Replace Your Phone Book with Yahoo!

Replace Your Phone Book with Yahoo!

Throw out the giant book of numbers, and find everything from business information to personal phone numbers by searching at Yahoo!.

In the days before the Web, the local telephone directory was probably the most used book in the house. Getting in touch with friends, finding a place for dinner, and reaching local government agencies was accomplished by flipping through the pages of your phone book. Even the maps printed in the book could help you locate hard-to-find addresses.

Now, every home that has an Internet connection can get the same local information with Yahoo!. And with Yahoo!, you not only have access to local listings and business, but you are also able to browse virtually every phone book from every city across the United States.

Finding Businesses

Finding a business address and phone number on Yahoo! is similar to finding the information in a traditional phone book. Say you want to get a haircut in Sebastopol, California. You'd find a local directory, flip through the Yellow Pages until you find the Barbers categoryor maybe Salon, Hairdresser, or Hair Stylistand look through the listings.

On the Web, you can browse to http://local.yahoo.com and type in barbers and a locationin this case, 1005 Gravenstein Hwy N Sebastopol, CA. Yahoo! will come back with a list of phone numbers and addresses, as shown in Figure.

Yahoo! Local results for "barbers" near a Sebastopol, California, address

The listing of phone numbers and addresses is where the similarity with the phone book ends. In addition to the standard listings, Yahoo! offers many improvements that the phone book can't compete with.

Mapping and directions.

Depending on how specific your initial query is, Yahoo! can know something about you the phone book could never know: your exact location. Then along with the phone and address, Yahoo! provides a distance to your location. And if you provide an exact address with your querysay, 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CAYahoo! can sort the entries by how far away they are, giving you a good guess at how long it would take you to get there.

This knowledge of geography also lets Yahoo! show the results of any search on a map. Click the View Results on Map button at the top of any search results page to see each entry in relation to your current location and in relation to the other entries, as shown with the barbershops in Figure.

Yahoo! Local results for barbershops in Sebastopol, California, plotted on a map

The star in the center of the map represents your current location, and each numbered square is an entry from the results page. You can click any of the squares or the titles on the right side of the page to see more information about that particular business.

Yahoo! can also give you detailed directions to any business in the results. Click Drive To next to any entry on the results page, and you'll be asked to verify the start address and destination. From here, click Get Directions to display a map like the one shown in Figure, with a highlighted route and detailed information about where to turn along the way.

Yahoo! Local directions to a barbershop in Sebastopol, California

From here, you have the option to print the directions so you can take them with you, email them to someone else, or send them to your cell phone.

Sending to cell phone.

Where a pencil and paper might have once been used to jot down an address from the phone book, you can now use the multi million dollar wireless networks all around us to send detailed information from Yahoo! Local to a mobile device. When you click "Send to Phone" next to any entry on a Yahoo! Local search results page, you'll see a form into which you can type a cell phone number. You can also check the "Add link to map and driving directions" option. When you click Send, Yahoo! sends an SMS (Short Message Service) message to the number. SMS is a protocol cell phones use to send and receive text messages.

The SMS message will contain the name, address, and phone number of the business. Many phones let users highlight the number so they can simply click a button to call the business. Optionally, the SMS message can include a link to a map or driving directions to the business. As with phone numbers, many phones allow you to highlight the link and bring up a smaller version of the map you'd see on the Yahoo! web site.

Ratings.

Another insight the standard phone book can't provide is how other users of the phone book feel about a particular business. Yahoo! lets any user rate any business in its listing on a scale from one to five stars. If you feel like you need to voice more than a rating, you can also add a review of the business. You can browse ratings and reviews for any business by clicking the business name in the search results. The business detail page contains the average rating by Yahoo! users and links to any reviews that have been added.

Finding People

Yahoo! provides a service called Yahoo! People Search (http://people.yahoo.com) for finding residential phone numbers. You can search for phone numbers by name and city, or for email addresses by name. The difference between the Yahoo! People Search and your local phone book is scale: you can use Yahoo! to search across the United States. Try searching for just your last name, leaving the city blank and Entire USA (the default) selected for the state. The list might include some long-lost relatives.

In addition to the name, address, and telephone number, each entry includes shortcuts to add the address to your Yahoo! Address Book or show the address on a map.

Look carefully on results pages for boxes or columns labeled ADVERTISEMENT or Sponsored Results. Even though you might see what look like official Yahoo! links, be aware that any site within one of these boxes or columns will take you to another domain that Yahoo! doesn't control.

If you find your own information listed in Yahoo! People Search and you'd rather not be included, you can request to be removed. To remove your email address, go to http://people.yahoo.com/py/psEmailSupp.py and enter your name and email address. Yahoo! will remove the listing within five days. To remove your address and phone listing, go to http://people.yahoo.com/py/psPhoneSupp.py and enter your information.

Keep in mind that filling out these forms removes your information only from the Yahoo! People Search database; you'll need to contact your phone company and any other services to keep your information out of other directories. The data for the Yahoo! People Search is supplied by a company called Acxiom, and you might want to read their privacy policy and opt-out provisions at http://www.acxiom.com/default.aspx?ID=1671&DisplayID=18.

While you won't be able to use Yahoo! Local or Yahoo! People Search as a booster seat for your toddler, the added features and convenience will let you finally say goodbye to your old phone book.