Here’s an interesting story from our Yellow Pages friends up north: Yellow Pages Group, a leading Canadian local commercial search provider, announced this week that it has purchased Restaurantica.com, a popular restaurant and dining online community.
The move is the latest in a growing trend among Yellow Pages companies towards developing or acquiring new online and mobile tools as a means of generating new revenues.
Yellow Pages Group, which already runs the YellowPages.ca online search engine, will benefit from the addition of a restaurant-related site that hosts user reviews, which are becoming increasingly popular among users.
According to the company, 80% of dining decisions are significantly influenced by user recommendations and reviews. The site also comes with more than 50,000 restaurant customers, who will in turn become Yellow Pages customers.
Restaurantica currently lists around 400,000 restaurants, bars and cafes, with more than 200,000 user-generated reviews, according to the announcement press release. Additionally, the site, which has its own iPhone app, attracts more than 540,000 visits and 1.7 million page views per month.
New web verticals such as Restuarantica and EveryCarListed.com, a SuperMedia site dedicated to car sales, represent Yellow Pages’ expanding influence in the digital space – and a sign of more to come.