Local search engine optimization (SEO) consultant Andrew Shotland has just posted his list of top Internet Yellow Pages sites according to their SEO efforts.

He came up with the list by searching Google with his personalization turned off, and found 20 of the top yellow pages headings in the top U.S. cities. He searched by city and category, scoring them in reverse order, giving ten points to number one, nine points to number two, and so forth. He then added up the points and averaged them across all the queries for all the cities. The IYP with the most points was crowned American IYP SEO Idol of 2009. Directory publishers would do well to study the top few, to improve their own optimization.

Here is his list:

1.Superpages
2.Citysearch
3.Yelp
4.Yahoo Local
5.InsiderPages
6.YellowPages.com
7.BizJournals
8.AreaConnect
9.MagicYellow
10.Switchboard
11.MerchantCircle
12.GetFave
13.Yellowbot
14.Yellowpages.Lycos.com
15.Kudzu
16.Discoverourtown
17.Loqal.com
18.Local.Ingenio.com
19.YellowUSA.com
20.IAF.net

Scores dropped significantly after the first six, Shotland said.