YELLOW TREASURE. Review on Are Yellow Pages Useful

Yellow Pages

I first came to know of yellow pages during my first stay in the United States. It is taken for granted here that everybody is in the know of yellow pages. But for the first timer it is a discovery. I guess they are called yellow pages because the colour of the paper is yellow. Anything on earth or almost anything, you can find listed in these pages. Essentially these pages serve businesses and services which in turn helps those who require merchandise or service of any type. The listing is in alphabetical order first of the group of merchandise/service and then in the group again in the alphabetical order of names. I remember I wanted to buy a camera before my return. So I turned to yellow pages and the section on Camera. Next I wrote down the telephone numbers of the vendors and enquired the prices of cameras. This helps you to choose what you want and either you can order for being sent to you or you can go and buy. Many of the vendors are only mail order houses. In the yellow pages you can get addresses of restaurants, repair people, various merchandise, services, almost anything which you may suddenly want to know about.

Beginning

The advent of yellow pages was perhaps in Telephone Directories. To easily distinguish from the pages of telephone number entries, the business and services pages were made yellow. These entries are essentially advertisements by those who are listed to attract business. They pay for the insertions to the publishers of the directories. There are plain advertisements too. Also the insertions are not uniform but some have bold or different styling to attract attention. But all said and done they provide a very useful handy tool of a search engine.

Yellow pages in India

In India too some decades back there were a few yellow coloured pages at the back of the telephone directory.  In fact there were blue pages too. Government telephone numbers were listed in the blue pages. With formation of Mahanagar telephone Nagar Nigam(MTNL) the telephone services started improving and the single directory became a multivolume listing. MTNL also started getting it printed by private parties. The yellow pages also disappeared. Perhaps MTNL. Printer could not decide on the terms of profits. To cut the story short in the Metros of India yellow pages directory is published by the TATA PRESS. They distribute it free to telephone subscribers. A new directory is published perhaps every year or at most every two years, I am not sure. The work of distribution is given to some persons and they collect the old yellow pages in exchange of the latest one.

The yellow page directory has other very useful information. There is an index to the alphabetical listing. Right in the beginning there are entries of emergency services like hospitals, fire stations all over the city, police stations of different areas; Air services both domestic and International, city and Airport counters, train timings-arrival and departure, postal services, embassies and consulates, public libraries, cinema halls and theaters, and so on. In short it is a very useful compendium of the services one may require at one time or the other. In addition to vendors there are also addresses of many agencies, like charitable trusts, educational trusts, religious trusts and similar other bodies. Some of these may not have to pay for getting themselves listed in the yellow page book. I have found yellow pages to be very useful and handy. In Mumbai the Times of India has a service to provide information and telephone numbers of almost all such agencies and much more. I have got from them useful contact numbers many times.  They advertise their tel. no. in the newspaper.

The computer(Web sites) has added to the search engine but still the importance and utility of yellow pages cannot be denied.