Phone giants buy Yellow Pages site for joint Web directory

12:00 AM CST on Thursday, December 1, 2005

By TERRY MAXON / The Dallas Morning News

Two old-line telephone companies are leveraging the well-known Yellow Pages brand to encourage people to let their fingers do the walking on the Internet.

AT&T Inc., the new name for SBC Communications Inc. after it bought AT&T Corp., and BellSouth Corp. are officially launching their www.yellowpages.com site today, although it has been up and running since Nov. 20.

The yellowpages.com Web site and online directory were owned by a Henderson, Nev., company. BellSouth and SBC bought the properties, created a joint venture and combined yellowpages.com with BellSouth's RealPages.com and SBC's SMARTPages.com.

AT&T and Yellow Pages went their separate ways after AT&T Corp. split off its local telephone companies and other components in 1984.

Matt Crowley, yellowpages.com vice president of marketing, said it is only right that BellSouth and AT&T – both descendants of the original AT&T – should own yellowpages.com.

"AT&T and BellSouth built up that heritage and value associated with the Yellow Pages and I believe are the rightful custodians," Mr. Crowley said.

Although it carries a name familiar for decades, yellowpages.com faces off against numerous competitors, not the least of which is Verizon Communications Inc.'s SuperPages.com. It also competes against sites offering local city searches, shopping search engines and other specialty search sites.

At stake is a lot of advertising dollars – $2.86 billion in revenue from both paper and online directories for SBC/AT&T through the first nine months of the year. Verizon says its directory arm has annual revenue of $3.6 billion.

Yellowpages.com has added tools and information to lure visitors to its site, including consumer guides for such services as finances, autos and business, local city information for weather, movie listings, traffic conditions and more.

Mr. Crowley said that's in addition to the site's basic purpose, to help consumers find the products and services they need.

SuperPages.com has offered a steady list of improvements to its site as well, adding user reviews, comparison shopping, online coupons and other services in recent months.

E-mail tmaxon@dallasnews.com