Atlanta, Georgia-based BellSouth’s RealPages.com (www.realpages.com), the Southeast's leading online yellow pages, and the search engine giant Google Inc. (www.google.com), announced on October 28 an agreement whereby RealPages.com will become the first yellow pages publisher authorized to sell advertising through Google AdWords (https://adwords.google.com) to small and medium-sized local businesses.
Under the multi-year agreement, BellSouth (www.bellsouth.net) will include Google AdWords as an integral part of its RealSearch offering, a patent-pending search engine marketing service designed for small and medium-sized local businesses. By aligning with the BellSouth sales force, Google can now reach more small and medium-sized local businesses in the Southeast with Google AdWords. Google AdWords, Google's performance-based search advertising program, enables select RealSearch customers to generate leads across the Google Network, which reaches more than 80 percent of U.S. Internet users through sites such as Google.com, AOL, BellSouth.Net, and EarthLink among others.
Elmer Smith, president of BellSouth Advertising & Publishing, said that helping BellSouth’a advertisers grow their businesses is at the core of The Real Yellow Pages and RealPages.com's success, that he believes that this partnership will allow RealSearch customers to take advantage of the extensive reach of the Google Network, which will aid them in attracting more and more customers, and that the phenomenal growth of local search, combined with BellSouth's one-of-a-kind RealSearch product incorporating Google's AdWords, positions BellSouth as a primary partner for its online advertisers.
Sukhinder Singh, general manager of Google Local and Third Party Sales, said that Google’s relationship with BellSouth enables Google to leverage an established, market-leading sales force to reach small and medium-sized local businesses across the Southeast, and that Google is excited to add a new way to reach prospective advertisers, while continuing to provide users with relevant local information and advertisements.
