SEARCH CLINIC

Yell’s long running chief executive and finance director both announced their departure after it reported a 26 per cent fall in annual underlying earnings.

Yell, the publisher of Yellow Pages, has been battling fierce competition from advertising on websites such as Google and eBay as well as the effects of the recession. It bought a directories group in Spain just before that country’s economy collapsed. Late last year it raised £559 million in a share issue to bring down some of its debt.

Dr Search has been helping a number of clients who were Yell and Yellow Pages advertisers improve thier marketing investments by switching their budgets into search engine optimisation.

The results can be remarkable.

Andy Turvey stopped his four figure yellow pages budget and let me optimise his main website instead.

The result? “I’m now getting all of my new business from my website now being found at the top of the search engines ahead of millions of my competitors”.

Do you fancy some of that for your business? If so, please just contact the Search Clinic.

Yell’s annual results showed that the company made a profit of £46.8 million against losses last year of £1.03 billion. Sales dropped by 11.5 per cent to £2.1 billion, though, which left left underlying earnings down 26 per cent at £620 million.

The company predicted that revenues would fall by a further 11 per cent in the three months to the end of June and then would continue to drop at about 15 per cent until the end of September.

Net debt had been cut from £4.2 billion at the end of March last year to £3.1 billion to the end of March this year.