The Yahoo! Buzz Index (buzz.yahoo.com) has some interesting information this week about the yellow pages and Local Search. Apparently, more searches for the term "yellow pages" are performed during the week than on weekends. I'm assuming that's mainly due to the fact that people have internet access readily available at work, and they can easily look something up at their desk at work.

The Yahoo! Buzz Index folks also looked at what people look for when they search at the Yahoo! Yellow Page, and it turns out that they're looking for information about where to go shopping (is it a surprise that two thirds of the yellow pages searches are done by women?). According to Yahoo!, major chain stores dominate the top search queries in their Yahoo! Yellow Pages. Among the top search queries are Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Walgreens, Target, Pizza Hut, Best Buy, Post Office, Bank of America, and Sears. Restaurants, Florists, and Hotels are also included in the top searches.

According to the Google Zeitgeist, the top yellow pages queries at Yahoo! are similar to the top local search queries at Google. According to Google, the popular retail chains for 2004 include the following:

1. walmart
2. home depot
3. best buy
4. costco
5. walgreens
6. barnes & noble
7. blockbuster video
8. office depot
9. kinko's
10. circuit city

According to the Alexa Rankings (www.alexa.com), the top 5 Yellow Pages destinations are:

1. InfoSpace - www.infospace.com
2. SuperPages.com - www.superpages.com
3. WhitePages.com - www.whitepages.com
4. Switchboard - www.switchboard.com
5. SmartPages.com - www.smartpages.com

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