The Yellow Pages are definitely not dead in Egypt and the same goes for Portugal, apparently. According to Armando Alves of the A Source of Inspiration blog (www.asourceofinspiration.com), they better not be.

Craigslist has just opened their Portuguese version and Google is starting to take local search and location based services more seriously in Portugal.

PAI (Portuguese Internet Yellow Pages) visit www.yellowpages.pai.pt released a new set of features that are so Web 2.0 that they even have round corners and gradients. Here’s what you can do with PAI at the moment, according to Alves:

1. Comments
Now users can leave their ratings and comments, supposedly to improve the service quality. I wonder how long will it take until spammers and ruthless SEOs start flooding the system.

2. Maps
Nice one. Not Google maps, but at least they know the local market, so a tailored experience might be enough to convince portuguese users. The service is provided by Local Matters.

3. Search Widget
You can take the search service and embed it in your site as a widget. Unlike Google custom search, no revenue is distributed to publishers.

Things are definitely heating up with this European IYP version, and after Web 1.5, it seems that some Portuguese services are entering the 2.0 bandgwagon. Better late than never, I suppose.