Yahoo local visibility opinions/yext

[BedeFahey]

The third of the "Big three" upstream providers that you need to look out for is InfoGroup. Between them, those three push to a lot of different places.

I also consider Citysearch and Superpages to be fairly critical in a semi-upstream kind of way, as between them they feed to a fairly large number of platforms. There's also a suspicion of some kind of stronger relationship between them and Google Local -- this speculation comes from my own experience of how quickly an incorrect listing or reviews show up in Google from these two platforms. I think it's also mentioned in the local search ecosystem outline put together by David Mihm. I'd highly suggest looking that diagram over, because it's a great way to get your head around the relationships. The most recent version I know of is here.

Travis and Miriam, I will definitely follow up on the local visibility thing and report back. Yahoo! is currently pulling together the local data from my own company, which serves as my guinea pig. I also have a client in the middle of an address change, so there's reason for me to give it a shot.

Reading up on it, I kind of suspect (but am not sure) it's going to be more of a UBL type of service offering than a Yext one (e.g. it submits, rather than having an active connection). I'm incredibly leery of these services, as we've seen some absolute disasters come out of UBL when information is entered in a slightly different way.

In terms of streamlining things, Travis, you're struggling with something that I've been trying to systematize more efficiently in our business for the past few months. We generally use a plain old spreadsheet to keep tabs on everything. It works, but it's not the most amazing solution. The issue that we face is that clients in competitive local search niches that need a wide range of citations. When you get to a certain number, it's quite rough to  keep it all together, and maintain forward movement.

Here's our experiences with three different services (so far) that are all meant to help the citation building process:

Places Scout

Provided a massive amount of data and a huge list of citations, but very little in the way of managing (e.g. tracking) these. I couldn't figure out a way to filter out what we had already got, so we ended up doing a lot of double work going back and checking them against our list, or going to the site they recommended to check that. There's a massive depth of info within the tool (beyond citations) but it feels clunky, and the reports it outputs are not of a quality I'm comfortable showing clients. If you've got the time to fix reports (or don't need pretty ones) it could be worth it. It's $197/year, so not overly pricey.

Whitespark

Much better interface, in my opinion, and probably the most commonly used tool to track down citations. This has been our go-to tool for the better part of 6 months for building citations. My only beef: I can't find a way to mark a citation as "Pending" or "Needs action" so I'm back to the spreadsheet.

BrightLocal

Something we are looking into due to its local search rank tracking. (Sorry, SEOmoz, we love you, but your local rank tracking is confusing to our clients.)

We're experimenting with this currently. Doesn't seem to go quite as deep as Whitespark (but I'm comparing two different businesses, so that's anecdotal evidence), but provides slightly better management of whether or not you have a listing. It offers "Got it" "Pending" or "Potential" options, so you can at least tell if you've taken action.

Unfortunately, all three require that we keep a separate spreadsheet that details login information and notes.

Wow, long response!  Hope this helps, rather than putting you to sleep on your keyboard.

[BedeFahey]

Hi All,

I said I'd report back my findings about the Yahoo! offering.

Sadly, not a lot to report. I've submitted two businesses to the system now and they've not even been crawled or approved yet for the basic version (To access the paid version, you seem to have to get your listing approved in the basic version) . Not an auspicious start - if I was relying on the system to get work done for clients, I'd have egg on my face.

I'll keep checking back and let you know if I actually get a chance to use the paid version.

[MiriamEllis]

Bede, thanks for coming back on this. Sorry it's not going well so far.

[choiceenergy]

Thanks for the reply, been a bit MIA here...   Everytime it seems i get to  something 'new', i'm sidelined w/ something more immediate.   I have yet to really give this a shot although given your input it does seem the old fashion way is the only real way to pursue this correctly.  Tedious, but I guess it's one of those situations if you want it done, and done right you gotta do it yourself.

[YMD]

I'm not a 100% sure on this but I believe it to be true.

Yext acts like a sheet of paper over a listing.  Meaning when you stop paying Yext and/or don't renew, the sheet of paper will be lifted and the old underlying information returns. Yext doesn't actually change the listing it just over rides the current data.  If you don't renew with Yext the sheet of paper is lifted the old data returns.

[choiceenergy]

well if you find out a definitive answer let me know,...  This would be quite a 'deal breaker' in my eyes and a pretty significant detail that got 'left out' of their pitch.

Last thing i'd want to do is be handcuffed to yext or use it and then had all the time and effort reverted when the subscription lapses

[BedeFahey]

According to a comment left on Mike Blumenthal's blog by Howard Lerman, only the enhanced information is removed or reverted if you stop using Yext. The rest of the information supplied to the platforms by Yext stays the same.

Check out comment #23 in the link below.

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/01/yext-local-seo/

[YMD]

It is definitive.  Yext even states this when you cancel an account.  When you cancel an account in Yext you will get a message stating that the old data will return.  Check it out for yourself.  Go through the process of canceling an account, but don't worry you will get this message before you finalize the canalization. Meaning you can opt out before actually canceling.

[YMD]

Bede,

I'm not so sure about this one.  i did read comment #23 left on Mike's blog.  Some of the information may remain on some of the directories but not all the directories.  I know for sure Yelp will revert back as do others.

Why be enslaved to Yext?  As an agency I can't put all my eggs in one basket.  I'd rather take the time and submit my clients information manually and be done with it. What happens when you do cancel a subscription with Yext?  Are you going to spend the next several months continually checking 45 directories to see if the information has reverted back?

The only advantage Yext brings to the table is if you constantly run coupons and/or run daily, weekly or monthly specials.  In this case the coupons and/or specials get updated across the board on many directories at the same time.

Yext is suited for single business owners who know little about citation building.  If you are an agency you must build citations manually for your clients.

Just my two cents.

[choiceenergy]

Wow, thanks for that...

It's interesting, because that would take the reseller option out - as a client may want something one year and not the next.

So far the yahoo local visibility - I'm not impressed ... I 'submitted to over 100 directories' for a month i've had two listings, and my merchant circle is 'inaccurate' because the last time it was updated in their system was in November, 2012.  Of course it's inaccurate- and there's no way to submit a refresh from what i see.

By hte two listings part what i mean is i have 9 suggested citations available that i'm missing as opportunities, but yet i have accounts for all of them and Getlisted.org shows I have all but one of those, but have an account on the missing one?

Yahoo's reporting is horrible and from what i've seen so far is that its information is so outdated, great concept - poorly executed...

Yext, being handcufffed is a real deal breaker, what happens when they decide to stop their 'DISCOUNT' marketing ploy and start charging you waht they claim is their 'full price' ...  What a nightmare that would be for all your stuff to just drop.

All things considered -

Yahoo's price is very reasonable  - but it's lack of update and accuracy(IMO), and 'sub-par' reports, would make me say that it's a no-go...

Yext is a little pricey and can sticker-shock some people who are just starting up and don't understand the value of local citations completely.. But for them to have all their info, possibly get some results and then crash and burn worse than Maverick - The 'why' that happened, would not be a conversation i would ever want to have.

-- There's also Whitespark, and from what I've seen it's almost more cost effective than Yext ($4/listing), you know what they've done... and You wont be inundated with  outdated information which is absolutely useless you may of done 'incorrectly prior and fixed since then, and now notified that that thing you corrected is fixed, but we'll tell you it isn't (Yahoo if you didn't infer that from the text).

One issue I have, is that i have one site that has an address wrong completely and I can't find that citation anywhere from where they 'pulled' their information.  It's a local newspaper with a few dozen directory subsites..  Any help would be appreciated.

Anyway, I appreciate the input/discussion...  and apparently there's no easy way out, sometimes you just gotta get your hands dirty.