Few people realized it, but last month, Verizon Superpages.com celebrated its tenth anniversary.  Here's an article from Multichannel Merchant on how the IYP and local search engine pioneer has evolved over the years, and what they have in store for the future.

Now, Verizon's not alone in the IYP and local search space.  So, what makes Verizon Superpages different? Innovation and thought leadership.

According to the article, "Of course, plenty of other IYPs were making approximately the same decision at the same time about the future of expanded local search—not to mention lots of the first- and second-tier search engines. While local is only part of the ad business at Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves and AOL, and is certainly a small sliver of their general-search focus for consumers, those companies can be aggressive competitors on the technology development front.  For that reason, Chandler says, it’s all the more significant that Superpages.com was able to bring out a pay-per-call ad option before any of its non-directory rivals."