[wvenable]

Did you actually try this? I just searched for a Vancouver business, the name of which I'm not exactly sure of, to find the hours. The yellowpages site didn't find the business at all but it was the first result in Google with direct links to their website, a map, and the closing time was listed right in the search results. It turns out I did get the business name slightly wrong.

Ironically, the 4th link on the page was a link to that business on yellowpages.ca -- so they did have a listing but I couldn't find it by seaching there.

Google is the one tool to do everything and it does things more than well enough that sites like yellowpages.ca are pretty irrelevant.

[michael_h]

I've found the business metadata (hours of operation, address, etc) that Google puts into the search results extremely unhelpful. The hours of operation and phone number, in particular, are very rarely correct for me. Most of the time, the address will be correct, but not always (when I search for my doctor's practice, the address is listed as 'Blvd.').

...but even with that, I'm still not going to yellopages.com. I'll just search for it and get it directly from their website.

[Kluny]

This info is usually self-reported by the business. If they don't have someone assigned to the job of making sure Google is up to date with their hours, it often won't happen. My company (a small web host that works with mostly local businesses) has a Google specialist whose job is about 70% keeping our client's metadata up to date with Google.

[kazinator]

> I'll just search for it and get it directly from their website.

Ah, but not all businesses have a website though. Of those that do, not all have a website that is ranked on the first page of a Google result.

Ahead of the real thing are spam pages with junk info, many of which are deliberately designed to look as if they might be the official website.