If your business is located in USA and you would like to add your company details to local search (i.e. make a local listing so people can see you when searching the map), all you have to do is to go to http://listings.local.yahoo.com/. There you can have a ‘Basic Listing’ added for free!
What does a basic listing includes? It includes of a phone, address, and website !!!, business operating hours, your products and services. Not bad for a free of charge listing, isn’t it? God Bless America…
If you business is located in the UK and you would like to add its details to uk.local.yahoo.com… change the location mate, cause there isn’t easy, straightforward way of doing that.
Can’t I just add them at the same page Americans do?
No, you can’t do that. The only way to add your business details to a local UK Yahoo search is to go with the company that Yahoo have signed an agreement with in respects of managing ALL OF THE UK LOCAL LISTINGS- Infoserve Limited.
Have you ever heard of Infoserve Limited? Me neither and many of us did not until they called us.
About three days ago when I actually was shopping and had my office number redirected to my mobile phone, a nice lady called and said she was from …Infoserve – no!, she clearly said she was from YAHOO!!! WOW neither Google or Yahoo has ever called me before so I must admit I got a bit excited, but as I get tones of ‘spam’ and con phone calls offering gold solutions to problems I don’t have, or offering business life changing advertisement deals I wanted to think it off and simply said I was in Tesco shopping and could not have a proper conversation with Yahoo while pushing my trolley. The lady gave up, but promised to call another, more convenient time. What a relief…for some time.
I then performed a quick Google search on the claimed ‘Yahoo’ number she called me from- 08453677200, and found out that it was not Yahoo’s number. The number belonged to Infoserve Limited.
I then added a free basic listing via Infoserve website and now I am waiting for more phone calls from them, as I bet they are not going to give up my money without fighting (i.e. the money which can buy ads or ‘bold’ listings through them).
Will I get listed for free? I don’t know and I don’t care. My websites statistics prove that I should not care too much.
For the past year 2009 only 3.73% of my taxi related websites visitors came from Yahoo. I can hear what could Infoserve salesman now say- so how many visits did you get 300 000? So 3.73% makes about 12000 visitors, we can improve that figure.
I honestly believe they can improve that figure. The question here is how much will it cost me or you to improve the number of visitors or callers and if it’s worth it or not. You see I focus on UK market and Brits are my targeted group and I simply don’t believe it is worth to spend a big money for adds on Yahoo in my niche, on the UK soil targeting UK customers, not for local search results. For me, it was Google who sent the most ‘leads’/users/callers last year and with new Google products coming this year- Chrome Books, and Chrome Web browser that 3.73% of total visitors on my websites that Yahoo sent me last year will probably shrink this year and a year after…
What are your thoughts?
Should have Yahoo let us add our business details to their local search listings database directly? Do you find phone calls from Infoserve enjoying, or were you happy with they approach and attitude when they called? Do you think its right for Infoserve employee to say they call from Yahoo, are they authorized by Yahoo to do that? Do you find it acceptable, or cheeky? Do you think it is good for Yahoo’s image to let a third party company deal with Yahoo’s local listings? And finally did you manage without being pushed to buy ads by Infoserve to add your FREE local UK Yahoo listing?
I have read wtih interest this piece. My company has been working with Yahoo! as the exclusive supplier of advertising on Yahoo!Local in the UK for 3 years, and in the vast majority of cases we have happy customers who get a great return on their investment. We can gauge this from the testimonials and the level of repeat business.
If the writer of this blog, or indeed any other business, wishes to get a free listing on Yahoo!Local we are only too happy to put them in the directory. Indeed, up to some 300 businesses per day apply for a free listing and we try hard to complete the process within 21 days, although on occasion it could take slightly longer. Given the unfortunate level of spurious applications for listings, we always telephone each business to verify that the details are in fact correct. Additionally, we sometimes already have that business listed and need to ensure that we do not duplicate a record. Do we offer those people the opportunities to upgrade to a featured listing so they are at the top of the page? YES we do, but we see this as a service and many businesses are happy to spend a little money to get ahead of their competitors. This is normal. We do nto use high pressure techniques and are always happy to provide a free listing for any business if that is all they require.
Yes Steve I can’t agree more with you- it’s normal to offer the opportunities to upgrade to a featured listing. Is it normal for a Infoserve Limited emploee to introduce himself as a Yahoo emploee? I checked that I was not the only one who had an Infoserve employee pretending to work directly for Yahoo- “I am calling from Yahoo…” you may want to see this link:
http://www.snozwangler.com/search.php?q=08453677200
and this:
http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/08453677200
Just found your article on Yahoo’s UK local issues and wanted to give you all my advice- forget about Yahoo local and Infoserve. Go and add your business to Google Local Business Center. Cancelling a contract with Infoserve recently costed me time and nerves. Waste of money the least to say. Check out what others think of them here: http://www.blagger.com/db4/company_id/5083/companyname/Infoserve.html
I was contacted too by “yahoo” after requesting a free listing, the guy who called clearly said he was from yahoo, his name was steve at the darlington office. He talked me through what they had to offer and that i would also appear on google, cityvisitor etc. Now me being very computer litterate and actually desgned the website, i know what im talking about, he was telling me things that didnt really make sense, im sure this is about yahoo, so why is he mentioning nothing but google now? but at the time i just let him pitch me. It started at £800 for 6 months, eventualy he went down to £200……(bit of a drop if you ask me!!) He swayed me enough for me to think about the proposal, so i said call me tommorow. I sat down and had a talk with my mother, who is the business owner and we aggreed that we couldnt afford it.
The next day he rang as aggreed, however i wansnt at home, so my mother answered, And she got done by the hard selling techniques this company uses. My mum being the nice lady she is, cannot say no, stand firm, or put the phone down, she listened, and of course this guy, used the sales tricks of “logic” to close my mum..
So when i got back and i found out my mum had spent £400 on an emailed invoice which didnt even item-ise what she ordered, i called them to find out what she had actualy bought and it was standard entry on yahoo local uk, with only 5 key words! for only six months! and to top it all off the county of north lincolnshire where we are, isnt even listed on yahoo!!! so they only way that we would ever be found is by typing scunthorpe camping or campsite, eitherway it was difficult to find. So I demened it be canceled. they said “You have no rights of a refund and their is no ‘cooling off’ period as this is business to business sales” I stood firm, and the lady on the phone eventualy said we will put you on cityvisiter.com but it cannot be cancelled.
Over the course of the next few months i watched carefully where the web traffic was coming from. And this is no exageration. We had 4 people come through from yahoo in the first 3 months. and they could have come from the main yahoo search, not the yahoo local site. 4 VISITS!!!!! compared the the whopping 100+ from google where we have no sponsored listings! Just a lot of hard work by myself to get us near the top….
I know google is always going the be the biggest traffic source but that ratio is pathetic!!!
Six months went by and the figures wernt much better, so when “Steve” called again from “yahoo”. I didnt want to renew the listing, i was very pleasant with him, i just said we havnt had the traffic to justiy the price, he came back and said to me “Youve had tonnes of traffic, im reading your report now” i said thats rubbish im looking at the stats too and they given me the refferal numbers from all different websites that link to my page. He said “No, yahoo local works the same as when you type in the address in the bar, a direct entry” I couldnt believe what i was hearing. He was blantantly lying to me about how the whole system works. then he told my that my hosting company are “google” biased and that the stat counter i have is wrong….. he then started getting aggressive and telling me the website ive made is shabby etc etc….. I ended up putting the phone down.
A few days later the phone rang again, a bloke with the same northern accent. Wanting to speak to heather (my mum) i said she is not here, what is this regarding? He explained he is from the cancelation department, and needed to ask a few questions before they cancel my listing….. The call very quickly turned into another attempt to close me, and i know for a FACT it was Steve, pretending to be someone else. he thought he could have a stab at the easy target of my mother.
If this company Claims they dont use high pressure selling techniques they are quite frankly talking s**t. My brother used to work in a “boiler room” scam selling overpriced restricted stocks. And he said the selling techniques used by this company are very similar.
Beware!!! Dont buy from these guys unless you really really want to have a sponsored listing on yahoo. Your best sticking to the FREE google local maps service.
Just had Yahoo call me!! I even double checked and said your Yahoo and the reply was yes sir.
On checking out our listing it turns out Yahoo Local does not even have any business in London listed for Spray Tanning but Dennis kept telling me how great yahoo was over google search…. He even went on to tell me how much better Bing and Yahoo was over google at which point I gave up on him as he started to tell me how Bing was going to take over the desktop and how he worked with FreeServe oops another flop
Anyway Yahoo dont call its a company trying to sell you a listing and im not going to spend £160+vat for 6mths listing when I dont get any traffic from Yahoo only google and that cost me nothing.
I feel better now getting that off my chest.
I can also just confirm that after trying to get a free listing, I was contacted by someone who fraudulently identifying themselves as being an employee of Yahoo!
To add insult to injury, unlike Steve Barnes above says – I asked SEVERAL times if we could have a free listing and I was told it was not possible.
When I asked about the non-featured, free listings that were already on there, I was told that they are only on there because they have bought another product or service from Infoserve and that they do not offer free listings of any description.
Quite laughably – I was given a quote on the phone for sponsored results. The only way to get a free listing in another category and when I asked to be emailed a copy of what I was being offered I was told that the email would come from his manager as the person who phoned was not permitted to send emails.
I received a telephone call only last week from someone claiming to be from Yahoo giving me priority listings on yahoo and city visitor. A costly sum of £400.00, I later looked into infoserve and found I could have a priority listing for our carpet cleaning devon company for approx. £12.50 per month, not the £400.00 per month that was mentioned by telephone.
What makes me really mad is they harp on about improving your listings and improving your traffic while actually blocking your phone lines!
Self money making that’s all I can say, please stop contacting our Exeter cleaning company! We do not want paid listings. Oh, and what’s wrong with adwords? Nothing, it works as far as we can see.
Very Interesting post. I was trying to find out how to list my Guildford car valeting business on the UK version of Yahoo local, I realised after seeing this post that my business was already listed and having never dealt with InfoServe I can only guess that the listings are taken from google or another local business directory such as Thomson or Touch Local. Will try and improve my listing with InfoServe, at least its on there but more importantly now I know who to actually deal with! Thanks again.
ARE YAHOO SO DESPERATE FOR MONEY THEY HAVE TO SCAM THEIR CUSTOMERS?
A representative called me claiming to be from Yahoo and wanting to check my details on a listing on Yahoo (actually turned out to be a compnay called Infoserve – scammers).
The sales person then tried to sell me some space on Yahoo. I was interested to buy space on the main yahoo page, where he promised I would have a fixed listing at the top of the page, on the map, and a marker on the map.
When I received the invoice he had charged me for space on the yahoo local page and city visitor.
I telephoned back same day to cancel and get a refund, and followed up by email, coz this is not what I ordered.
They refused, agressive phonecalls and emails later I still have not received my refund. I am appalled at the way they treat customers.
I have just started my business I cannot afford to pay for advertising I am not receiving. I will take legal action.
AVOID INFOSERVE, CITY VISITOR AND YAHOO THEY WILL RIP YOU OFF
i had the other day tried to submit my listing on yahoo and bing local directories, my business url is http://security-training-uk.co.uk . we provide door supervisor, security guarding, cctv training in london uk. to my dispair i kept on trying and damn could not find a way to do so
Spent £300 on a Yahoo Local listing 3 months ago.
They told me the search levels were ‘exceptional’ and that I’d get a monthly report.
I’ve had 3 website VISITS since then from Yahoo Local. Wtf?!
I’ve never had a monthly report and to top if off these listings don’t even appear on the main search engine results, they ONLY appear under the local search when you click on the map etc. Yes, you have to click on the map or text, that’s ridiculous!
Take a look at recent search volume levels, Google gets over 90% of searches, Yahoo is around 3%. THREE PERCENT and they said it was exceptional!?!
They don’t give refunds and they lie on the phone. Wow, just wow.
Why on earth are Yahoo wasting their time with InfoServe?
Why not allow people to produce listings themselves in the same way they do in the US and indeed as Google do?
This must be reducing their coverage, increasing costs and alienating potential customers. It will not help them compete with Google, quite the opposite.
I have two delightful letting holiday homes at Shanklin on the Isle of Wight. One is a family home for eight and a dog too, and the other is an apartment for four with amazing uninterupted sea views.
I have fallen in to most of the traps that other contributors have listed. Cll from ‘Yahoo’ – not clear difference between Yahoo and Yahoo Local – no mention of free entries – no cooling period – in addition I received no confirmation and no invoice – one classification, but can add key words later (how?) – the copy was given by phone and appeared online wrong – I only found out about Infoserve from a phone number that appeared in my credit card statement.
The only thing they did well was to write prompt long emails saying that I had got what I had paid for. I have also complained to my credit company who say they cannot arbitrate. Trading Standards are very helpful, and are guiding me towards makling a claim against both in the Small Claims Court.
I now have this fantastic idea!! I have a better chance of getting customers for my holiday homes from this board than from Yahoo Locals!! So roll up and look at http://www.wightholidayhomes.org.uk, and welcome to the Isle of Wight.
Oliver
i have been trying to list my business which is http://1acesecurity.co.uk but could not find a way to list with yahoo
Hi
I have a couple of sites like http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk and http://www.seoserviceproviderinuk.com
We are security service provider in London and Birmingham, we got our listings with infoserve the way they want, kill the b..s..t..r..ds
I received my 3rd phone call today from the same ridicules guy at infoserve.
I just want to add my new small family business to Yahoo Local. I was told that I sound angry when I explained this…. for the 3rd time. I was also told that it takes 16 weeks to go through, and every time I try to add it it “goes to the back of the queue”.
To be honest, it isn’t worth the bother dealing with any of infoserves “products” or Yahoo until they drop these guys.
On a sidenote, every single listing site that I have submitted my business too has called me offering different things which I politely decline. Unfortunately, Google has taken over the world so there is no value (for me at least) in advertising online in any other directory. Get your google places listing correct, put a few images in, get some customers to give you a review and it will do thousands of times better for you than anything infoserve or Yahoo can do for you.