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The Industry
"Five years ago the challenge was to create the infrastructure. Two years ago the challenge was to build the websites. Today, the challenge is to put consumers and businesses in touch with the merchants and services they want to find"
- Steve Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer of Magis Information Technology, September 1999
Small businesses are rapidly adapting to the Internet with penetration projected to deepen to 80% by the year 2003. As businesses embrace the Internet it becomes increasingly arduous to find individual businesses - thus, the need for the Magis search engine as an efficient solution to patrons searching for a local business to transact with.
Searching for a business through the conventional print version of the Yellow Pages with its maze of cross-references and confusing categorizations can be a frustrating experience. While searching the online version of the Yellow Pages should be far more efficient, it remains less than ideal currently as existing online search engines do not produce the best results due to errors, misspellings and inadequate software. For instance, searching for ABC Computers when it is registered in the Yellow Pages, as ABC Information Technologies will yield no result whatsoever.
Advertisements in the Yellow Pages represent an estimated US$14 billion industry in the United States alone. In Canada, estimated advertising in Yellow Pages amounts to $1.2 billion annually. While the print version of the Yellow Pages is here to stay, the shift to electronic distribution is well underway. The Yellow Pages Publishers Association (YPPA) reports that the print version of their members' Yellow Pages decreases by 3% per year, and that this loss is shifting to on-line directories.