Breaking Down the Benefits of Online Directories – Paid and Unpaid

by cj Advertising | March 5, 2012

We have been asked several times by clients what the value is, if any, of online directories such as Findlaw, Lawyers.com, etc. But last week when Barbara Bryant asked a specific question about an opportunity with which they were presented, it prompted me to look at the related data in an equally specific way that eventually helped the Bryants to come to a decision quickly and conclusively.

As a result, we decided to go ahead and put all of the collective information out there in an effort to help our clients make the most informed decisions when they are similarly approached with such opportunities.

The below table shows five online directories/lawyer aggregate sites, the number of times they appear as a top five referral to any cj client site, the number of visits generated by those referrals, and the overall percentage of traffic those resultant referral visits represent as a proportion of all traffic to those same sites.

I hope you find this useful. Please give credit to Barbara Bryant for asking a good question, and please do the same for us and send us your questions so that we can continue to build the blog as a go-to resource for as many of your questions as possible.

Referral Site Number of times site/directory appears   as top 5 referral source to a cj client site Visits Total Traffic % of Traffic
FindLaw
TOTAL 3 360 44740 0.8%
lawyers.com
TOTAL 6 1462 117497 1.2%
Martindale Hubbel
TOTAL 3 212 46167 .5%
Lawinfo.com
TOTAL 2 119 22669 .5%
Yellowbook, yellowpages, superpages, etc.
TOTAL 19 3038 293352  1.0%