Yell Aims to Restructure Local Search to Compete Against Google
Yell has announced that it is to restructure its website to focus on local search in a bid to combat services like Google and GrouponYellow Pages. The company’s revenues have been falling as the internet has become more ubiquitous and the print industry has started to fall.
The company is also looking to avoid a potential breach of banking covenants with the move, which comes after the company’s shares dropped by 10% to less than 9p per share. This is the lowest since the company was listed on the stock exchange in July 2003.
Yell chief executive Michael Pocock, a former executive at Cisco, has outlined the key strategy that the company will follow in this process.
He says “Is it too late? No way. There is a lot of opportunity for us to keep the position we have enjoyed for years in print. We have to become relevant in digital media. We are moving, we just have to have a more robust, well thought through strategic plan.”
Pocock said Google, which dominates the online classified ads market, doesn’t have “half of what we have” in the local search market. “Look at Groupon, Google, Yahoo … none of them have outside sales forces.”
