Trade magazine Adweek recently reported that the competition in the Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) arena is heating up. This growing demand for more local search advertising options has triggered AT&T’s Yellowpages.com and other leading Web publishers to beef up their respective sites with new offerings, improved design, and better user experience.)

SuperPages.com announced a new list of site enhancements which include City-Specific Skylines, a Two-field Search Box, Highly Rated Businesses (which allows users to view highly rated businesses in a given city based on the most recent search), and More Local Content (which delivers more localized content to users when they return to Superpages.com, such as WiFi locations, traffic, and weather)

SuperPages has also added Neighborhood Refinement, Streamlined Search Bar, Enhanced Narrow & Refine, Enhanced Maps (a feature that shows search results plotted on the map), and Defined Look (a cleaner business listing format to enable users to find what they need faster) to its results page.

YP Corp. and LiveDeal.com are also set to unveil an integrated yellow pages and classifieds solution. As one of the leading providers of local Internet Yellow Pages and classifieds, YP Corp. will begin offering a Yellow Pages Premium Store Program for yellow page advertisers on its LiveDeal.com site. (This is the first co-developed product between YP Corp. and LiveDeal.com since YP Corp acquired the LiveDeal online-classifieds site.)

The new solution virtually eliminates the traditional separation of classifieds and yellow page advertising, and delivers a highly competitive value to small and medium business by bundling two offline media solutions into a single lower cost advertising package, reports Minic Rivera in 901am.com.)

With this new offering, businesses can get premium placement on both LiveDeal.com and on YP Corp.’s online yellow pages for a monthly fee of $39.95 a month for most categories. Yellow Pages Premium Store owners can also have their listings personalized with a company logo and include contact information such as business hours, phone numbers, maps, and link to their web site.)

AT&T;s YellowPages.com which was named the fastest growing Internet yellow pages site by comScore has began testing its new Beta site which features a new design and better usability. These upgrades include improved refinement and navigation, such as mapping and personalization features that are much simpler to use.)

AT&T’s directory/yellow pages division increasingly sees itself as a brand with a multi-platform mission, including print, Internet and mobile, writes Greg Sterling in localmobilesearch.net. Regarding the latter, it now is offering text-based mobile search and WAP search. There are also plans for yellow pages on IPTV and potentially tighter integration with 1-800-YellowPages, AT&T’s ad-supported free directory assistance offering.