Looking up business addresses and numbers used to be easy. The only references there were, after all, were the white and yellow pages, and they were more than enough. You could look up the yellow page heading for any business in your area, call them up, and find out what you needed to know. It was simple, and it didn't occur to anyone that there was any other way to do it.
People are always looking for new, innovative ways to do things, but sometimes the simple solutions are the best. You see, nowadays people put up websites for almost any kind of business. Every time I want to try out a new restaurant, I usually look at the website first. I find an Internet Yellow Page site, look for links, and get to it. Unfortunately, a lot of restaurants don't put up their web pages. Other ones don't update them often enough and contain inaccurate information.
I did not even realize that this was a problem until I was looking for an Indian restaurant the other day. All the sites that I could find on the yellow page were for places that I had already tried, places that weren't any good. It hadn't even occurred to me to look in a business yellow page book. What I didn't realize was that they contain far more headings then the web does. If you are willing to look up a business Yellow Pages site and actually give a restaurant a call, you can find dozens more in your area. For some reason, Internet Web directories are still not very complete. I do not know why this is, but it doesn't seem to be getting any better.
When you are looking for a white page listing, the situation is even worse. Unless a restaurant is willing to update its own information, it will be very difficult to find anything about it on the web. Don't get me wrong – Internet restaurant reviews are a great source of information, but they aren't enough. Sure, you can get directions online, hear reviews from people who had been to restaurants, and even find out the schedule, all without picking up a phone. Nevertheless, sometimes you get a much more accurate impression by simply calling. Who says that the Internet makes everything easier? Newer isn't always better, as I recently discovered. The place I ended up going to for Indian food was not listed, and it was the best I had tasted.
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