Consider the rotary phone. It had a familiar, sturdy design. It entered service in 1919, with a demise beginning in the 1970s. Its nemesis was touch tone dialing provided by a keypad instead of a dial. Its primary legacy is that phone numbers are still “dialed”.

Now consider the phone book. Official versions date back to the 19th Century. Printed phone books, though still widely used, are now in decline. This trend has accelerated over the past few years, including a key moment in 2007 when, according to Google Trends, the path of descent for “yellow pages” was crossed by an ascending nemesis: Google Maps. Business listings in search engine results as well as improvements in local search have effectively pushed the printed phone book aside, its popularity and usage dropping like a brick.

What does this all mean? Online local business listings are becoming the de facto standard. Rather than taking time to find the cumbersome phone book, individuals will jump on Google or Bing and perform a local search on their smartphone. Businesses that focus on building an effective local listing will move to the forefront and have a prominent position in the search engine results pages.

As for the latest issue of the phone book, it’ll look just fine tucked underneath that old rotary phone.