So why was www.highdesertyellowpages.com created and what is our mission? Well some time ago I did an online search for a plumber on one of the larger online yellow page directories and just got very frustrated with the results.
I would go to Google, type in the name of this large directory and when I typed in "plumbers, Victorville ca" the page that came up was full of 909 area code phone numbers.
Well shoot man! I don't want a 909 area code plumber. I had a slab leak and wanted a local guy. So after this happening over and over with the different searches I would do, I finally decided to create my own little online phone directory that I could refer to for myself.
This was never intended to be a public use directory but when I uploaded my files I found that I started getting traffic. Traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and the others. I started getting traffic from all over the High Desert and sometimes from other countries!
Our Philosophy
& What We Believe
So at this point I decide that I should let it go and try to improve the look and increase the categories. I knew that these larger directories really don't know as much about the High Desert as they would have us think and I never got the sense they really even cared. All they want is our money and they get this by feeding us some bs lines about how they drive business through their online directories.
They don't understand that we in the High Desert are kind of like an island unto ourselves. Even though we are considered San Bernardino, we really are not part of the San Bernardino we know down the hill.
So what do these companies do? They let advertisers from down the hill show up at the top of the search results in the High Desert.
And why does this happen? MONEY! Of Course. What happens is when these 909 businesses pay to advertise on these websites, the website company sets it up to where the company will get visibility from anyone in the entire county when someone does a search for their type of business. Since we are part of the county of San Bernarino, we see the search results with all the advertisers in San Bernardino.
Its a stupid way to run a website but that's what they do.
What I wanted was a simple and easy way to find local phone numbers and now I see that others wanted the same thing. Our traffic is exploding and has far exceeded my expectations! True that this may not be the most technical or aesthetically pleasing site but were trying. Sorry but this is a low budget situation!
As long as it makes it easy to find local business then we feel our goal is being accomplished and things should only get better!
You will see that there are very few if any out of the area phone numbers and that's the way we like it.
Custom Search
Another thing that really bothers me about these larger online directories is that they are still trying to charge ridiculous amounts of money while making business owners sign the long term contracts that they made people sign when they did phone book advertising. This is wrong and should not be tolerated! Their phone book usage is dying and now they are trying to stay afloat by transitioning to online yellow pages but the cost to operate has dropped dramatically. Think about it,,,,, they still print the phone books that people are using less and less and the internet HAS NO PAPER, PRINTING OR DISTRIBUTION COSTS! They most likely are using template services to build your websites so they arent paying high priced code writers. The same template service you could use yourself , they are using. How cheesy! But they dont dare tell you that. They charge huge dollars for something that should really only cost you no more then 30 or 40 dollars a month. (Unless you do Google type search engine marketing.)
And in the High Desert I can tell you they could never drive the results they say they can simply becuase our population once again is so much smaller compared to down the hill and Los Angeles.
Yet they have the edacity to charge the same amount for your online advertising as they charge for the bigger cities and in fact in many cases they charge more! They must really think were stupid! Lets do what we can to show these big companies they can't push us around any longer.
Find more helpful business info and tips on www.highdesertyellowpages.com.
