2010 June 24th

WhitePages Takes on Google and Bing to Help People Easily Find Local Businesses

Improved WhitePages Business Search includes more than 15 million business listings and store locator for 1 million local branches of popular national business chains

Seattle, WA – June 24, 2010 – WhitePages (www.whitepages.com), the largest and most trusted online directory, today unveiled a new version of WhitePages Business Search. The new offering includes contact information for more than 15 million local U.S. businesses and the WhitePages Store Locator for one-click access to neighborhood contact information for over 1 million local branches of popular national business chains. WhitePages Business Search is focused on eliminating the headaches of scrolling through information such as search engine reviews, videos, coupons, and product offerings for those who simply want practical contact information-- addresses, phone numbers, maps and directions as well as business hours and nearby businesses.

“The frustrating days of scrolling through search engine results, clumsy store locators, or phone books for simple local business contact information officially comes to an end today with the launch of WhitePages Business Search, ” said Jason Milstead, director of WhitePages Business Search. “Web users who want to connect with websites should use Google or Bing. But if they simply want practical, easy to find contact information to connect with a local branch of a business chain, or a doctor or dentist, WhitePages Business Search is the best resource.”

For example, if someone was using Google to look up contact information for Target in the Seattle area, more than 6,000 results will be returned. Of those 6,000 results, only four of the first ten results are for an actual Target store -- with Target Training, Trend Target and Target Darts appearing in the results. With the new WhitePages Store Locator, relevant and accurate contact information for 16 specific neighborhood Target stores in Seattle appear with the most relevant contact information being on top.

Unlike traditional search engines, WhitePages has built its extensive back-end database of business listings from the ground up to not only capture the most accurate local information, but to surface it in a way that makes it easy for consumers to locate and connect with businesses all in one place. The latest version of WhitePages Business Search further simplifies this process for consumers by offering the following new capabilities:

Quickly find over 1 million locations in WhitePages Store Locator. With practical neighborhood contact information for more than 2,500 of the most popular national business chains searched on the Web, and with over 1 million locations listed, the new WhitePages Store Locator is designed to make it easier for people to find addresses, phone numbers, business hours, and maps and directions. In addition, the information is in one easily searchable map complete with company logos and map pins so that consumers can clearly find store locations in their local areas.

Comprehensive database and improved search experience. With the launch, WhitePages now has contact information for 15 million businesses across the US and also offers a new interface that makes it cleaner, faster, and more intuitive for people to easily find local businesses, as well as refine or expand their search based on popular business categories. For example, if someone were working on a significant home renovation, instead of digging around the Web to find local business information, they could use WhitePages as a single resource to quickly track down addresses, phone numbers, business hours, maps, and directions for specialty home retailers like Target, Home Depot, and Lowe’s. Once they locate the stores they are looking for, WhitePages Business Search makes running the actual errand that much easier by providing maps and directions to the location in addition to the ability to refine or expand their search based on nearby businesses or popular business categories, all accessible without ever leaving the site.

Share business listings with friends, family, and colleagues. WhitePages Business Search also includes the ability to email and text listings for free as well as to save contact information to Outlook. For example, without leaving the site, re-typing information or copying and pasting, people can quickly send complete business listings to cell phones and email addresses or simply save the file to their computer so they never have to look it up again. WhitePages Business Search is also one of the first local search engines to allow people to share their favorite businesses via Facebook ‘like’ and Twitter.

“Every day WhitePages seeks new ways to make it easy for consumers to look up contact information for people and businesses online without surfing non-authoritative sites or dialing 411,” said Alex Algard, founder and CEO of WhitePages. “The new WhitePages Business Search takes us one step closer to helping everyone quickly and efficiently connect with both people and local businesses.”

About WhitePages

As the largest and most trusted online people and business directory, WhitePages offers a suite of free mobile and Internet services that makes it easy for people to find and immediately connect with anyone in the U.S. Only WhitePages offers one-click access to more than 200 million adults and powers more than 2 billion searches on over 1,500 partner sites including MSN, Ask.com, SuperPages.com and the United States Postal Service. For more information, please visit www.whitepages.com or check out the WhitePages blog at blog.whitepages.com.

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