The sites buy their listings from the Bells, but the Bell books all have 3 (three) listings. Most numbers I want to look up are in the Business Listings section.
Why, since the third grouping is in all the major city phone books, don’t the web sites offer it?
Well, http://www.555-1212.com/ has both residential and business search options under its white pages heading.
[sub]Soupy - [/sub]
Your’re right, none of them seem to to have the basic information of a regular phone listing, which is strange, since they must strart with exactly that identical phone co. info.
I tried bibliophage’s number and it wouldn’t find the Home Depot one mile from me. I looked under my city name, and it said nope. It’s in the unencorporated county zone, I guess.
Yahoo found it only with a yellow pages “wide area” search, but turned up 40 other stores first, with names like Pet Depot, Tool Depot, and Music Depot.
I’ve collected every “phone book” I find, because. I just tried the same test on AnyWho, Yahoo, 411, infoUSA, Softseek, and Switchboard. None of those I’ve used can give me what the regular paper phone book does. A regular book doesn’t even need the exact suburb, just the major city in the areacode.
It’s like none of the programmers have ever used a regular book.
I’ve always had fantastic luck with US West’s DEX. Now, with Qwest in the picture, it’s a touch different, but still good.
Try here.
They also are missing the OTHER sections so common to phone books.
They have no government Blue Pages. This is the key thing I want on-line, because I often deal with governments outside my area code, but still close by, for permits, etc.
There is no good way to look these up without a trip to the library. (And regular human 411 operators are useless, because department names change count-to-county).
Also, since they are renting the data anyway, they should let you at the index, where it will tell you “towing” must be searched for under “road service”, and “barbers” under “hair care professionals”, or whatever.
The sorted area code list should be right there too, to find out if a number is in the state or in Guam before you call it. I know that’s elsewhere on the web, so why not right in the phone packages?