Yellow Pages in New Zealand is now just Yellow. They have recently relaunched their entire online offering.

To help you use their new search engine they have put together a handy online tutorial to give you step by step instructions.

It is very similar to the one Google had to explain to you how to use their search engine…..hold on a minute, I don’t think Google ever needed an interactive tutorial on how to use Google. This could be an issue Yellow, you have fundamentally missed what makes a good search engine from both a consumer and a business perspective:

1. You know how to use it instinctively.
2. Most of the time you find what you are looking for straight away.
3. You can buy advertising simply and easily online.

As my colleague Joel found out recently spending money as an advertiser is remarkably difficult for some reason?

Whilst there is no denying that Yellow is a substantial and long overdue enhancement of the previous offering, I can’t see why they didn’t prioritise using AJAX and actually getting the data right. I tried searching for “Sports Shoes” in “Auckland” and got Berton Automotive Ltd, an automotive repair shop, in my top 10 search results. They don’t sell shoes, sports or otherwise. Let’s try “Running Shoes” instead. One company in the biggest city in New Zealand that sell sports shoes apparently. Okay.

I did see that they had bought banner space on YouTube, which is quite a clever media buy. I have to say though, the idea of advertising a search engine is also fundamentally an issue. Ask.com is everywhere in the US at the moment and it will be very interesting to see if they can make any in roads at despite a seemingly huge advertising budget.