Yell’s director of product marketing Matthew Bottomley says: “It means that as well as finding local businesses on Yell.com, our users can at the same time also obtain a wealth of information, consumer advice and ideas around what these businesses do.” In other words, Yell hopes that the more interesting content they can offer, the more people will be inspired to buy the services of their classified listing clients.

The Yell search box is ever-present at the top of all these pages, but isn’t there a risk that—unless there is a bigger, more aggressive move to get people searching for small, local businesses—these microsites could grow their audience without significantly growing Yell’s revenue?

—- Elsewhere, while a classified business is investing in content, newspaper businesses continue to get into the classified ad sector. The latest is Archant which has launched Localquotes24.co.uk, a free service to find out prices of local businesses and tradesmen. Archant says the site—a customised white label label version of Quotatis—has more than 10,000 businesses registered. More from Eveningnews24.co.uk.

Earlier this year Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) launched the business directory Localmole.co.uk.