Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

The growth of Internet Yellow Pages has been modest in comparison to other areas of the Internet, but the space is full of opportunities as no true leader has emerged to dominate the field.

Yahoo (YHOO) still leads the space with a 22 percent market share, but others are nipping at their heels like Idearc Media who is right behind with close to 20 pecent share. And right behind Idearc Media is Yellowpage Network with almost 18 percent share. This is one area where Google (GOOG) is behind a number of other online search companies.

With no clear leader and the top companies which leads people to think that the local market is still relatively immature. Something I definitely agree with. That means it's wide open for competitors to step up into, as there is no branded company in the local space yet.

"There is no true leader in local search," said Stuart McKelvey, CEO of TMP Directional Marketing. "Consumers are making the transition from print to Internet, and the big media properties haven't figured out how to really deliver it yet."

This year the overall growth of the IYP search market was 5 percent, reaching over 800 million local searches in the first quarter of 2007.

While I think this area has a huge amount of opportunity for marketers and providers, it has been much slower to take hold than regular search. One area that may benefit strongly from this is the mobile market, once the business matures and works out some of its problems.

This isn't something to be overly concerned about, but I would be dedicating a small amount of time and resources following and experimenting on some levels in preparation for when it does become ubiquitous. To me it's at a similar place that online video is as far as figuring out ways to monetize it goes.

The difference is local markets have been much slower to go online than national and international markets, which is one of the reasons growth is more moderate.

On the positive side of that moderate growth, it could develop into a much more healthy and viable industry as it's not receiving all the hype and swings that the other markets have been experiencing, as it's growing more under the radar.