Someone has been following in the giant’s foot steps. Yell.com, the UK equivalent of Yellow Pages, recently launched netReach, which is quite similar to Google AdSense. Their advertising syndication product is aimed at online media owners and Yell.coms advertiser base.

The services combines Yell.coms content with filtering techniques, and is designed to prevent inappropriate adverts being served to partner websites. Yell.com netReach can deliver geographically and contextually relevant advertising results onto third party websites, and offers network partners a level of control not available from generalist search engines.

In addition, netReachs network partners can choose which business classifications appear on their websites, eliminating competitive issues. The Manchester Evening News is among half a dozen network partners including Multimap and Genie Knows who successfully trialled Yell.com netReach between November 2007 and January this year.

These three businesses are the first to join the Yell.com netReach network, with more companies set to follow in the next few months. Ad syndication programmes also provide a revenue stream, and Yell.com netReach remunerates partners on a pay per-click basis. Trial sites undertook competitive analysis examining revenue generation and click-through rates and Yell.com performed well against competitors.

NetReach was launched last month as an annual fee add-on for existing Yell.com advertisers, while new customers can create an advertising package including the product. The netReach network aims to give advertisers extended reach across a network relevant sites to deliver proven value and strong leads.

Ian Bowen-Morris, head of ad syndication at Yell.com, said: Given the growing trend from web users to filter out or turn off from sites serving irrelevant content, leading web publishers are keen to find a trusted solution for syndicated advertising. As yell.com is trusted by thousands of people every day to find business details and can offer a high level of content control to partners, we believe we can really add value to a wide range of online media owners.

It seems inevitable that Yell.com would go down this road to try to compete with Google, but at the end of the day, they still have a strong brand and established customer base to work with.