had appreciated them, but one of the questions always remained: if Google is so good at searching for and indexing information, why not let Google have access to that data?

And why not let other search engines index it also?

Well, that’s exactly what Sensis has belatedly decided to do, calling it a “strategic move” that lets all the search engines “index the 2 million-plus listings” on the Yellow website “and make them available to people using search engines to find local businesses.”

It also puts Yellow-listed businesses without a website onto the web for the first time, and searchable by Google at that, which Sensis says gives them ?an instant web address where their business details can be found by the millions of potential customers using search engines.”

Sensis are calling it “an evolutionary step” in its “strategy to help Australians find, buy and sell”.

It’s also an opportunity to give Yellow salespeople an extra edge in convincing businesses to renew their Yellow subscription in the face of competition from website designers who’ll create a website for you and get the search engines to index it as they would any other site.

Sensis' General Manager Online Search and Directories, Chris Smith, said "Making our Yellow database searchable by search engines represents another key milestone in our strategy to increase the distribution of our content and the value for our advertisers.

Smith continued: "In much the same way we've made Yellow listings available across print, online, voice, mobile and satellite navigation devices, this initiative takes Yellow a giant step further by taking advantage of the popularity of search engines and using them as another channel through which Yellow listings can be found.”

So, what did Sensis have to do to prepare its content for indexing by the search engines? Continued on page 2.