I’m an insurance agent and the designer of heritageins.net. Since early June of 2013, I’ve been trying to get Heritage Insurance of Alabama up and ranking high on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and such. Insurance is a competitive field and I realized that if I wanted to rank #1 in Google, there would be a lot of companies already in the area that I would have to rise above.
After checking out my competition, I became heavily under the impression that I was one of the very few in my field that was personally managing my own page; I was one of the few to not pay money to another to create my webpage or pay to promote through listings, ads, and other media. I checked out a very useful video about SEO (search engine optimization) and started building my page from there.
After using Word Press to create the site, I turned to optimizing social media. I signed up for sites I knew like Google Local, Yahoo, Facebook etc., and also signed up on some I didn’t know. Along the way I found different offers to pay money so that the business would be listed on several websites at once. Constantly, the company that keeps appearing is Yext.com.
Thinking that Yext was possibly another free listing site, I entered in my information, phone number, etc. It displayed a lot of websites and said it couldn’t find me on most of them. Then it asked if I wanted to fix the listings. Of course I did. Then I saw the prices. I left. A while later I got a phone call from a Yext salesman who discounted the most expensive offer. I still needed to do some research. The salesman said, “we’ll put you on our partner sites”. I don’t believe that all of the sites that Yext lists are “partners”. I think that some of Yext’s “partners” are actually websites that Yext has created just to put companies on websites. This much I know; those companies that paid for Yext’s listings ARE listed higher than many others. If you search for an insurance business on google like I always am, you are likely to see that business on some of Yext’s sites that I’ve listed in this post.
“209 Location Data Errors Detected”. How is that possible!? They only have 42 (46 if you check their link) “partner” sites (some of which they probably own). An example of the errors it shows is like this:
WhitePages
“address: NOT FOUND – special offer: NOT STANDING OUT – status: NOT STANDING OUT”
“address, etc: listed – special offer: NOT STANDING OUT – status: NO PHOTOS”
So for every 1 website that is listed, I would count when it said “not found standing out, etc”. I only counted 114 errors. I also only counted 42 listings… so with 3 possible error listings for each, that equals 126… So where are the other 83 errors?
Another reason this bothers me is because WhitePages is a Yext site that must be paid for, but on Facebook at the moment, my company has 70+ likes, pictures, videos, etc. I optimized the heck out of facebook, so either Yext is inaccurate or it’s lying when it says NO PHOTOS.
I’ve arranged Yext’s listings in alphabetical order. I couldn’t find anywhere where the listings where just plainly and simply written out in text; much less in alphabetical order. Why not? My theory is that they want to overwhelm customers by making the choices seem too complicated, throwing in the unknown yext only websites in with a mix of bigger names such as Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, etc. As you see, when you click on their link, the first icon to pop up is Yahoo with Bing and Facebook next to it, buried in a pile of trash sites. Compare the logos of avantar, switchboard, white & yellow pages, & yellowpagecity, (which I guess are 2 different sites from each other; hey, they’re 2 listings, right?). Find any similarities? Yeah, same logo.
Another thing about Yext is the payment. You see the 4 deals they offer with the monthly fees? Well, it’s a little deceptive. I’ll post the picture of it below just in case something changes later. One deal says $17/mo, billed $199 annually. I asked the Yext salesman about it and he said, “You’d pay $199.” I asked, “so there’s no option to pay $17 a month?” “no sir”. Yet the biggest # you’ll see is the monthly fee. Why? It’s more appealing. Do you get an option to pay the monthly fee? No.
I’ve attempted to list out each of these sites individually, and list which ones are free and which ones need money to use. This took a lot of time and frustration to do, because when a site isn’t free, they usually want to TRICK the customer to list all their information, thinking it might be a free listing, then throw prices at you. All true free listings ALWAYS give an option to pay, so when I list a site at “FREE” that only means a free basic listing, but from what I see, the guys who get Yext end up with just that little bit of info on each of their sites anyway. The acid test to prove that it is really free was if I could have an actual URL of my listing.
Here’s the “partner” sites for Yext; it’s where I got the list below – http://www.yext.com/network/overview. This is how I found each site as of August 2013. Note that these sites can and will change over time.
| YEXT | Cost | Notes |
| 411.com | ????? | linked to Yext – Powered by whitepages |
| 8coupons | $$$$$ | linked to Yext, called me |
| AmericanTowns.com | FREE! | |
| Avantar | ????? | Can’t find place to list business |
| Bing | FREE! | Must have microsoft account |
| ChamberofCommerce.com | FREE! | Listing posted after 24 hrs. |
| Citysearch | ????? | linked to Yext in the sidebar & footer |
| CitySquares | FREE! | Basic listing is REALLY basic |
| CliqSearch | $$$$$ | linked to Yext |
| Co-Pilot | ????? | Can’t find place to list business |
| Cricket | ????? | Can’t find place to list business |
| eLocal | FREE! | linked to Yext, provides basic listing |
| EZlocal | FREE! | Easy to do, doesn’t appear right away |
| FREE! | Easy to do, takes time to build | |
| Factual | ????? | Can’t find place to list business |
| Foursquare | FREE! | Weird verification process |
| GetFave (Fave) | FREE! | Search for something, then add yourself |
| HopStop | $$$$$ | linked to Yext |
| Local.com | $$$$$ | WASTE OF TIME! NOT FREE! IT LIES! |
| LocalDatabase | $$$$$ | I never received the verifiaction email |
| LocalPages | $$$$$ | WASTE OF TIME! NOT FREE! IT LIES! |
| Mapquest | FREE! | Go to More > Business Listing |
| MerchantCircle | FREE! | Easy to do, takes time to build |
| MetroPCS | ????? | Can’t find place to list business |
| MojoPages | FREE! | Easy to do |
| Navmii | ????? | Can’t find place to list business |
| Patch | $$$$$ | linked to Local; they’ll call you |
| PennySaver | $$$$$ | Free for 21 days? |
| Phonenumber.com | $$$$$ | whitepages, yp, switchboard |
| Pocketly | FREE! | Easy to do, searchable |
| ShowMeLocal | FREE! | Easy to do, searchable |
| Superpages | FREE! | Easy to do, searchable |
| Switchboard | $$$$$ | Can’t find place to list business |
| Topix | $$$$$ | linked to yext, whitepages, yp |
| Tupalo | FREE! | Easy to do, searchable |
| USCity.net | $$$$$ | linked to Yext; waste of time |
| Where To? | ????? | Account creation disabled!? |
| WhitePages | ????? | It’s making me jump hoops |
| White & Yellow Pages | ????? | iPhone app? Can’t find it… |
| Yahoo! | FREE! | LONG verification process |
| Yasabe | FREE! | Submitted, public in 24 hrs |
| Yellowise | FREE! | Submitted, under review |
| YellowBot | FREE! | Easy to do, searchable |
| YellowMoxie | ????? | connectnow.com – 60 days free |
| YellowPageCity.com | ????? | info submitted under review |
| Yelp | FREE! | Submitted, public in 24 hrs |
It seems that business listings on some of these sites like yellowpages are free if you give your info to a site called InfoGroup, found at http://expressupdateusa.com. I’ve been told that it takes months to get listed though, but I’ve also read that when you are listed, it’s on 5 or 6 of these sites and probably more.
Also, for your own site to be found on google, I suggest using webmaster tools, fetching as Google, and submitting your URL. Your website and it’s pages won’t be found until you submit them all individually. However, if you are trying to have one of these free business listing sites found, you should go to this site: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?pli=1 and submit them. Once Heritage Insurance’s facebook had 70+ likes but couldn’t be found on google. I used that URL and submitted facebook to it, then suddenly it was one of the higher ranking results for our company.
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Thank you so much for reading this article! It took a lot of hard work and I hope it has helped you. This article was posted on 8-27-2013, the internet is always changing, so please pardon if some of the info about these listings have changed.
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