UPDATE 11.25.12:

Since I wrote this two years ago, a lot has changed.  Yext has pivoted its business away from pay-per-call to business listings management to help you manage your yellow pages listings from a single dashboard.  The service is called Yext PowerListings.

Yext Powerlistings can automatically update your business’ information across 50+ of the top local search sites out there including Yelp, Yahoo Local, SuperPages and more.  They also now do review monitoring. It’s not free, but the amount of time it can save you is huge.  Check it out here.

Here’s their fancy graphic showing where they send their data:

Full Disclosure: I get paid every time someone buys a Powerlisting via the above link. It’s not much, but it helps keep the lights on at the blog – and I do think it’s a great service. Ok, end of shill…

Yext.com, has been bugging gently encouraging me to post something about the company and since they just convinced some smart people to give them $25MM I thought it was high time to pontificate on where Yext fits in my unified theory of the local search universe.

So the interesting thing about Yext is that they are selling “Pay Per Action” calls.  What this means is that they generate phone leads to advertisers via trackable phone numbers, but instead of charging the advertiser on a per call basis, which is how Ingenio started, they only charge them when they deem the call to be a qualified lead.  Yext is currently focused on Yext Chiropractic, Yext Auto Repair and other professional services.

I worked on a pretty big pay per call program at InsiderPages and I can tell you the amount of garbage calls we got through these numbers was painful, both for us and the client.  A number of services have taken different approaches to solving these problems, but Yext has focused on an approach that seems pretty novel.  They transcribe the audio of the calls into text and analyze the text for keywords.  Only when the call contains “qualifying” keywords they charge the client.

Here’s a sample transcribed call:

According to Ross, Yext scrubs out 44% of all calls that come through their system.  So Yext believes that almost half the calls that they provision are junk.  Yext gets most of its call volume from search engine advertising and distribution via local search directories, which is not too different than how other agencies that sell calls operate.  So if Yext’s algorithms are accurate then that means 44% of pay per call leads are junk.  Attention pay per call advertisers – you may want to renegotiate your rates.

Of course the price that an advertiser would be willing to pay for a call in theory should be based on the conversion rate of those calls so the junk calls should be built into the price.  Of course that probably doesn’t account for the time the advertiser spends answering the phone.

When you talk to local salespeople all they ever say is that advertisers really just want to pay when the phone rings.  Yext thinks that they really just want to pay when the phone rings and it’s not a robocall from a carpet cleaner or misdialed porn line.

If that is the case, Yext seems like it could be the Yext big thing (sorry had to work that in somewhere).

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260 Response Comments

  • Jeremy Jennings  October 2, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    Looks like a good service. Too bad their demo for advertisers is very small, barely readable, and the button that says connect now isn’t clickable to a contact form. I don’t have the time right now to call them but I am interested in costs. Hmmm maybe this little tiny contact link at the very bottom of the page leads to a form….nope. Guess I’ll just email them…

  • Stever  October 3, 2009 at 10:41 am

    I’m not overly surprised by their estimate of 44% junk calls. But reading through the transcript of that sample call, either those 2 people are from another planet, or the voice to text software is missing and mistaking lots of words. So a keyword based quality filter has some margin of error there. But I like their idea here.

    @Jeremy, they want you to phone so their robots can filter your call and inspect your junk.

  • Andrew Shotland  October 3, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    While the transcription is a bit freaky, it’s not that hard to figure out what they are talking about in general terms. That said the transcription software could be used for a band name generator, my fave extract from the conversation – “natural gas injector soul spray”

  • Jeremy Jennings  October 5, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    @ steve LOL!

  • James Stratford @JRStratford on Twitter  October 15, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    That model certainly seems more viable than the predecessors do. It’s like the difference between safelist (junk) and organic traffic (Valuable). With one having no target and being broad based (hoping something will stick) yet the other is targeted and sticky.

    The way they decide if something is contextual and therefore a paid lead is well thought out. This should work out very well for many businesses.

  • Elliot Leiboff  October 23, 2009 at 1:56 pm

    Yext is really on to something.

    In addition to tracking responses to all forms of marketing for our clients, our company, CallSource, also records and reviews calls to filter leads from non-prospects. Although we also have speech analytics software, we use live analysts.

    We then review and score how well the client’s employees handle calls from actual prospects — then offer phone skills training to correct specific weaknesses.

    After reviewing hundreds of thousands of calls across multiple industries, I’d say 44% junk is actually a conservative figure.

    More than half of our clients’ calls to toll-free or local marketing numbers are actually solicitations from vendors, repeat calls from existing customers, personal calls or mis-dials.

  • Chris Reilly  November 7, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    “Used by over 20,000 businesses nationwide, Yext Calls™ is the most affordable and relevant local advertising service ever created.” -from Yext’s site.

    Are they selling this service through white label arrangements or something? I couldn’t find any reviews by business owners who use the service on the web so far…

    Other industry players like Yodle and Local Marketers have plenty of reviews out there, mostly negative. Perchance Yext clients are so satisfied with their results they are keeping it a secret?

    I am inclined to believe that Pay Per Call is the future, but there has been a lot of hype about it since 2004-5 not much action since then- perhaps Yext technology is the future.

  • heather  November 9, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But our company is highly unsatisfied with YEXT. We have been working with them for a few months now. The first month we received 6 phone calls. All of which were placed in our “qualified” inbox, but were either sales calls or junk calls. I was not told upon signing up for Yext that I needed to personally monitor each call received through Yext each month. $150 was debited from our credit card on the first. We paid $150 for soliciation and wrong numbers calling our office.

    Upon calling to correct and receive a refund for the $150, I was told that they do NOT give refunds but can credit the amount towards future calls. We had decided to cancel the service because it did NOT generate any new leads. They will not issue refunds so we are forced to continue with Yext until our $150 credit runs out. Was told “You’ll just have $150 sitting here whenver you decide to come back to us”. They informed me that in order to avoid the same thing happening again, I needed to call or email each month before the first of the month to tell them which calls were junk. On top of that, they still debtied $10 the first of the next month for the service instead of using our credit. We did not realize upon signing up that we’d have to monitor closely this service.

    Please note this before making the same mistake we did. I just checked our calls for this month. We paid for 2 existing patients that looked up our name and wanted to reschedule their appointments. Something that shouldn’t cost us $25 per phone call.

    Highly dissatisfied that the customer service could offer no way to fix the problem.

  • Chris Reilly  November 9, 2009 at 5:07 pm

    Heather, that is really disappointing to hear. The hidden cost of bad pay per call leads is wasted time of the advertiser… you could have kept recycling the dollars and asking for more calls, but if they continued to be junk it would be more wasted time.

    I’m not certain how Yext generates calls, but as with any lead generation, high quality contextual marketing is the only way to drive usable leads.

  • Clive Clifford  December 7, 2009 at 9:23 pm

    Interesting. The only real benefit here is the automatic classification of the call as either a valid lead or a junk one.

    The article states “Of course that probably doesn’t account for the time the advertiser spends answering the phone.” – this still happens with Yext as the business owner still takes the call – be it a junk call or not.

    Interesting technology I will be interested to see how well it does and how it is marketed.

    Dis a saerch and

  • Dave  December 9, 2009 at 10:02 pm

    We used the Yext Service for a two months and we got a total of 12 calls out of the 12 call 2 where legit calls. Yext ( AutoGlassSearch.com) billed us for all calls and refused to give us credit or a refund for these calls.
    We paused our service with them and less than a week later our Yext number was rerouted to a Sears Auto Care dept. where this particular Sears refers its auto glass jobs to a large auto glass chain. The real problem with this is that Yext still has our advertisement with our information posted all over the web but with the number going to Sears our potential customers are being tricked into using a national chain . So we loose even more money on the deal.

    Yext has since blocked us from logging into our account so we can’t change our profile to inform our customers that they are being mislead.

    $165 is all Yext would have had to refund us or credit us and they refused.

    What Yext is doing is robbing our industry and getting rich one call at at time . Yext,Sears and the National Chain Auto Glass company all are making money off my company and ruining my reputation one call at a time.

    This service is a rip off and needs to be shut down.

  • Heather  December 17, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    I would like to follow up and report that I received a very nice email from Yext saying they were changing their policies to include refunds on unwanted calls (to be deposited back within 3 business days). They also gave us a refund on past calls. I appreciate the effort to correct this and it has greatly improved my opinion of Yext.

    Thank you.

  • nathan  December 18, 2009 at 8:57 pm

    I just signed up today and anxious to see how it works for my 2 BMW repair shops, will post my results

  • Mark  January 21, 2010 at 12:38 am

    I just signed up for Yext three days ago. I’ve received 6 calls. Only one was a legitimate call, and it did end up being a job.

    The others were for a service I DO NOT OFFER. But after asking for a manual review, Yext determined these were potential customers. Not only that, when I signed up I was told I would be charged a low rate per call, but I’m getting charged twice as much.

    I even got a call from a lady who called the 800# on the back of her insurance card and got me! She asked me about her hospital bill. I told her I was a windshield repair service. And yep, I got charged twice as much. Their software doesn’t work.

    I was not told about the monthly charge until AFTER I gave the salesman my credit card number.

    I am afraid to cancel until I get my bill straightened out, but it doesn’t look promising from what I’ve read here. I plan to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the Texas State Attorney General’s office if these bogus charges aren’t removed from my bill.

    The worst part? This has been a ton of stress. All I wanted was some referrals, what I got was a nightmare.

  • Bryan  January 28, 2010 at 9:56 am

    I’m so glad I found this site. I signed up for the site but haven’t yet agreed to the Terms Of Service yet so I don’t get billed (I know smart move). I wanted to see what other business owners felt w/ about their experience.

    Upon on reading them I don’t think I’m going to roll the dice on this one (especially since they want to charge me up to $45 per call) Seems like I get more qualified leads through google local business listing and city search vs Yext .

    Thanks for all the input everybody!

  • Mark  January 31, 2010 at 11:24 am

    This is a follow-up to my previous post.

    After working with an account manager, I was able to get the bogus calls removed from my bill. So I was only charged for one call at the originally agreed upon price when I canceled the service.

    Now I have a new nightmare…Yext aggressively markets your business name with THEIR phone number in all of the internet directories. (They issue you one of their phone numbers so they can record the phone calls.)

    Even directories that we were listed in months ago, long before I signed up for Yext, are now showing the Yext phone number instead of mine!!! I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like they have already issued the number I had to some other glass shop in my area. In other words, my competition is getting my phone calls.

    Now my webmaster has to write to all of those directories to get our phone number straightened out. I’m glad I didn’t keep Yext for more than a week…I may have never gotten this fixed. It may take awhile to recover as is.

  • Pitstop Appliance  February 9, 2010 at 1:21 pm

    I’ve used Yext for a few weeks now.

    I received a few calls through them and have no problems paying for a LEGIT refered customer. What I do have a problem with is that I had a lady call up and ask if I charged a service call to come to her house and look at her dishwasher. When I told her yes, she said thanks anyway and hung up.

    I was charged by Yext for that call, and when I wrote my ‘account manager’ about it she responded-

    “The service does not guarantee that every call will result in a booked job. There will be a few calls where people inquire but don’t schedule and those will still be billed. The idea here is that the calls that you do get as jobs will make a profit for you that will cover the cost for the calls that don’t.”

    When I called her up to talk to her live about it, she said that’s the way it is, that’s life, and if I don’t like it she would cancel my account. I complained that I was not told of this policy when I signed up and because of that she did remove the charge for that call.. but she said from here on out I am aware of the policy and if I choose to continue the service then I agree to it.

    I’m not happy about it as it is very common for people to call several places trying to find something for nothing. I can’t pay Yext money ‘OUT’ for a call that didn’t bring any money ‘IN’!!

    I’m may have to cancel anyway as the rate per call is high in my opinion. I charge $60 for a service call.. figure the Gov takes $20 of that, and Yext takes another $20. That leaves me with $20 to cover gas, vehicle costs, etc, etc.. It leaves nothing for me.. I’m not in business to keep them and the government in business. They need to be reasonable. I can’t do anything about the government, but I’m going to talk to Yext to see if they can do a more reasonable $10 per call.. especially if I continue to get charged for people ‘windowshopping’ in the future.

    I also see they have a new program that will post a customer feedback at a charge of $5 for customer. That is high IMO also. They want me to pay $5 for each customer feedback to help me get more calls..so they can charge me for each new call. Seems to me that they should want to give us the feedback as standard since if it helps us get more calls, they get more per call charges!! They double dip into my pockets into my pockets..which as already laid out above there is just nothing left! Oh wait..I forgot the monthly service charge- tripple dip.

    As I said, the service has worked well so far as getting new calls has gone. It just needs to be a more resonable rate for a small business like me and not charge me for useless phone calls.

    I am sending this link to a Yext manager so he is aware and see if he can pass it up the chain so the people in charge of the company can work WITH us instead of alienating us. I think the system could work well and I have no problem making them money as long as I have some left over for myself.

    If the owner of this blog could pass on my message to Ross @ Yext as well..

    Thanks!!

  • Pitstop Appliance  February 9, 2010 at 2:03 pm

    Follow up-

    In further searching I found this page-

    http://emediavitals.com/blog/38/yext-why-newspapers-should-care

    Which has a video promoting Yext and underneath there is text stating-

    “Yext takes a lot of that work out of the equation. The pitch is a straightforward, “You pay us when you get a call that results in business.”

    I would like to say that in my example from my earlier post above, a person calling around ‘windowshopping’ who never books an appointment does not fall under the claim of- “Pay us when you get a call that RESULTS IN BUSINESS”.

    I think the solution is simple. On the call ‘manual review’ page dropdown menu (dispute process) there just needs to be a choice of ‘Did not schedule’ or similar.

    I hope they (Yext) realize I’m not knocking the business as whole, it just needs a little tweaking. And that can be completely on a per case basis. I’m pretty sure a doctor, dentist, electrician, plumber have higher revenues and can therefore pay more per call and feedback. I can’t unfortunately.

  • Chris Reilly  February 10, 2010 at 3:22 pm

    When I first found this thread I was considering offering pay per call marketing to local businesses using a system similar to Yext (without the transcript keyword reading technology).

    I have elected not to do so. Here’s why: By providing accountability and detailed tracking for advertising buyers, it just seems to drive the behavior of the advertiser complaining- about potential customers calling them…

    If a business were to spend $1000/month in the yellowpages and get 50 calls per month (not bad response for YP these days) AND 50% of the calls were telemarketers, out of area, automated calls, etc, then the cost per qualified lead (not sale, lead) is $40/call.

    Unless the advertiser is spending money on call tracking and doing detailed reporting on the outcome of EVERY call, they don’t have the insight to know their true cost per acquisition.

    If Yext is charging $20 per call and not accepting 50% of the junk call requests you dispute, that still is a $30 cost per truly qualified call.

    The problem is that the perception when broken down to a per call basis is that Yext drives poor quality leads. What is really happening is the technology is opening the advertisers eyes to the vast amount of junk that comes over the phone.

    The pay per call model had great promise, but I think that unfortunately keeping advertisers in the dark is a safer way to sell ads.

    I think the best thing a local biz can do is work on generating more calls through local seo and building strong presences across vertical directories and social media. This is what I help my clients achieve, and their ROI (when we do call tracking, detailed CRM usage, etc) is always better with using their and my time than giving the margins away on lead generation to companies like Yext, reach local, etc.

  • Pitstop Appliance  February 10, 2010 at 6:58 pm

    Did you seriously just say that?

    “keeping advertisers in the dark is a safer way to sell ads.” (sell ads = make money)

    A rather self serving viewpoint.

    That exact reasoning is partly why people are moving away from the Yellow Pages. High cost, no control, low ROI.

    I mean even though Google Adwords charges me for clicks that may not be what I wanted, they at least give me the option to monitor them and prevent it from happening again with the ‘negative keyword’ feature.

    Sure SEO and organic results are the best way for businesss (if they can do it themselves).. but for a lot of people this doesn’t bring in the amount of work they need.

    Honest and fair is the best way to deal with customers, and making a modest return over a long time period is always better than a quick money grab. Besides, even though word of mouth is ‘old tech’.. it should not be disregarded. For example, in my line of work I am constantly dealing with realtors, contractors, electricians, plumbers, etc..as well as the homeowners. Naturally we exchange business cards and talk shop.

    The recommendation to use Yext by myself and my fellow techs to other business owners we know easily outweighs the palty fee they charge for someone ‘window shopping’. They really should look at the big picture for long term growth and continuing clients.

  • Chris Reilly  February 11, 2010 at 9:57 am

    Pitstop, I fully agree with you!

    As I was considering “selling ads” I realized that keeping my clients in the dark about their marketing was a losing proposition. On the other side of the coin, having to sort the wheat from the chaff as it were on every customer inquiry is a quick way to run yourself ragged.

    I have been on both side of this equation, selling leads for a major internet lead provider (and experiencing daily disputes over lead quality) AND later working for a small company and buying leads to find hot prospects (and being really upset about the junk I had to pay for.)

    I don’t even think that pay per lead/call is a perfect model for the consumer. Because of the cost of each lead is substantial, advertisers are force to push those customers hard to buy from them, and often times get disappointing when leads don’t turn out to be good- and don’t treat them like they would treat a referral from a friend.

    What my comment above should have said is this: “Asking my clients and I to have to agree on the quality of every customer inquiry that our mutual efforts generate to determine my fees didn’t seem like a very appealing model to pursue.”

    So I’m not in the business of selling advertising. Nothing wrong with that- I just wanted to avoid that potential for conflict with my clients and try to work more collaboratively. I work with my clients to find every valuable way to increase sales online and offline. People are often surprised to find their internet marketing guy suggest they do some direct mail, or start a customer appreciation program. I just happen to know those things work really well, and at the end of the day that is where any business owner’s time and efforts should be concentrated.

    Pitstop, I like your site a lot – I’ve been going all of the web trying to find local sites that make the most impact in 1-2 pages, I think your does a great job.

  • Andrew Shotland  February 18, 2010 at 11:43 am

    btw if you like this discussion – which I think is pretty interesting – please link to this URL with the words “Yext” in the text of the link. It would be great if we could outrank Techcrunch for searches for “Yext” don’t you think?

  • Dee  February 19, 2010 at 7:15 am

    Junk..Junk.. Junk.. $550.00 this month.. junk… junk../
    Total rev for the month. Hang on to this super return..$88.
    That’s not 88K or 88OO. that’s $88.OO. This is a great going out of business adder for any business. Good luck on getting credit on the bad calls, they deside if it’s a good call call or not.. How about getting charged $50. for a call about how do u guy’s set the radio code in a Mercedes? We did not have Mercedes on our profile list. Told the phone customer we don’t work on his type of auto…… BING>>>> that cost me $50. BE VERY, VERY CAREFUL WHEN UUUU SIGN UP.

  • Custom Muffler  March 8, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    Yext.com is a total rip off.I have made zero money from this service. It has only cost me! If I hired someone just to go through every call to get paid back then it would have a slim chance of working. But thats slim. My advice, let this dot com die!

  • AlmostGotRippedOffByYext  March 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm

    I almost got ripped of by Yext.com. They sounded very real over phone. But when it came time for them getting my credit card number I wanted referrals. Glad I did. I called first one and he told me his story. They charged him $20 for every call that came in on the phone number yext supplied to his business. If the same person called back the same day, they did not charge him again. But if that same person called again next day, an other $20 charged to him again no matter why they called. He was charged around $1000 to his credit card. After spending a lot of time on the phone with them proving he did only business with about 7 of those calls he was able to get them to only charge him $700, even though they should have only charged him $140. But he said they did other things to that they said they would not do also. Also he said he wanted for them to stop, and they still keep charging him high fees every month for calls to him that do not bring in business. He can not get them to turn off the service so he is going to have to close his credit card account to stop them from using it. I am so glad I talked to this person or I am sure they would be ripping me off too. They called me and wanted to know If I was going to sign up with them after I originally said I was going to check their referrals. I told them what I found out about them and they screamed at me over the phone. …pond scum at its best.

  • AlmostGotRippedOffByYext  March 9, 2010 at 10:40 pm

    Oops forgot to mention. The person I talked with that got ripped off by yext.com said the reason he signed up with them was because his business was not doing so well, so he took a chance because he was a bit desperate. He said yext.com are the type of people that take advantage of others that are desperate like him.

    Many people are getting pretty fed up with companies like this. Makes me mad. Very mad…

  • ROBERT CURTIS  March 11, 2010 at 8:47 pm

    SCAM SCAM SCAM 1000.00 DOLLARS LATER OUT OF 41 CALLS ABOUT FOUR ACTUALLY CAME IN FOR SERVICE ABOUT 400 DOLLARS NOW THEY CLAIM TO HAVE A BASIC SERVICE FOR 59.95 PER MONTH WHERE WAS THAT 30 DAYS AGO WHEN I AGREED TO IT SCAM SCAM SCAM

  • Pitstop Appliance  March 12, 2010 at 6:47 am

    Robert,

    Can you do me 2 favors?

    First, stop using all caps and try making a sentence.

    Secondly, give us legitimate details.

    What business are you in? What do you charge VS what they charge?

    I’ve had over 20 legit customers so far from Yext and only 3 ‘window shopper’ charges. The first one I detailed above earlier and it was removed. The 2nd + 3rd I will pay for because I agreed to knowing that policy in order to continue the service.

    I’ll be honest, I think the prices they set for things are a little high, but I’ll also admit I do not know their operating costs.

    I paid the additional $5 each charge for ‘testimonials’ by a bunch of customers I submitted which I think is questionable (also detailed above) but I had a customer mention to me that reading something by one of those other customers is what made her decide to call. So it *did* add value to my advertising and pay for itself rather quickly. If it continues to gain new customers than it is all positive in that regard.

    Note- Yext has raised the fee for testimonials from $5 to $10 per and when questioned on it the response was ‘due to unexpected demand for the feature’ which I think we all know what that really means.

    Keep in mind that Yext is a new company, run by enthusiastic aggressive young people who don’t have a lot of real ‘life’ experience (yes I know I am categorizing, but stereotypes are typically based on reality to an extent). They are building at a fast rate, adding new business types, features and customers. They are guaranteed to be busy (overwhelmed) and may have some growing pains and make a mistake or 2.

    Another thing to mention is that they removed the submit ‘manual review’ option from the website to report junk calls to get them credited. (with no notice to us) I had to email my ‘account manager’ to have an out of area call removed from my charges. I’m sure they can handle this by a phone call also, but I liked just having to click a button. I guess this is better in that dealing direct with someone allows US as the end user to have someone to hold accountable to making sure the job gets done. Fair enough.

    Back to your situation. You claim 41 calls and 4 jobs. I would question the reason for your low conversion rate over any faulting of Yext. They do not control how much effort you make on your profile (nor how nice you are on the phone!).

    Have you taken the time to go on your Yext profile and make sure it is the best you can make it? Out of the 6 other servicers in my area, I am the only one that has added any pictures, details about the business, etc.

    Prime example- I had people calling and after explaining the problem they are having with whatever appliance, we would prompt them to make an appointment. Only at that time after speaking with them for several minutes they would ask if we charged a service call to drive to the house. When told yes, $59.95 they would hang up and I got charged by Yext for a non-customer.

    What I have done to try to stop that is go into my Yext profile and the first thing it now says at the top of my page is WEEKDAY SERVICE CALLS ONLY $59.95.

    See what I mean? Give us details and lets see if we can figure out where the problem is with you converting. Are you able to give customers same day appointments, etc? The hard part is over.. you had 41 people calling you WANTING some service. We just need to find out why they didn’t follow through..

    Pitstop Appliance
    Service@PitstopAppliance.com
    http://www.PitstopAppliance.com

  • Julie  March 12, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    Very disappointed, Rebecca told me and the owner that the first 15 calls would be free, which they are not! Feel misled and I will not recommend YEXT to anyone.

  • Pitstop Appliance  March 12, 2010 at 12:50 pm

    Again, can we have more details?

    Why don’t you call and talk with the account manager you were assigned and try to resolve the issue?

    The fact that you possibly received 15 calls (and made some sort of profit from them) should be a good thing.

    What type of business?

    I was told my first months account maint fee was waived. No free calls for me.

  • Potential Target  March 15, 2010 at 11:32 am

    Thanks for posting this valuable info. I got a call from a Yext rep. today.

    She said I have two customers for you in your city’s area. Great come on line. It gets you to listen to the pitch. It went on that the cost was $30 per job you get.

    It was mentioned about the Yext phone number, that they’d do promotion, the inbox, but nothing about paying for every call they deem to not be spam, in which doesn’t translate to a paying customer.

    BTW, I also question this claim of 20,000 customers already signed up. I do.

    If a company is going to eventually get it right by screwing the customers until they scream loud enough at every inappropriate turn of automation, then I’m not going in for the Guinea Pig status.

    A successful company, even a tech one, has as its underlying foundation integrity. ..from the start.

    It would appear that perhaps the founder’s ambition is greater than all the toes stepped on to bring this to fruition via a misleading sales pitch.

  • Target that Signed up  March 15, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    i just signed up for this the sales person said the same BS to me. And since i am not getting that much business i thought i give it a try.

    But after seeing this site and reading all posts i figured i made a mistake.

    i just emailed them to close my account asap and i dont want to see any charges on my credit card.

    i hope they close my account before i see any charges and i have to fight with them for credit.

    this is what i just hate about this kind of services.

  • Julie  March 15, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    I DID call and talk to the rep. She swore up and down that she never said the first 15 calls were free. During her pitch,she said there was absolutely NO RISK which is why I gave her my Personal bank account number as I did not have access to the business card. We got one job out of the whole thing which was a repeat customer that has been coming to our shop for years. The shop paid me back and I’m just glad it only came to a little over a hundred bucks.

  • Custom Muffler  March 15, 2010 at 2:25 pm

    I really believe this would work if it was on a monthly fee. Thats just to get Yext.com started. I`m established, they are trying to get established. Yext.com needs to look at it from a startup standpoint, not a “you need us one”. Just my opinion. Pay for the yellowpages online advertising. You`ll reap more rewards.

  • Yext User  March 15, 2010 at 4:38 pm

    I have used Yext for several months now. I do get a lot of junk calls, but also some good jobs out of it. The bad part is that Yext will charge you for no-shows, cancellations, etc. It is up to YOU to track this and request credit. I have never had a credit denied. Yext recently instituted a 7 day waiting period for submitting credit requests. This makes it much harder because you have to track these calls over time. I keep a notebook and log every call we are billed for. Sometimes you will have to download the calls and listen to figure out if that customer ever showed up. If you don’t want to spend some time tracking calls, then don’t sign up. But if you want to expand your business a little, then the Yext system is worth a try.

  • Mike  March 18, 2010 at 3:00 pm

    I have been using Yext for 1 week. We have received and paid for 4 sales leads @$30 each. I carefully monitored each call and NONE of them turned into sales. I called Yext to cancel and was told that THEY know which calls are “converted calls.” The representative said she would cancel the account, but I would still need to pay the $120 for their “service.” I refused and she said she would call back later in the day. A few hours later a different lady called and said that she could sign me up for an unlimited plan for #40/month, but it would not be as effective as the plan I was on. I liked the way they directed 4 new potential customers to us this week, so I agreed to reinstate my account. Then we haggled over the $120. I was able to get one of the calls taken away because I told her the potential customer just wanted to donate his dead computer to charity. Then she reluctantly agreed to give me 1 month free of the unlimited plan, which was $40. So I ended up paying $120 + $40 – $70 = $90 for the 3 sales leads and unlimited for 1 month. I can’t say I am happy, but atleast they were willing to work with me. Tip: If you want to call Yext, a good time to call is 9AM ET. I only had to hold for about 10 minutes.

  • Owner  March 23, 2010 at 5:06 pm

    Thank you all for your feedback on this. I received a call from Yext today. They wanted $40.00 per call for the “computer department”. I’m not sure if they charge different rates for different departments but it seems there pricing is all over the place. With Hidden fees, more things to manage, sizable chunk of my margin, and a conflict of interest in regards to my marketing with local search engines I feel there are better avenues to pursue.

  • rick  March 31, 2010 at 5:43 pm

    Help Ive been with yext about 3 weeks lots of calls no jobs…
    i dont understand i am by far the cheapest in my area and still nothing i think i may be getting scamed.
    maybe next call i get i will tell them its free bet i still wont get it.
    is it possiable they pay people to make these calls??
    what a rackett i really dont want to close my account but
    sure seems strange to me

  • Custom Muffler  April 1, 2010 at 2:02 pm

    I was also under the impression that YEXT wil generate their own calls to generate money and to “test” wether or not its even noticed. I hate scammers and that is EXACTLY what this is. Sure there is an apparent outside legitimacey to YEXT but underlying, its a scam.
    Same old game with different clothing.

  • Andrew Shotland  April 1, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    This continues to be an amazing discussion about Yext. As you can see we are attracting a number of advertisers who have been having issues with Yext. It’s unclear whether or not you all represent a vocal minority or the silent majority. It would be interesting for future commenters if we could get some feedback on advertisers who have had a positive experience with Yext and/or how Yext compares to other pay per call services you might have tried.

    Thanks for keeping this thing going. I know that Yext execs are keeping an eye on this post and taking your feedback seriously.

  • rick  April 1, 2010 at 6:36 pm

    called customer service today to cancel my account.
    after a verry choice exchange of words they offered a 20$
    monthly account (no calls tonight) i really love their ranking on google and the other search engines just wish they were not so sneeky no i have to fight to get the paid calls knocked off.
    i will post the outcome when i know more

  • Richard  April 2, 2010 at 1:29 pm

    YEXT uses high pressure sales tactics to get you to sign up. I ended up signing up. I was out and about and not near a computer to check them out while they were talking so I thought it sounded ok and went for it. I am not in need of more jobs but the reason I wanted to be a part of them is because of the exclusivity for the 50 mile radius I would have. Plus I like to be into the next thing because I don’t want to be left behind in the new types of advertising that come out. But then when I did finally get near a computer to check them out I came across this page and a couple of others. So I said the best way to see if they are a reputable company or not was to call them back and test them.
    So I did by starting off with I would like to end my account. The account manager on the phone would not end my account at all. It was like he pretended not to hear that part. He kept saying he wanted to know why and I told him that I didn’t need their services. So he asked again why I wanted to end my account. So I explained in more detail that I have enough jobs and decided not to do this YEXT thing. So he says why do you want to end your account so I said I just told you. So he repeats himself again. This went on for about 20 minutes the same exact stuff and question. Why do you want to end your account. This guy would not end my account for nothing. He was rude and belligerent. All in all a half hour goes by and I finally just said I would report them on the internet and not to worry Ill cancel my credit card and get another. I feel that no matter how long I stayed on the phone with them My account would have never have been ended. All in All that is probably a little over an hour of my life that I can never have back. They stole that hour of my life from me so Ill repay in kind by posting this complaint in as many places as I can find. One more thing, I hate typing so for me to sit here and type all of this means that I am really ticked off. I don’t lodge complaints unless I feel extremely strong about something so by me typing this it means I think this company is definitely crap. YEXT I feel for you. You’re going to rip off the wrong people one of these days and its going to get ugly for you!!!!!

  • foot doc  April 2, 2010 at 10:33 pm

    I just want to put in my two cents. I am a podiatrist in los angeles and when approached by yext, i was intrigued and decided to sign up. To try and make a long story short, my first impression was as most of the opinions here. But I stuck with them, because among the calls that were charged, I was getting 50% of them as new patients to my practice. As the company grew and initiated the new technologies they have in place now, and as management had some turnover, i also noticed better customer service. I was in open dialogue with representatives who listened to constructive criticism and changed things to help the service better serve my practice.

    For me, one patient can generate 3-4 times the cost of the phone call in 1-2 visits. If 50% of the calls generate new patients, I am making money and growing the practice. I now average 6-10 new patients a month.

    Also I have had nothing but good experience with customer service. I can email them with complaints if a charge is not reversed, and as long as i can show the logic in why i shouldnt be charged, they seem to be ok with the refund. Also i read that they only issue credit, which is not the case with me. I get debits back to my account as they are issued.

    Overall they have cleared my skepticism and until I see a drastic drop in quality or the calls are not generating a profit, I will continue to use their service.

  • Fusion Data Services  April 5, 2010 at 8:27 am

    I was going through my voicemail and found a call from “Yext Computer Repair” saying they had extra work in this area and needed a computer company to help take some of the load.

    I called back, gave the lady our company name, she looked us up, then said “We have a couple customers who need counter tops installed. Do you do [blah blah]?” to which I replied we were a computer company, we don’t install counter tops. “Oh, hang on…”

    Then she gave me a similar line to what was on the voicemail. I said that sounded okay, we’re signed up with another national company that does warranty and contract work for Wal-Mart, the government, etc. Only then did I get the real story of what they do. I was driving, didn’t have Google in front of me, and wasn’t wearing my skeptic’s hat. She said the service was totally free, we only pay for calls that actually generate sales.

    I thought that sounded okay, but once she got me to agree, she said “Oh yeah there’s a $10 monthly fee.” A little alarm bell went off but I was already engaged and decided to sign up. The next day they called me back to walk me through the account set up. I complained that the call from the day before was kind of a bait and switch, so they offered the first 3 months free.

    Reading on here, the thing that worries me the most is the idea that if we ever cancel we’ll have the wrong phone number listed on all those local search engines and people who call will end up being routed to a different company. I kind of had a bad feeling about this already… I’ve been ripped off enough that honesty and integrity are top priority for me. I don’t like their sneaky tactics. I don’t trust them.

  • Russell Alexander  April 9, 2010 at 7:48 am

    I got a call from Yext sales associate Jared Pinchasick, who talked a good line. I was told that I would pay for calls that resulted in work. I thought $30 was high, but I agreed to try it for a month.
    This morning I got the “set up your account” call, and I’m glad I did! I was going through the setup and noticed there was one call listed in my Inbox, with a $30 charge. It turns out yesterday (first day on the service) I got a call from a guy who wanted to know about replacing a DC jack in his laptop. I told him he was better off sending his laptop to one of the online places, because they could do it for less than I would charge him. We spoke for a bit, and that was it. It did not result in work (I don’t “shill” work, I’m busy enough)
    I asked the set up guide why it was listed as $30. She said “you pay for every call you get through us.” I told her that was NOT what Jared told me. I trusted them with my bank debit card, and said I wanted the account canceled immediately and my credit information destroyed.
    She said she was closing the account, but would have to put in a request to have the charge canceled.
    I left a message for Jared, and if I find out that one penny has been deducted from my account, I’ll be sending a lot more messages:
    Better Business Bureau
    NYS Attorney General
    NYS Consumer Protection

    plus, since I live in NYC, I might just take a stop down there in person.

  • David B  April 12, 2010 at 9:23 am

    Can any advertisers offer feedback to the transcription of calls vs. listening to the call/lead. Is it a helpful feature to determine accurate leads, is the time savings a benefit? Are you using the transcription features?

  • Mike Evans  April 12, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    Wow, am I glad I found this site. I too, got a message from “Mandy” about having some work referrals in my area and if I was interested in picking up some extra work. Of course, it was yextcomputers. I managed to put her off for a day, while I did research, now I’m really happy I did. Today, I talked to another local computer repair guy that was in their listings, He haggled because he didn’t like the $30 per call fee, and found they offered a service for $30 a month that was basically just a listing service, but with their supplied number (this looks like it ties in with some of the above commenta regarding having this number shunted over to a competitor when they cancel) . He’s actually OK with this plan and says he’s gotten 3 of 4 calls in the month that he’s had it. It still doesn’t work for me, but I can see it.

  • Russell Alexander  April 13, 2010 at 2:57 pm

    Update – I got the following e-mail:
    Hello Russell,

    My name is Alex Miller and I’m the head of customer support for Yext. One of our account reps (Lindsay, who I believe you spoke with earlier today) forwarded me a note about your call with her and the you felt that the service was not accurately represented to you. I wanted to take this time to apologize for any confusion or disconnects that may have arisen during the sale and assure you that your account has been closed and that we will not be charging your card for any amount.

    Please feel free to contact me by phone or email (both are below) if you have any questions or would like to discuss further. If not, have a good weekend and best of luck with Alexander IT.

    Thank you,
    Alex Miller

    —————————————————-
    Alex Miller
    Vice President of Operations, Yext

    So, unless I see a charge on my card about this, I supposed I dodged that bullet! Thank you for this thread, it could have been an expensive lesson…

  • Andrew Shotland  April 13, 2010 at 3:05 pm

    Thanks for the update Russell. I have spoken with Alex in the past and it sounds like they are taking these issues seriously and trying to resolve them as quickly as possible.

  • ABC Computer Solutions  April 14, 2010 at 6:56 am

    They must really be pushing computer repair companies right now. They called and told me that they were getting hits from our zip code for computer repair. The guy was very pushy and wanted (obviously) to sign me up right there on the spot. I made him follow up on Monday (this was Friday.) Lo and behold, he called me early Monday, and I hadn’t reviewed Yext yet. He is going to follow up tomorrow.

    They charge $30 bucks for EVERY call that hits their phone number for you. I entered my zip code on their engine, and I have 3 other competitors in this area. In this economy, people are calling around more looking for the best price. The way I look at it, a customer could potentially call all 4 numbers listed on their directory, and only go with one of the companies (if that.)

    I’ll give the guy that called me this; at least he was honest about the charges (from what I can tell.) I’m all set with their service.

  • RJ  April 14, 2010 at 4:53 pm

    Talk about the hard sell!!! I didn’t like their approach at all! They said they had a couple clients in the area that needed my service, that was a lie. Never start a sales presentation with a lie!

    He also told me that they “scrubbed” 44% of their calls. I can tell you from experience that there is NOW WAY that 66% of calls that come through will be valid calls, no way!

    The only way I would ever do a service like this is if they let me review every call BEFORE being charged. No review, no charge. Short of that, I would steer clear of companies like this unless you have a lot of free time to go back and fight over bogus calls,

    Save your money and invest in your own site. Get a good SEO guy, get going on adwords and put a tracking number in your site. Yes, you will have to spend SOME time working with your campaigns but it will be well worth it.

  • Dr. E  April 15, 2010 at 7:32 pm

    Wanted to say something about my experience with Yext.

    I own a chiropractic office near Philly. Spent a ton of money ($2,500 a month) for six months with little results… less than $500 return per month. Newspaper was a real killer at $270 per week with barely any results.

    So, decided to try Yext after getting a call from a rep. In the summer of 2009, you could make the price you wanted to pay for a call (I believe it started about $29). So if you decided you wanted to pay $30, you’d beat out the competition by a dollar if they offered the minimum. Basically, you’d appear near the top of the listings, rather than at the bottom.

    I barely got any action at all with calls for three months. Then I started getting $10 maintenance fees… when I was told there wasn’t any charge if calls weren’t generated. When I called in, they told me there aren’t any maintenance fees for the first few months… they “waived them”… again, not what I was told.

    Finally, in the fourth month, I got a few calls… three out of four were people just calling around looking for a good deal. They had basically called all around and the chances of actually making that person a customer are slim to none… since they’ve talked to five or more chiropractors in the area.

    The one “good call” was from a woman with not very good insurance… United Health Care… they pay for next to nothing and argue most charges. They are about as bad as any insurance company we’ve dealt with.

    Fast-forward to 2010… things have picked up… we’ve received more calls. More calls to go into the trash bin.

    HOWEVER… we’ve received ONE about a month ago that ended up being a person that had a motor vehicle accident five months ago. The patient has the same type of back pain now, as they did when they had the accident. The patient has now been coming in three times a week for the past month and will be downgraded to two times a week starting this coming week. This one quality call will far exceed the amount we’ve spent through YEXT since the summer. I believe we’ve paid about $200 so far. Heck, we were paying $270 a WEEK for the newspaper ad.

    We have NOT been paid for the accident claim YEXT… I mean YET. We expect to, and if we do… it will make YEXT our most profitable advertising. Go figure.

    I will update when we finally get paid. I would expect that by the end of April.

  • Andrew Shotland  April 15, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    Thanks for the excellent info Dr. E. I think your experience is very typical of local internet marketing – a lot of noise and confusion, but the ROI can be compelling if you stick with it.

  • Tomasz Banas  April 16, 2010 at 7:02 pm

    We have tried Yext for couple of days. $30 per call was pretty expensive as Service Magic and other similar businesses charge $10-15 per call. We received 2 calls in 3 days. All junk, both leads said they have to think about it and will call back very soon, never called back. For us it looks very very suspicious and would never do it again.

  • Dr. E  April 16, 2010 at 8:04 pm

    Tomas… I suppose it depends on the service you provide and how much you can make per client or job.

    As a chiropractor, my clinic stands to make several hundreds to several thousands on one patient… depending on their issues/conditions.

    So, when a call comes in and it cost me $40 (yes, it costs a chiropractor $40)… I have to weigh that cost versus how much I could get with one successful call.

    Last night I posted that we’ve been successful (we haven’t been paid yet, but don’t expect a problem) with one car accident patient. When it’s all said and done, this one patient will likely end up bring in $2,000 to $3,000 for the entire treatment period.

    And it just so happens that today (Friday April 16th) we ended up getting another call from a new patient that scheduled an appointment for Monday. She has Blue Cross Ins. too… which is a pretty good insurance in our area. So, things are looking promising. Regular insurance doesn’t pay as well as an auto insurance claim, but about half of them are decent… Blue Cross is one of them that typically pays well.

    One of the things that I find irritating with Yext is that sometimes you get garbage calls mixed in with the good calls, and they don’t take them out instantly. I had two calls come in that were obviously sales calls, and Yext listed them as “good calls”. The irritating thing is that when you dispute the call through their automated system, there isn’t enough options to explain exactly why you are contesting the call. Allowing a two sentence option to explain why would help greatly in them reversing the decision to charge you. Instead, I’ve requested twice to have two sales calls removed (they were obvious) and both times they were denied. I then had to take the time to call the next day to make them remove them… which they did.

    Last thing I’d like to point out… there is now an option to limit the amount you might potentially pay for the month. I’ve got my limit set at $200. I guess if you hit the limit, they simply pull your listing until the next month.

  • Andrew Shotland  April 17, 2010 at 8:40 am

    Todd Leiser, CEO of Valpak, left this comment which unfortuantely got eaten by my spam filter (no reflection on Todd of course). Check out Todd at http://www.toddleiser.com:

    “This is a great discussion Andrew. Thank you.

    My past experience in providing call tracking services to our customers and listening to hundreds of those calls was, as you called it, “Painful”.

    The number of “junk” calls received will always outweigh the valuable ones. Think about our own inquiry habits. The relative cost to make a phone call of is very low.

    The art is in the advertising of the number and, even more importantly, the category of business. Then you must add into the equation, the ability of the business to convert, or at least, extract value out of the call. The majority of businesses I dealt with didn’t do this well.

    My experience is that the ROI equation on any call tracking or pay per call service is truly dependent on the cost of the product/service and the lifetime value of that customer. If there is no reoccurring business relationship, then the cost of the relatively low number of “good” calls is not going to pan out.

    If I’m a computer or appliance repair company, it’s likely a one time shot and PPCall is maybe not a great choice. If I’m a chiropractor, I have a good chance of getting more than a one time visit out of the prospect. If I’m a kitchen remodeler, then I’ve got a big ticket to work within.

    Pay per call, like any advertising, ain’t easy, exact, or consistently profitable. Done right, the transparency and return can be very valuable as a component of an overall marketing plan.”

  • Bob Dudy  April 18, 2010 at 9:10 pm

    I was a Yext customer (used their service) and in my experience YEXT IS A SCAM! I was charged $20/call for all sorts of junk and garbage calls, their salesman who sold me the service informed me that I would only be charged when a lead generated actual revenue. YEXT IS A TOTAL SCAM! Save your money and use real advertising. At least then you know what you are getting.

    Next Yellow Pages???? PUHLEASE!!

  • Nichole  April 19, 2010 at 6:50 am

    SCAM!! wish I had researched it first. I now owe $40 and have nothing to show for it.

  • Tim Wilson  April 19, 2010 at 11:03 am

    Yeah. I too got screwed over by the YEXT FRAUD. They charge you for crap calls and take your money away. When you complain that is NOT how the service was sold to you, you are told to go pack sand. I only wish I could set back in time and avoid this Yext Scam. My business would be many hundreds of dollars better off.

  • Dr. P  April 20, 2010 at 7:42 am

    I read with interest these posts. What form of advertising can actually guarantee results. I was an enormous skeptic of this service. I ranted and raved on a group web site I belong to about how this just would not work. I had been previously scammed by the Red Book like a yellow pages that charged per call. Then I noticed this service recorded the calls. I decided that if I only got a couple of calls it would be worth it because I could listen and train employees. That is the best aspect of the entire service. Getting patients is great…getting information is priceless.
    Sure we all get hang ups. Even calls from the Yellow pages hang up on us! The important take away is that when they occur, you know if it was just a competitor calling to check your prices. You can also formulate ideas on how to deal with those calls. Otherwise you are just sticking your head in the sand and assuming that no one calls and hangs up.
    I have had numerous calls from my own patients and have always had success in getting credits from Yext. Your problems occur when you do not check your calls for over the time period. Even when I have screwed up and forgotten to check them in a timely fashion, the company has always been fair in adjusting the bill. Yesterday I advised a podiatrist down the walkway from me to sign up. He listened to one of my calls and said that indeed for training and possibly gaining new patients it was worth a try. With other organizations you sign for a year, with Yext, you can get out at any time.
    My only hope is that no one in my area signs up! I want it all to myself.
    Dr. P

  • Chris  April 21, 2010 at 12:27 pm

    This is a great discussion. It mirrors some of what I’ve seen regarding both Yodle and ReachLocal – suggesting that there are lots of frustrated people, although also some businesses experiencing success.

    I think these companies are basically providing a decent service, but seriously need to reign in their salespeople, and better communicate/set expectations. The problem is that I don’t know if the incentive is really there – Yodle is growing fast, and suggesting that it will hit profitability soon.

    Regarding some of the complaints with customer service – I wonder how much of this is related to their being fast growing web startups. They would not be the first companies founded with the idea of having awesome systems that do everything, only realizing later that customers don’t always fit in those systems.

    I wrote a long blog post regarding complaints with these companies as well: http://bit.ly/aSPjWB

  • Andrew Shotland  April 21, 2010 at 12:32 pm

    Interesting observations Chris and spot on. I recommend readers check out Chris’ post.

  • Johnny W.  April 22, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    YEXT has been awesome for my company. Much better in fact, then I could have imagined. Not only has it increased my overall sales but the clients seem to have money to spend, as opposed to the clients I get with other “coupon” type of advertising. The customer service is outstanding!!! I will recommend this service to anyone. Just use the tools they provide and it should’nt be a problem making this system work for you and your business. Anyone who is having difficulty getting business for this service is’nt doing their part as a salesperson. In the 11 years of business nothing has ever come close to YEXT. I will be a YEXT customer for a LONG time!

  • Dr. E  April 23, 2010 at 10:23 pm

    Okay, I’m here to report that yet another Yext person hasn’t shown up for their chiropractic appointment.

    When people other than those who saw us through Yext call up for an appointment, we typically get about a 75% show-up rate.

    With the Yext patients, two out of six have shown up. I guess it’s not that outta wack with the usual average we have… if you consider just having one more show up would drastically change the percentages.

    I can definitely understand the frustration of having to pay $40 for a damn phone call… when the person’s not really serious about your services. A few of my phone calls came from people price shopping and saying they’d come in if your prices are lower than others. So you book the appointment and eventually they don’t show up… yet you lose $40.

    This last girl that called, made the appointment, and then didn’t show. I called her a couple times from the office phone, and of course, she wouldn’t answer. Being a little ticked that I spent $40 on her phone call, I decided to try and call her yet again, but using my cell phone… and she answered. I then asked her if there was something the staff said that bothered her, as I’d like to correct the issue. She then said that “she couldn’t find the place”… which is bull because on the taped initial call, she tells the receptionist she lives right down the street and knows where we are. We are also in a very easy place to find… 500 feet off an exit next to I-95.

    After talking with her a little more… about her back problem, she started telling me how she’s “scared” to come in as she’s never been to a chiropractor. I told her about our practice and reassured her that she had nothing to worry about… I’m very gentle as far as chiropractors go… but she wouldn’t commit to an appointment.

    It’s definitely frustration to pay $40 for something like that… makes you feel like you want to tell the person “Hey, you better get in here… you cost me $40”.

    We STILL have not gotten paid on the car accident patient that’s come in through Yext. Hopefully within the next seven days. We were previously paid approx $250 for a patient for about five visits… not horrible… but not very good.

    I’d say we’ve spent close to $400 between summer 2009 to April 2010 and have $250 so far… with a lot riding on the car accident patient… which will likely be a couple thousand.

    Remember… I use to pay $270 a week for ads in the local paper… and that barely did JACK for several months.

    Will keep you all posted. f

  • Andrew Shotland  April 24, 2010 at 7:55 am

    Great info Dr. E. Thanks for sharing.

  • Marc S.  April 25, 2010 at 4:11 pm

    I own a small Mobile Auto Repair business and have been using Yext for approximately 2 months with limited success. In the beginning, from a per call basis, it was horrible. After moving to a monthly fee of $49.95, I am pleased to say that I am far ahead from an ROI perspective. In this economy, I do receive many calls from perspective customers on a fishing expedition. I only use it because it opens up another avenue to reach prospects at a cost of less than $600/year. I also use Craigslist which has brought several thousand dollars in business this year at a cost of zero.

    What has helped with yext, as someone mentioned above, is a good profile. My profile includes pictures of my van, credentials and other details about the unique service I provide.

    Last year I spent money on advertising with everyone from Yellowbook, diner mats, prescription bags , local newspapers and spent a small fortune with little return. I have learned that constantly communicating with your base of customers and providing them with business cards whenever they called has accomplished more. Also mailing out flyers with information, discounts for referrals has also helped and is the best approach economically.

  • Dustin  April 27, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    I am actually doing some research on YEXT for a possible sales job with them and have been reading over these comments. As the responses have progressed over time, they seem to be trending more positively from the business customer’s standpoint. I guess you might expect that, as a relatively new company, YEXT has been learning from the complaints and working to improve their business practices.

    It seems that the main problem has come from ill-trained and/or undereducated sales people from YEXT creating unrealistic or misleading expectations for their customers (although I did notice a few complaints from people who didn’t seem to be doing their part to ensure the service was working as well for them as it could be). As the YEXT customer service department seems to be improving, if the sales force is prepared and knowledgeable about what their service can do for certain businesses, maybe customer expectations and satisfaction will come into better focus.

    A lot of great insight here! Thanks!

  • Andrew Shotland  April 28, 2010 at 3:30 pm

    Thanks for stopping by Dustin. Definitely keep us posted on how the interview goes.

  • Richard  April 29, 2010 at 7:59 pm

    Half of the people on here sound like shills for Yext. I could be wrong. But it seems the type of language being used for the positive comments about the company are bieng written in such a way as to all sound the same. Every positive comment adds sentenes like they are improving or its a good company. The ones who are writing complaints are speak a different way. The complaints are basically the same but the ranting is completely different from one post to the next. But the ones writing the positive comments are all saying the exact same thing. Dont you guys have anyhting better to do. We already know youre monitoring this article because you asked for the article to be created. And I am pretty sure as an emerging company you cant sit idly by and watch people complain about your company without trying to balance it out with positive stuff. So instead of actually trying to better youre company so that real people will say good stuff about you you make up stuff and still try to take people for their money.

    You can make more money honestly than you ever can dishonestly. If you were honest this article would not exist. There would be another article along the lines of “yext the next best thing in advertising”

  • Andrew Shotland  May 4, 2010 at 7:04 pm

    I don’t want to support or deny Richard’s unsubstantiated claims (anonymously posted btw) but then again I did find it a bit strange that Dustin would post a comment if he were interviewing for a job with the company.

  • PCTech scammed by Yext  May 4, 2010 at 7:29 pm

    Richard, I think I’ll have to agree with you…. they all sound the same… even using the same language! Our company never signed up with Yext, but Will the salesman who called our business claiming to be Yext Computer Repair tried to tell us that he was a local repair company that was looking for a third party contractor to take calls in our local area because they only do business in one portion of the Denver Metro area. He further claimed that we would only be responsible for paying a flat fee for each call we responded to for his business. It wasn’t until doing some research on Yext, Inc. that we discovered they’re merely a directory. It was absolutely unbelievable how this guy misrepresented himself. So much so,I filed a complaint the Attorney Generals Office in my state. To make an otherwise long story short, we denied Will’s offer to do business – never signed a TOS with him and now our business no longer show’s up in the major search engines. You search our business name, and Yext’s directory show’s up. None of the major engines even recognize our URL since turning Yext down on their offer. All of them recognized our URL prior to being contacted by Yext to join their cult! This company is not only awful , its a flat out scam!!!!

  • PCTech scammed by Yext  May 4, 2010 at 7:39 pm

    Dustin states:” It seems that the main problem has come from ill-trained and/or undereducated sales people from YEXT creating unrealistic or misleading expectations for their customers (although I did notice a few complaints from people who didn’t seem to be doing their part to ensure the service was working as well for them as it could be).”…. well Dustin, ill trained / undereducated doesn’t even come close to describing fraudulent misrepresentation! I’ve read the others on here who have been scammed by Yext and I have to say, I feel better knowing our company wasn’t the only one and merely wait for the lawsuits that will surely follow!

  • yextequalspuke  May 4, 2010 at 7:49 pm

    Yext is a company that is run by a bunch of foolish kids, They have a scam going on with a few of the search engines. They will pre-cache your page with all your key words before ever calling or talking to you about it. They do not even bother waiting to see if you are willing to work with them. They will do this days before calling you. Your key words and company name is cached on a search engine in their site’s about us section. What this does is when anyone searches using your keywords or company name, The cached shows up. And in most search engines if two pages have the same keywords company name or seems cloned. The search engine drops the page with the lessor ranking. Yext has a high ranking because they pay for ads on these search engines. Which is fine. But if you try and get their cache deleted. They refuse because yext.com is still an active url. Its not hard to do. But they get around the company names and stuff by using a – or anything else. But in the eye’s of the search engines it is all the same. Yext is a rip off.

  • l33tprogrammer  May 4, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    Yext is a company that is run by a bunch of foolish kids, They have a scam going on with a few of the search engines. They will pre-cache your page with all your key words before ever calling or talking to you about it. They do not even bother waiting to see if you are willing to work with them. They will do this days before calling you. Your key words and company name is cached on a search engine in their site’s about us section. What this does is when anyone searches using your keywords or company name, The cached shows up. And in most search engines if two pages have the same keywords company name or seems cloned. The search engine drops the page with the lessor ranking. Yext has a high ranking because they pay for ads on these search engines. Which is fine. But if you try and get their cache deleted. They refuse because yext.com is still an active url. Its not hard to do. But they get around the company names and stuff by using a – or anything else. But in the eye’s of the search engines it is all the same. Yext is a rip off.

  • Richard Morris  May 4, 2010 at 9:26 pm

    I use skype for all my day to day business phone calls. skype offers me the ability to record all my phone conversations with a free plugin called Skype call recorder. I mark my phone calls when they are done by date time and who the phone call was to. So it is possible that I still have the recording. I will look for it.
    Andrew, I am not trying to ruin your blog or anything, I am just telling you exactly what happened with my dealing with Yext. I do not ask you to support or deny what I said. I really dont care what you or anyone else believes. I do to the point that this sales rep I talked to reaaly %^&% me off. I also had to cancel my bank card. For you to add the words “unsubstantiated claims” about my comments is wrong. everybody writing here on your blog about yext, all have unsubstantiated claims. Also my post was not “anonymously posted ” My Name and email address was filled out in the comments field.

    Besides now the true technical side of yext is coming out.

    This will also be my last post with your blog. I have my expeirence with yext posted with other websites like ripoff report and complaints board. I urge everyone who has problems with this company to go there and post their issues. I figure this page here wont be here much longer. Yext is probably chomping at the bit to get it removed. The other 2 places I mentioned will never remove them.

    I know the flaming will start so go ahead. I wont be getting caught up in petty flaming.

    THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

  • Andrew Shotland  May 4, 2010 at 9:27 pm

    Ok PCTech I may have misunderstood what you are saying because I think you said that because you didn’t do business with Yext your website is not showing up in the search engines? If that is in fact what you meant I can assure that is pretty much an impossibility. Maybe your URL on Yext didn’t show up but not your own URL.

    l33tprogrammer, if you are saying they create a page for your business and try to get it ranked for queries for your business name, that’s pretty much what every local search company does. With a little bit of work any SMB should be able to outrank any local search site for queries for their own name.

  • Andrew Shotland  May 4, 2010 at 9:51 pm

    Hey Richard, you are not ruining my blog – I do a pretty good job of that on my own – it was not my intention to piss you off and my comment has been edited to hopefully prove that. And I do think you have a point about the nature of some of the positive comments. So feel free to post what you want. No one is going to remove your comments.

    BTW the one thing I did object to was your use of “%^&%”. If you are going to use this kind of language on my site I’d appreciate it if you used the grown-up version 🙂

  • PCTech scammed by Yext  May 7, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    Well Andrew, I’ll just refer you to l33tprogrammer’s response. Sounds like I’m not the only one to experience this. Btw, what is your position with Yext?

    Richard,

    Thanks for referring the Complaint Board. I’ve already posted my issues on Ripoff Report as well. Perhaps if enough people are made aware of the misrepresentation Yext engages in there will be fewer victims of this company’s fraud.

  • l33tprogrammer  May 7, 2010 at 6:01 pm

    No, Maybe you need to read for a change, And stop just skimming. I’m not going to re-type everything I said so you can skim again and come up with a diluted thought. Just so you know, I’m saying in a nice way that you got what I said WRONG.

    Try reading it again. Maybe if you read it slower you may get it. I know for you people with a short iq get frustrated with stuff that you do not know about. Its ok, Read it a few times, Read it slowly. Read it like you read a bible in jail. Take you sweet time with it.

    And before you try to tell me I do not know what I am talking about. I have a BA in Computer Science. And getting my Masters.

    SO. READ. SLOWLY.

  • foot doc  May 7, 2010 at 11:44 pm

    for the record, i am a real person with no relationship with yext except that i use their service. If you want real language, here it goes. I’m not a computer geek nor do I think I can understand a lot of the jargon you guys use. what is obvious to me is that certain professions can do well with this style of advertising (Physicians) and certain ones cannot (computer repair or car repair).

    Do i think there is misrepresentation here? yes. you can call it fraud or lying or stealing. anyone that is taken advantage of will speak their mind somewhere to feel better about their situation.

    like the chiropractor was saying, one good call can balance out several bad ones. if you know the rules then choose to play or choose not to. you guys that got screwed have all the right in the world to be pissed. But the site is doing pretty good for me so just go after the industries that are damaged by their efforts not those that benefit.

    thank you and if these comments hurt anyones feeling SUCK IT. is that real enough……

  • Pitstop Appliance Repair  May 8, 2010 at 7:32 am

    I think a lot of the responses here are degrading to rude, borderline hostile. I don’t care who went for school for how long or for what.

    Back on topic- for the record, we are still using Yext. In the 3 1/2 months since we started we have had 65+ actual customers that have scheduled an appointment with us. We have had 4-5 times we were charged for people calling price shopping. It ticks me off, but I’m still better off with Yext than without.

    Oops,… I had planned on typing more, but the phone just rang and a customer scheduled. I’m off to take care of business (Sat charges are extra!)

    *I logged in and checked the Yext website and this call came from them. Thanks Yext!

  • Dr. E  May 8, 2010 at 11:57 am

    Yeah, I too could care less who has what schooling… doesn’t make me better than a guy that owns a body shop, or less than an MD that thinks he’s “the real doctor”.

    We are all here to share our experience with Yext… that’s the bottom line.

    To say that Yext is a SCAM because you’ve had few callers that decided not to go with your service is premature at best.

    Most advertising takes time, so it’s likely no matter what advertising you do, you’re going to spend several hundreds of dollars if not thousands of dollars before you see a decent return.

    I can totally understand the frustration of having to pay for someone that’s “window shopping”. It’s happened to me on more than half the calls. But it only takes one good one, to make serious money and make it worth your while.

    I had mentioned that I haven’t had much success with my Yext calls… so far since last summer we’ve spent about $300 to $350 and have received that much in payments of patients.

    An update on the car accident patient I received through Yext: Because there was an eight month delay from her accident to the start of treatment, a review is being done on the case, so it will likely take another month to six weeks to figure out what they will pay. The patient’s pain would come and go, and has recently become worse… and the reason she is just now coming in for treatment.

    Yext is NOT a scam simply because you don’t have a 100% conversion rate… if that’s what you’re looking for, you might as well not advertise.

  • Lewis Computer Services  May 11, 2010 at 7:23 am

    I received a call from them this morning, initially asking if I fixed Mac computers and if we did residential customers. I responded in the affirmative but thought it was a subcontracting company and told them we don’t do subcontracting. She told me she had clients for me and that they were a different company, and that I would be exclusive to my ZIP code and service radius and that they needed someone for my area.

    I had to turn off Adblock (I have a feeling they’re bidding extremely high on their keywords so they’re the only one that appears) to see their site, and when I punched in the ZIP I service I saw one of my competitors. So much for the first claim that they needed someone for my ZIP.

    Then she goes on to tell me about how I would get a phone number and all, but that seems counter-intuitive: I’ve spent years building my brand and marketing my company with a certain phone number, why would I confuse clients with multiple numbers? In my experience, clients write down one phone number and use it exclusively, even if you give them new cards/info.

    The one thing I can say that works time and time again is good old fashioned customer service and word of mouth. You treat your customers like royalty and they’ll spread the good word.

    Glad I found this site to read the good and bad, it seems that for my situation this won’t be worth it.

  • Brandon Meyer  May 11, 2010 at 9:50 am

    I was just called by yext and a very pushy sales person was trying to sell me magic leads at 30 dollars each. They were upset by the thoughts of me contacting a customer for there opinion and when I told them that I wanted to wait 24 hours and think about it they got more aggressive. This site saved me money. I put the man on hold and navigated here after reading the post I realized that this could have been a big time wasting mistake.

  • Crossed lines!!!! I signed up with Yext, and boy am I sorry. Although I immediately started getting genuine business, they somehow forwarded six other phone lines to my phone. One of which was a major hospital, and one was Dominoes Pizza. I was getting all kinds of wrong calls all day and night.

    What’s worse is I was charged for all of them. I was over-charged $560.00 and had to fight to get it back. They did give it to me, but because of all the hassle, I discontinued the service.

    However, I am still getting calls from people dialing completely different numbers than mine. I know that they are because of Yext because I get the Yext “calls are being recorded”.

    So I complained to Yext and they said it is on my end – which is not true.

    Although I am making money still from the customers Yext generated, my time is valuable and I don’t have time to deal with all the problems that come with Yext!

    Dr. Jeff Dougal
    Portland Massage and Chiropractic Services

  • Charles  May 18, 2010 at 6:54 pm

    I think a lot of people are missing the point of yext. It is not a perfect advertising service but for the 10 years I have owned my business, not a single marketing venture we have done has produced a 100% conversion rate, it just does not work that way people.

    We as a company have spent many thousands of dollars on creating a website, trying to buy adwords on our own, hiring a guy to handle our SEO and SEM with little to no results. Yext not only puts you at the top of Google but almost 20 other major search engines. This provides our business the maximum amount of internet exposure we need.

    Now in regards to the call recordings and the “relevant” leads they send our way, yeah sometimes crappy one’s get through but their support team has been nothing short of professional and prompt in their responses. Not every lead turns into a job and it certainly bugs me, but my company is much better off with Yext than without.

    If you are too afraid to invest a couple hundred bucks to see if a very worthwhile and legitimate service actually helps your business than keep moping about a young aggressive sales force trying to get you to sign up.

  • Charles,
    Once again, I did get some great business, but don’t have time for all the bad calls.

    I still have at least two crossed lines coming to my phone which are misdirected from Yext. I am not getting billed for them at this point, but they interfere with my time.

    If I was dead slow and had time to deal with all the problems, I would recommend them. Fortunately I am very busy and don’t have time to deal with false leads, billing problems, and crossed lines.

    Regards to All,
    Dr. Jeff Dougal
    Portland OR

  • Richard Morris  May 26, 2010 at 8:09 am

    Is that all he does is checks them? Does he even try to fix any of the problems occurring here? Why doesnt he post anything? 4 times a week is a good bit.

    I would like to see someone from yext fixing these issues. Maybe posting and getting in touch with the people who have been screwed if for nothing else but to say “we are sorry”

    Listen Yext. You can avoid the class action lawsuit coming your way and still make your business model viable. Your company will close down and be sued unless you try to solve the types of complaints here. By posting comments right along with us other people will see that you are trying to fix the issues that we are talking about. Contact us and help us through the posts here. Dont be a stalker comment on our comments. Come in and join us. It would be nice to see a few posts along the lines of ” Yext solved my problem and the customer service has greatly improved”

  • Yeah seriously. They could really be a great company if the problems were fixed. But at this time, I’m too busy to call them again and try to get the problems I’m still having fixed.

    I still have at least two crossed lines coming to me from Yext. Last time I called about it they said it was on my end – but it’s not. When I get a wrong number, I ask what number they called and write it down. When I call the number, I get my phone with the “This call is being recorded” – which is the same as the Yext numbers that they gave me.

    I suppose that I should spend this time calling them again, or writing them instead of here, but I want others to know what happened so it doesn’t happen to them.

    Also, as Mr. Morris hopes, maybe a concerned Yext rep will read this and give me a call – and probably tell me it’s on my end. LOL

  • RE: Online Lead Generation  May 26, 2010 at 9:56 am

    The way Yext handles their lead gen seems ok to me. You just need to understand that getting a lot of junk is expected with the type of operation they have. It takes massive amounts of human labor to really generate high-quality leads, especially leads that are delivered as a paying customer like we do for our service based clients (and they gladly pay a premium because it’s profitable).

    As a small business owner I don’t mind if I spend $200 on a mixed bag of leads as long as I made $1000 in profit from that $200 spend (Our clients typically see a 300-to-600% ROI from our services and I make roughly the same from my clients).

    As mentioned in an earlier comment, there are other factors to consider, such as the amount of time spent following up with your leads and other soft dollar costs.

    Conduct a self-audit (this applies to SMB’s, marketing managers and CMO’s alike) and examine how your potential customers interact with your business.

    Put yourself in your customers shoes and walk through the customer experience process from start to finish and ask yourself some questions along the way.

    1. Do my customer service people suck? (If they do, why? Do they need additional training, incentives or morale boost?).
    2. Does my phone system work properly (clarity, easy navigation menu, long holding times, annoying music, no music, pick-up on the second ring or you rarely pick up at all? etc.)
    3. Do I call the leads within 3-5 minutes of receiving it, wait until after lunch or you’ll get it the next day?
    4. Other questions would be: Is my pricing competitive? Do I stay abreast of new technology or my competition? Do I upsell? Do I not charge enough?

    You get my point.

    After 4+ years in online marketing I’ve spent my fair share of money on utter garbage but I’ve also made a lot of money online. A lot of it comes down to experience (or working with someone who has experience) and knowing which channels of online advertising are right for your business.

  • Andrew Shotland  May 26, 2010 at 10:37 am

    “Do I call the leads within 3-5 minutes of receiving it, wait until after lunch or you’ll get it the next day?”

    #1 prob with SMB marketing as far as I can tell.

  • Richard Morris  May 27, 2010 at 4:53 pm

    So how about it Yext? Are you going to join us?

  • Mike Coday  May 27, 2010 at 9:22 pm

    Many SMB’s would be amazed to know how much local businesses pay to make their phone ring using traditional paid search programs (e.g. AdWords).

    If Yext’s technology is screening out 66% of the phone calls and only charging for the balance, these SMB’s are only paying a fraction per call compared with their peers.

    Honestly, $40 phone calls are a bargain in most verticals… regardless of whether or not they are legitimate.

  • Richard Morris  May 27, 2010 at 11:05 pm

    You know what, thats a load of crock Mike. Nobody is going to pay $40 for a phone call that is not legit. Thats not even right.
    Thats the most outlandish thing I have heard yet on this site.
    4 or 5 of those a month is 200 hundred dollars a month just being flushed down the toilet.

    since we are making stuff up here:
    lets say i receive 1000 phone calls a month
    666 of them are not legit and deleted
    333 phone calls are left
    out of those 333, 100 are not legit for whatever reason
    100 x 40 = 4000 dollars are month

    thats $4000 dallars a month

    4000 x 12 = 48000

    $48000 per year on nothing

    why even say “Honestly, $40 phone calls are a bargain in most verticals… regardless of whether or not they are legitimate”

    I would rather hang myself than let some company ream me like that. However to each their own. If somebody wants to do that, well then thats their choice.

    But it is very apparent through all the posts here except for yours mike, that nobody is gonna let a company rip them off or anybody else if they can help it. Yext is truly doing people wrong here. And they know it.

    Sorry Mike about me being an asshole about your post. But their is just so many people getting ripped off by companies these days that conumers need to stand together until someone fixes things and makes it right. Yext is still doing this to people.

    http://www.merareview.com/28959/-yext-is-a-total-scam!.html

    http://www.complaintsboard.com/bycompany/yext-a217274.html

    http://www.complaintsboard.com/?search=yext&everything=Everything

    I really dont know what to say to everyone here.

    Yext is a terrible company and I have not too many more people get ripped off.
    Or Maybe Yext will fix themselves and take care of the people who have had problems.

    I doubt it though. I have seen too many fly by night companies and no doubt Yext is one of those.

    Ill end this comment with the same post I used the last time because I would like to see Yext here talking with us

    So how about it Yext? Are you going to join us?

  • Dr. E  May 27, 2010 at 11:50 pm

    Richard…

    I understand you’re upset at losing money. I understand the frustration of getting a call that was absolutely garbage… and perhaps the person was just “window shopping” and called five different people for the same job. That means at least four people are going to lose the job, if not all of them.

    But what you’ve got to understand, is ALL advertising is a crap-shoot. I was spending 270 freaking dollars a week on advertising in the newspaper… and was getting next to nothing for a return. I did that stupid Ad Cart.. where they put together an ad for you (the ad was actually pretty good) and they put it on 150 or so shopping carts in a grocery store. We got ZERO people from that and it cost us about $2,700 for six months. Of course, every time some advertiser comes into your office to pitch their advertising, they make it out to be the best thing since sliced bread.

    You know what the best part about advertising is? You advertise in three or four different places at the same time… to cover your bases and “brand” yourself. All so you can bleed out faster, and ALL the while the only calls that come into your office are MORE advertisers trying to sell you their advertising. Because they see your other advertising and figure you’ve got money.

    Actually, Yext is one of the best opportunities (for someone like me… a chiropractor) to make money. It’s not that much a risk… you can limit your monthly cost and you can quit at any time. And in our field, it only takes ONE nice case that works out, to make a good amount of money.

    I had a few so-so patients come in… a few that just wanted a quick little adjustment, and basically I made a couple dollars. I’d probably spent $300 to $400 since last summer… and probably made about that much back in that same time. However, I do have the one accident patient that the insurance company is “reviewing the case” and whether they are going to pay because there was a several month lag time in treatment. It happens, as some patients try using pain killers and eventually get sick of them, get use to them or can’t tolerate them at all anymore.

    I should know within the next 10 days whether or not the car insurance company is going to pay the claim or not. If they do, it will bring in at least 3,000… if not, the patient still has regular insurance which will still end up bringing in $1,500 or so. The problem with that is, the patient will have to pay the co-pay they haven’t been paying, because we were assuming the car insurance company was going to pay.

    These car insurance companies are really getting bad with reimbursement. If there is one car insurance company that has always come through… or reimburses well, it’s State Farm.

    United Health Care is a JOKE and will do whatever they can to weasel their way out of paying for anything. They sometimes contract a 3rd party to fax us these offers to accept payment within 10 days for a lower accept payment than was billed. At first, it’s okay… say the bill is $300 for a few days of therapy. They send over an offer to settle for $240 or so. Next time they have an offer, they’ll reduce it because you accepted the last one and they want to see how low you’ll go. So instead of $240, it will be $180. If you accept that one, the next offer will be $125. Then they get down to about 10 percent (yeah, that’s right… $30 on a $300 bill, and you want to grab through the phone/fax line and choke them out.

  • Richard Morris  May 28, 2010 at 7:35 am

    The thing is I didnt lose money. If you check out post 45 you can see what hppeppened with my experience with Yext. Anyway whenever a company has salesman who act like the guy I talked to you know that there is something wrong with this comoany.

    So how about it Yext? Are you going to join us?

  • Frank  May 28, 2010 at 2:04 pm

    I am beginning to believe that some of the lookie-look calls are generated by yext themselves in order to keep the cash pumping in. I have a computer repair service and most of the customers only want a quote, and tell me they will get back to me. EACH NON-SERIOUS CUSTOMER COSTS ME $30!!!!!!!

  • Chris Reilly  May 28, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    Hey Frank, try this:

    Ask each customer for their e-mail address, then tell them you’ll send an e-mail quote. Set up an account with AWeber or other e-mail autoresponder and do a drip marketing program where they get a weekly e-mail from you with computer tips. I know a guy in town here who does that and closes a ton of business. He even drops in the occasional affiliate offer and makes some money off that.

    You can get on his list here:
    http://www.spokanecomputercommando.com/

    It sounds like people are shopping you just to compare pricing to the geek squad.

  • Andrew Shotland  May 28, 2010 at 2:21 pm

    Excellent tip Chris. For those of you looking for some great local seo help, I recommend clicking on Chris’ profile.

  • Andrew Shotland  May 28, 2010 at 2:21 pm

    BTW we are now at over 100 comments. Really appreciate all of the input and conversation from you guys.

  • Alan Anderson  May 29, 2010 at 4:29 pm

    I also was talked into Yext and the first month I found I had several calls to me but none of them generated any service calls. When I called Yext to complain they deducted some of the charges but talked me into staying with them. The next month I was charged for several more calls and only one of them generated a service call and that SOB refused to pay! I called Yext again but they refused to reduce the charges and so I discontinued their service about $60 poorer but a bit smarter.

  • Julie  June 2, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    auto repair boulder: Don’t do it…

  • Richard Morris  June 2, 2010 at 5:36 pm

    where is yext? are they still monitoring these comments. They havent responded to anything yet. they must not care what complaints they are recieving!

    Are you going to join in theese comments Yext?
    I could go through the list of names but typing Yext is easier.

    I did a google searh for “Yext is Great”. Guess what I found?

    I did a google search for “Yext Complaints” Guess what I found?

    You assholes over at Yext apparently dont give a shit about what you put people through. 3 weeks without a debit card because you didnt want to close my account. You need to apologize to me and all the other people here. And youneed to make restituiton to the people who you screwed. Until then I will continue to post everywhere that yext rips people off. soon all you will have to do is google “Yext” and nothing but complaints will come up.

    Yext eeds to man up and explain themselves to their customers!

    Come on here and talk to us Yext.

  • I recently received a call from a Yext rep. He reviewed my account and stopped the crossed lines from calling my phone.

    So, they are reading these threads.

  • Charles  June 4, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Hello everyone,

    Just wanted to update everyone with my Yext experience but before doing so wanted to respond to Mr. Morris’ personal crusade against Yext.

    You seem really unintelligent, belligerent and I can understand 100% why a service like this wouldn’t work for you. From my perspective I don’t even think you actually used Yext because if my theories are correct we work in the same industry and the “leads” are not 40 dollars a pop. Could be wrong but thats just the vibe I get from your posts.

    Now in response to post 102, I will give ACTUAL results, not just some theoretical #’s you thought would strengthen your argument:

    In 86 days of Yext service we have received 97 phone calls, of the 97 calls 34 of them were deemed relevant leads by Yext’s calling system. In listening to all of our calls we felt that 2 “relevant” leads they sent to us were not up to our standards so in a calm and professional manner we e-mailed them the call, gave our rebuttal as to why we did not think it can be considered a lead and 3 days later the leads were credited.

    Of the 32 billable leads we were given, we converted 20 jobs that generated revenue. For argument’s sake our average Yext job goes for about 100 bucks, that means we got 2000 dollars worth of revenue on 640 dollars of advertising. Not terrible ROI for my business.

    Now for those who think I am drinking the Yext cool-aid, you are wrong. I find it very tedious going back and checking calls and making sure they become jobs. Its annoying as hell but in this ever changing internet marketing environment and more importantly volatile economic conditions, I will do whatever it takes to keep my business going.

    P.S. Richard I did your challenge to Google Yext and yeah I found some complaints but I also saw something that seems to me that they are growing a hell of a lot faster than you are building your “class action”lawsuit against them.

    http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/02/yext-superpage/

    Good luck to all and I will keep everyone updated.

  • Andrew Shotland  June 4, 2010 at 4:29 pm

    Thanks for the great info Charles.

    There are definitely strong feelings on either side of this discussion and to date I have let the emotion flow freely. I don’t want to edit anybody, but I’d rather not see this discussion descend into whining and name-calling.

    That’s what my children are for 😛

  • Charles  June 4, 2010 at 5:00 pm

    I apologize, no whines here. I just think that if you are going to play in the big leagues with trying to expand your business through using the internet you need to understand the rules beforehand, be willing to invest a decent amount of money and evaluate your ROI based upon the numbers, not emotional reactions to day to day results. That is all.

  • Yes Charles. That was pretty heavy handed. When you start name calling, you lose a lot of credibility with me.

    You’d be better off sticking to the facts than getting personal. Mr. Morris makes some good points.

  • Chris Reilly  June 4, 2010 at 5:14 pm

    Charles, I agree with your point- if you see my comment that was literally 100 comments ago on this post, I was pointing to the fact that the flexibility/granular nature of the pay per call model inclines advertisers to hold their marketing dollars to unrealistic standards. If Yellowpages advertising used the “pay per call” model vs the “huge monthly fee” model, they would undoubtedly suffer the same criticisms leveled at Yext.

    I don’t fault anybody for being frustrated, though! Having sold leads professionally, I dreaded the calls from advertisers about lead quality. Having purchased leads, I found myself “cherry-picking” the tightest filters and being overly obsessed with the quality of individual leads. The systems in place actually create these dynamics by nature, which is why I’ve avoided the model for my work with clients. Ultimately, the people calling these numbers have no idea that they are costing the business any marketing dollars, and simply want to know what they want to know. I contend that the only way to get a really good internet lead is to have a really good website that:

    – Explains your unique selling proposition
    – Clearly identifies what you do and do not do
    – Clearly explains who you work best with and who you don’t
    – Provides testimonials from people that look/feel like the customers you’d like to get more of
    – Offers a clear, compelling call to action for those that are “ready” to get started with your products/services.

    Unfortunately, my own website does none of those things very well… I should get to work on that and stop letting my e-mails get the better of me : )

  • Andrew Shotland  June 4, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    Hey Charles, my comment was not directed towards you. I just wanted to give future posters a little encouragement to keep it a bit more civil

  • Charles  June 4, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    Heavy Handed? Read Richard’s out of control post, # 113 and tell me who is belligerent . I come to these forums and many others to find ways to improve my business through communicating with other owners about sales and marketing strategies.

    Throwing random numbers out and constantly talking about how terrible of a company it is detracts from the point of these websites, which is to educate the uneducated.

    2 years ago I knew nothing about SEO, SEM, adwords, nothing but by going to sites like these and having open discussions with more knowledgeable people about what works and what doesn’t work has helped my business evolve.

    I did not mean to offend you Richard and I’m sorry for using such harsh language, I just don’t think that this forum should be your soap box to bash Yext.

  • Richard Morris  June 5, 2010 at 8:13 am

    its alright. I have yet to receive anything from yext. I am glad they call Portland Massage and fixed that problem.

    The actual cost for me would have been 30 dollars. So in my post where it says 40 dollars I was going off the numbers that a previous psoter made when he was trying to say yext was well worth it and he would pay for the them for the illegitmate calls.

    You apparently didnt read this entire comments page charles or you would have never said what you said.

    and further more just who are you. youre a new poster who hasnt posted here before. and youre first and every other post was to slam me. Do you work for Yext? There is no billegerence in any of my posts.

    You seem very emotional on my statements about Yext. but you didnt really read all the comments. If youre here to learn about yext then you should have read all the comments. You definitly did not read post 45 which if you had you would have understood (maybe). Anyhow, Next time read all the posts.

    Yext has lied to people which is apparent throughout this entire column. they have lied just to take peoples money. they have defrauded people and lied. Or in other words ripped people off. They had no prblems with defrauding me and forcing me to have to go through what I had to go through.

    I am very hapy Yext called Portland Massage and Finaaly owned up to their mistake with them. They lied to Portland Massage and told them the crossed lines were on his end. Then one day out of the blue Yext called them up and said we are going to fix this for you. And they did. Would they have done that if I had not been trying to get yext to call people back and fix their mistakes. Possibly.

    All I want from Yext is an apology and for them to stop ripping people off. They need to work with their customers and help them when they have problems instead of hanging them out to dry.

    And Charles please read everything here before you slam me again.Thanks

  • Richard Morris  June 5, 2010 at 12:13 pm

    also of an ineresting note, this looks like the first time you have ever posted anything on this website charles. I searched for you name across this entire website and I found comments by Charles Laughlin and charles lewis. No comments from any other charles until this particular column.

    You seem extordinarily emotional for no reason whatsoever. Your only purpose was to slam me. Instead of saying I was wrong you resorted to name calling and tried to… honestly I dont know what you were trying to accomplish, but you said some rude things to me.

    The only reason Im here posting comments is to help people and myself to get some resolution for the things yext has done to us. They have wronged a lot of people. Im not the only one. read the entire column.

    I beleive now that there is enough information on the web that if people do google yext they will see for their own wether or not Yext is a good company. There are complaints and there are other posts with people saying things like yext fixed their problem.

    Just because you came on here and tried to demolish what it was I was trying to do means nothing.

    Yext still needs to come on here and talk to us. Yext still needs to help the people posting comments here to fix their problems. They neeed to participate in this column.

    I am still dealing with issues over Yext and having to cancel my credit card. I thought it was over but its not. I deal with companies all day long 24/7 it seems like. I know when a company is out there to help or out there to lie and give you the run around. Assuming you are who you say you are charles how much per hour are you getting paid going through all those phone calls trying to determine what is legit and what is not. That should never be your job. Your suppose to lessen your paperwork. Not create a whole bunch more. are you losing extra time with your family because you have to sift through phone calls. I am losing time with my family to sit here and type up all of this to try and make people aware. So all in all Yext seems to be a crappy company.

    charles site:localseoguide.com

  • I also think that we all have things we like about Yext and things we hate about it.

    I think we are all working together here to try to make Yext work!

    I got customers immediately. That’s awesome!!!

    I ended up making much, much more money than I was overcharged by Yext.

    I still am not ready to do business with them until some problems are worked out. I feel that because of this dialogue, Yext is working on the problems that I and others have. I see improvements in all aspects – and because of that, I will probably do business with them in the future.

  • Charles  June 6, 2010 at 1:10 pm

    Post # 92 was mine if you read my previous comments. My job as a business owner is to expand my business and keep it open. Yeah listening to calls takes away from my time but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get through.

  • joel  June 7, 2010 at 7:43 am

    Richard,

    I am considering working with Yext for my Appliance repair company. Let me just understand something, what exactly did Yext do to you? If you signed up with them and they don’t charge you anything up front, and you cancelled with the same 24 hours, why did you cancel your credit card? There is another post from someone else who said he signed up and cancelled and was worried but didn’t have any problems. You seem to be the only one in recent months that has excessive complaints. And all the complaints you posted to other sites are the same ones that were posted here. So what is it that actually made you so mad?

    Charles, really liked reading what you wrote. I’m getting more and more into the internet and learning, and these are the places I like to read stuff.

  • Richard Morris  June 8, 2010 at 9:06 am

    They wouldnt end my account. It was a couple of days later. They called on a friday and I called to cancel on a monday. The salesman on the phone wouldnt close my account. He just kept repeating over and over “why do you want to end your account”
    This went on and on for close to 25 minutes. I said I just changed my mind and he pretended not to hear that. Just kept saying the same thing over and over and over and over. I tried to get a supervisor and once again he just kept repeating himself. I finally just said look if you dont want to end my account Ill call and cancel my card and I hung up on him and called the bank and said I think i might have been scammed and this company wont end my account I think I need to Cancel. And they did. But now my bank has been several weeks in getting me a new one only to find out they shipped it to the wrong place and now I have to wait for another one. Hence the post where I cuss

    It is extremely frustating to have to deal with a company like this. I am constantly on the phone with companies every single day. So I am use to dealing with companies. You can tell when youre getting the run around and when youre not.

    However I have never been treated the way Yext treated me on the phone. Never. I have had companies lie to me but never outright treat me the way this salesperson did. In all honesty if I had known where he was I would have driven over there and kicked the shit out of him. I take back what i said, I was treated like this by 1 other company and I started a class action lawsuit and won. For me things arent about money, its human decency. I give everyone respect and I demand respect back. I would never in my life talk to someone like this salesman talked to me.

    I really really wish I still had this recording. Normally I use skype when i call companies and use a recording plugin to record all my skype calls. that way if a company lies to me well I have the recording. Skye is a wonderful program for that. I normally keep the recordings if something wierd happened or they promised me something but i delete them if it is an everyday run of the mill call. I have searched trough them thinking I had the phone call and would try to post it. But I dont know what happened to it. Either I didnt use skype when I called them or I accidently deleted it. For this I am sorry. I wish everyone here could here it. I feel I was treated like a nonhuman or something. I dont know if anyone here has ever felt that but thats the way it was.

    Now I am still dealing with yext issues because now i have to wait even longer for my bank card.

    Now Joe, I have only posted one complaint and that was on complaintsboard. Besides what ive said here, complaintsboard is the only other website that i have posted to. So I dont know what you are referring to as far as me posting all the complaints everywhere because that is not the case. Do you have a link to some where else i have posted?

    Also I am not into doing a class action lawsuit. I have been involved in several class action lawsuits of which only 1 was started by me. The rest I had no clue about I just received a check.

    Also I dont remember what their terms were when they talked me into doing it. I think it was 30 dollars a call + a monthly maintenance fee and I think there was some other fee but just cant remember.

    Its coming to the point when corporations are going to have to start answeriing to the consumer. Corporations cant go on forever ripping people off. People are getting tired of it. I have seen people got out and spend $2000 dollars on a tv only to have it go bad as soon as the warranty is up and the company wont do anything about it. That was just an example. Consumer affairs.com has all sorts of things posted that are mostly about companies and corporations that are doing people wrong. Once all this filesharing stuff is over with people wil need something else to do and I bet they move towards talking about these corporations

    Anyways did I mention I hate typing.

    The point is Yext reminds me of another company called Prism Pointe Technologies. On their website it says they have a 97.2 customer satisfaction rating. However, They have not paid their contractors. I havent been paid in 2 years. They still owe me money. Im okay with that. I cant remember what happened exactly but I think they were signed on to do and take care of warranties for some company and then that company went bankrupt so Prism Pointe was left holding the bag. But their customer satisfaction rating is no where near 97.2%. Those are false numbers put out by the company. I know for a fact that the majority of their customers are not happy. Prism Pointe cant have techs go out to fix the computers because they cant pay the techs. So customers are xtremely upset. Not just residential but business customers as well. Anyway another company lying to people on a consistent basis.

    Im rambling now Im done typing for today.

  • Richard Morris  June 8, 2010 at 9:35 am

    Oh and Charles If you want to improve and expand your business then quit sorting through phone calls and start visiting your customers. Go door to door. If you sold something to 1 person call them up and see how they are doing. Go by and see them. See if what you sold them are still meeting their needs. Maybe you will meet some of their other family and they might need something you have to offer.

    People are bombarded with ads day and night and most people dont know what they want. They want to be told what to buy. Why have an ad in a sea of ads and leave it solely up to the ads to tell your customers what they want. I think its a load of crock. People are growing weary of big companies and havig to speak with people in other countries when something goes wrong. People want a local person who speaks english for starters but they also want to be able to call and get something resolved right away instead of spending hours on the phone. They want to be able to hear “Not a problem Ill be right over”

    An ad in a sea of ads is not a good idea. You need to be able to persnoally say to your customer “this is what you want to buy” And if you are treating your customers right then they dont need to see all your other compettitors ads. When you get a customer and sell them something, it should never stop there, you need to sell to the rest of their family. Do follow up calls have a barbecue for your customers.

    Anyways people dont want to be a long string of reference numbers anymore they want to be more personable.

    Have 1 avenue of advertising to get new customers and then treat those customers like gold and they will be back time and time again probably bringing the rest of their family.

    Dont try to make all your money at one time. You treat them right and they will continue to come back to you for the rest of their life.

  • Richard Morris  June 8, 2010 at 12:24 pm

    And Joel I dont have excessive complaints I have 1 Complaint.

  • Charles  June 8, 2010 at 9:19 pm

    Wait a minute, Richard you never even used Yext? I went back and read everything because I assumed that you had been scammed out of money or whatever you are ranting about and the only evidence I get from you is that you don’t like how they talked to you??? Maybe you don’t like the fact that you were sold by someone younger than you, but I really do not understand why you are so passionate about something you never even tried.

    There are a good points to Yext and bad points just like every company in the world, do a Google search about Goldman Sachs or General Electric or BP for that matter and tell me what results you find?? Also look in the mirror, you are so high on great, honest business practices but I am sure that you have probably pissed off a customer or two, I sure know that I have.

    But anyways, this forum is for people that actually USED the service and want to discuss the benefits and pitfalls of a different advertising venue, not for some guy to make 15 posts because he didn’t like how he was talked too.

    Last but not least spare me your business advice, I have a very profitable business that is expanding in the worst recession since the Great Depression, if I gotta listen to a few phone calls a week to make sure we are converting jobs than so be it, getting the job done is what being a business owner is all about.

  • Dr. E  June 9, 2010 at 5:15 am

    Richard,

    Yext doesn’t work all the time. If you are looking for advertising that works 100% of the time (or near it), you might want to rule out the following modes of advertising:

    Other online ads, the newspaper, Ad Cart, gift cards, signage on your building or property, church bulletins, radio ads, TV ads, magazine ads, phone book ads, newspaper inserts, billboard ads, ads on mobile vehicles, brochures, business cards, fliers, postcards, bulk mailings, ads in other stores, bulk emails…

    If you just stay away from those types of advertising, you’ll probably get really good results.

    I understand if you’re frustrated with one of the reps that wouldn’t “let you out” of using Yext… I really have no idea why they wouldn’t terminate your month to month contract. They once charged me with $80 or so worth of charges I thought were unfair, so I appealed and they denied. I then told them if they didn’t take of the charges I was going to terminate Yext (which I didn’t want to do). They quickly got back to me (rechecked the phone calls I complained about and took them off). I also demanded that they take off the $10 monthly fee for the past two months as they wasted my valuable time writing in to them a couple times.. and they did.

    No… Yext is not the worst company to deal with… in my dealings with companies, that honor would go to PhotoConnection.com. They have several other names for their online sham company which sells electronics… mostly cameras.

    I ordered a camera (about $200) that was cheaper by $50 than anywhere else and it came with a tripod and extra cleaning kit (value $40). You then get a call where they try and up-sell you a bunch of stuff.. including a better battery for the camera. When you decline all the high-priced up-sells, they say they don’t have the camera in stock. So you say, just cancel the order and they say it’s going to cost you a 20% restocking fee. Yeah, these criminals come from NY, and they’ve been doing it for years.. so I wouldn’t touch a camera coming out of NY. Why have they not shut these people down? They transfer the business from one family member to another. Just Google Photoconnection complaints and laugh… so many stories, all saying the same thing. You’d think they’d be able to shut them down, but they can’t.

    Anyway… where were we… oh yeah… Yext doesn’t deliver anywhere close to 100%… BOOOOOO.

  • Richard Morris  June 9, 2010 at 10:06 am

    You apparently need business advice Charles seeing as how you pissed off customers. I do google local business and several other places that are free advertising and nowhere do I have any negative reviews at all. I have never had an angry customer. Thats the purpose of followup calls.

    Charles if you had not read the column what gives you the right to slam me when you had no idea what i was even talking about. You have got to be kidding me. You had no idea but wanted to run off at the mouth about my intelligence. That says a whole lot about your intelligence level.

    there is nothing wrong with my company, when they first called me they tried to say that were some some type of warranty company and needed 2 computers in my area fixed. so they lied from jump street so I googled and called them back on monday and thats when the trouble started. Apparently I am not the only one who had problems with this company. They lie, defraud, and dont care too much whether or not they improve their business practices. No matter what I say or anyone else says about Yext the facts remain.

    So anyone who wants to still deal with Yext, either they will improve their services or they will continue to rip peope off. When they rip you off Charles dont come crying here but this is a column for people who “want to discuss the benefits and pitfalls of a different advertising venue”.

    Dr. E I am not trying to say all advertising is not needed. What I am trying to say is you dont need to advertise everywhere. I get a hundred calls a year for all sorts of advertising Maps, postcards just all sort of junk. Why spend money on all kinds of advertising when all you need is one or two types. I dont know but the facts remain. Yext at its current level is a scam company and time will tell whether they continue to be that or not. I figure they wont be around too much longer. I have seen many companies come and go. and Yext will be gone soon.

    I hope everyone will think real hard before going in with Yext. Companies who call up and portray themselves as one thing and actually they are something else just lets you know what mindset this particular company is in. They cannot be compared to general electric. And once again I am not the only person this has been done to.

    Also You shouldnt have to keep calling Yext and arguing with people in order to get stuff resolved. They should already do it or be able to do it within the first call. One day it wont matter if you call to cancel. Youll end up owing 3 or 4 hundred dollars in illegitmate calls and they will say ok we canceled your account but you still owe us.

  • Pitstop Appliance Repair  June 9, 2010 at 11:19 am

    I don’t know about everyone else, but I am sick of listening to this childish bickering.

    If you guys want to continue this nonsense, go at each other on email and spare us.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Back on topic. We are still with Yext, and have had 75+ legit calls and probably 5-6 BS calls we get charged for.

    Yes, it is a pita to keep up with…although I could ignore the system entirely and it would still be profitable. Taking the time to get rid of as many BS charges as possible just increases the %.

    One thing I have noticed is that Yext has purchased a lot of URL that are now showing up aggressivly on Google ads.

    Examples-

    Local Refrigerator Repair
    Enter your zip code & find info on
    refrigerator repair. Search now.
    http://www.RefrigeratorRepairNearYou.com

    Dryer Repair Near You
    Enter your zip code & find info on
    local dryer repair. Search now.
    http://www.DryerRepairNearYou.com

    While I am happy they seem to be doing their best to get us work, it is a double edged sword. It certainly takes away from customers that can find us organically (or even on OUR adwords ads).

    Refrigerator Washer Dryer Repair

  • Linden Malki  June 11, 2010 at 2:17 am

    I signed up with yext about a month ago. They told me there would be a free introductory period, but they billed me $210 for 9 calls that “qualified”. Their robot screener picks up words like “mercedes” and decides that it is “high value call” and billed $50. The call was actually a call for parts, not service, and my profit on the sale was considerably less than that. Of the 9 calls, one was not billed as it was obviously an existing customer, but they did bill for a second call from the person who inquired about the Mercedes parts. Four were calls for parts or service that we could not supply. One was request for a referral. Only two were actual inquiries about service, but they appear to have been price shoppers and neither one followed up. In other words, they want $210 for nothing. I am asking to have the service discontinued and the billings cancelled; I have challenged most of the calls.

  • Joe K.  June 11, 2010 at 5:39 pm

    Paying per month YEXT is a win win situation. On the junk calls I get to practice phone etiquette, etc. I can easily pay w/ a couple paying calls a month. I like to update my website. I signed up 1 week ago and am getting calls I otherwise would never have gotten. YEXT keeps me more alert because I am getting more phone calls. It has been fun AND profitable so far. Thanks Andrew, Joe at Able Copier Service

  • John  June 16, 2010 at 1:57 pm

    Let me put my two sense in about yext at first it was not so bad i could get credit on bogus call then they assigned this sales rep to my account and then it seemed to stop. Her answer to me was i was to chase the customer for the job to me that is more like harrasment. I know i would not use that shop if they did that to me. In the aera that i perform work there is more price shopers than buyers. i took the time to explain this before going on board and they agreed that would not be a charge only for legitiment jobs that were performed.

    Well let me tell you maybe 2 out of 50 calls were legit that brought in revenue the others just add up the bill. When i canceled the account i also canceled the credit card so no future charge could happen now they have the gaul to send me a bill even after they gave credit for complaining and them removed the credit WTF is that. I say to yext and that nasty sales person try to tell the truth not be able to change billing amount and way you bill without prior notifying the person paying the bill . My opinion is stay clear of this scam its another way of paying per click not for quality calls that really bring in revenue.

  • IL/Wi glass  June 17, 2010 at 5:43 am

    Wow!!! So glad i found this site. I took the phone # they called me on and googled it. their phone call sounded legit, till he got to “give me your credit card to start the billing process, we will debit you monthly for the calls that work out. I’m somewhat old school and dont like giving my credit card to a company that I’ve never heard of and allowing them to debit what they want. I don’t want anyone in my pocket.

    So I went and googled windshield repair (what I do) and NOTHING from them shows up for 5 pages in a Google search. People looking for a service are not going through 5 pages or 10 pages of Google links to find a service. This morning Hugh calls me and I bring this to his attention and he says they only pay google for Prime Time listings. Well its 7:30 AM and if someone needs a repair they are not finding me since its not 8:00AM.

    Funny thing is If I post on a subject in ANY forum and typed a Google search for the subject I can find my post within a couple pages of Google links. So him saying they only pay for Prime Time doesn’t sit well with me. Very pushy on the phone, doesn’t take no for an answer. RUN AWAY when you see their number pop up on your phone!!!

    THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! For posting this subject and all these responses, saved me so much grief in my life I really don’t need to deal with at this time.

  • Dr. E  June 17, 2010 at 8:23 am

    (From a chiropractor)…
    UPDATE: Well, since almost all the posts on here seem to be going downhill, I’ll put up a positive one (and no, I don’t work for Yext).

    After reviewing the accident case I had, the care I rendered was found to be within guidelines and we have already received a $1,250.00 payment. We should receive approx. another $1,250 for services which have been billed… payment has not come yet.

    So, for the year, we paid out (approx. $400) and we received roughly $3,000 in payments.

    Out of ALL the advertising we’ve done (and we did a lot… $2,000 a month for about 6 months straight), Yext has provided us with the ONLY advertising that made us a PROFIT. We pay $40 per call… $60 per “higher level” call… we’ve been billed only $40 each time though.

    I understand there are bad calls mixed in with everything… and if we didn’t get that ONE patient, we’d be right about even, but that’s the crap-shoot of advertising.

    I think your service has to be for something a little bit higher than a $50 to $100 job. Because if you’re paying $30 to $40 per customer and they DO show up, you aren’t making much EVEN when they do show. If they don’t show… then it’s a total loss.

    Good luck to anyone that tries it… it actually CAN work.

  • Joe K.  June 17, 2010 at 8:39 am

    I am glad for the chiropractor and just wanted to say most of the negative comments here and elsewhere are from people who have not even tried YEXT yet. This is a good company to increase your sales and service. If i get ripped off I will be the first to tell you here but it seems to be going very well so far…thanks for this site Andrew…Joe at Able Copier Service and Sales.

  • ilya  June 17, 2010 at 4:34 pm

    I want to tell you small business owners, why YEXT is the worst thing that could possibly happen to Local Marketing, and it spells horrible news for the small business owner.

    We’re a service provider that uses Local Marketing aggressively, and have even been accused of misleading customers, however if its one thing we DON’T do, is steal listings and profiles from existing local business owners.

    I’ll explain how Yext is bad for your business but first a brief primer on local marketing and how people find you.

    Let’s face it most searches on the internet are on google, yahoo, msn, superpages, citysearch, insiderpages, etc…..all the local directories.

    If you are a business owner that is savvy, you go and do what’s called “claim your listing” on all the major engines. This requiers you to find the listing, and verify via phone, or snail mail. In some directories ANYONE can make a listing with your name, which means anyone can misrepresent you.

    The creme de la creme, ofcourse is the google front page….there are 3 ways to rank on the top…by having a good site, by showing up on the maps section (free), and by paying for search engine optimization.

    What YEXT does, essentially, is buy pay per click listings to Outrank you on the same front page (where you could be if you invested some effort) , and then re-sells the same real estate back to you at a huge profit. Additionally (and this is where it gets scummy), they get you to build up an online identity but channeling it through THEIR Home page, and THEIR Phone number. The more tiem goes by, the more your reputation on the internet becomes THEIR property.

    Lastly, and this is the worst – YEXT will go around to the secondary directories such as citysearch and STEAL/HIJACK your listings. Case in point – go to citysearch and search for computer repair, half the listings belong to yext even though they SHOULD belong to the business owner.

    What every business owner should do IMMEDIATELY is go around to EVERY search engine and local directory and make SURE that every listing points to THEIR home page NOT YEXT’s, and THEIR phone #, NOT YEXT’s.

    The bottom line is, once Yext owns your reputation online, they OWN your business. Get control BACK.

    Oh and if you don’t believe my local marketing advice, our company cleared $1,000,000 last year based ENTIRELY off local marketing. WAKE UP PEOPLE

  • John  June 19, 2010 at 3:09 pm

    Yext.com is a real life scam organization. Don’t get involved with these people………. you will live to regret it.

  • Richard Morris  June 21, 2010 at 4:59 pm

    Seems the bad is definitly outweighing the good with yext. I think the verdict is complete.

    And hopefully I helped some people to not get ripped off by yext. For the very few people who have had success with yext I am happy for you. However, give it time and you will probably change your mind.

    Yext is overblown in the media. Such high praise by nameless entities does not make yext a good company as evidenced by this column.

    I would rather be paying more attention to my family and my stocks so the hell with yext and if you read this column and still do business with yext then that is your problem. Still come back and tell us but remember a lot of people warned you.

    Yext still has not come here to talk to us and they probably never will.

  • John  June 22, 2010 at 7:46 am

    I have filed a complaint with the NY Better Business Bureau.
    I have a pending chargeback with my credit card provider. I am contacting the Florida & New York state attys offices. This company charged my business credit card 4 times for a total of $1277.00 I didn’t authorize Yext.com to bill me for services. I am contacting all signed up Yext providers in my zip code advising them about Yext’s business practices. Please contact those in your area about this company. This is a good way to get the word out……. I will keep you posted about my filings. John……

  • foot doc  June 23, 2010 at 12:30 am

    just for the sake of arguement, any physicians have any negative comments about yext? On the flip side, how many computer service companies have a problem with yext?

    my guess is the physicians find it appealing and can deal with some of the bad calls, while repair services feel like they are being beaten with a stick.

    I think it should be clear that yext benefits some and not all. if you are a company that needs more good calls than bad, then yext will piss u off more than put money in your pocket.

    as for me, last month i capped my spending at $300, got 9 calls, 5 of which made appointments and were seen at least once. of those 5, 3 are repeatedly returning for care so the 4 calls that were wasted cost me $160 which pales in comparison to the nearly thousand dollars i can and will make from the good calls.

    as long as they continue to try to make changes to optimize their service, i am on board.

    good luck to everyone

  • Richard Morris  June 23, 2010 at 8:35 am

    good question foot doc! You make an interseting point. Yext maybe should differentiate between the different kinds of services and charge accordingly. physicians should be charged 1 price point and smaller services like appliance repair or computer repair should be charged less due to the profit potential being so different.

    However Yext is still puliing a lot of shady moves.

  • Linden Malki  June 23, 2010 at 9:38 am

    Auto repair is one business that is probably not suitable for Yext’s program. For one thing, we get a lot of price shoppers, and including some for parts, nor service. And of course, a $50 oil change doesn’t bring in enough to cover a $20 birddog fee. And then there is the factor that the original sales call promised a introductory trial perios and gave the impression that they would only charge for calls that resulted in a job. When I challenged several obvious looky-lou calls, they seemed to think we should be able to turn them all into sales–but people who are shopping on the net are probably more likely than not to be calling more than one place.

  • Albert Robbins III  June 25, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    My partner and I have just signed up for Yext. Being in a competitive business(computer repair) you need to receive customers from many different areas. The cost($30) while high is just about even for advertising in our area. Repeat customers we are probably not going to get but word of mouth for a repair business is far better than repeat.(business cards were invented for word of mouth). We will keep this board posted on progress and marketing efforts on our part to help if an when we can.

  • Linden Malki  June 25, 2010 at 7:07 pm

    Mr Robbins, you do realize, don’t you, that the $30 fee is for every single call you get through them that they consider “qualified”, whether or not it brings in business. So that could be several $30 fees per day…

  • Jackson  July 9, 2010 at 1:39 pm

    I can only echo the negative experiences here. This board is getting an inordinate number of post – would this be so if YEXT was a good company doing a legit business. They are not. We have tried to deal with them, forget it. Now on to the CCard company – next stop, state Attrny General’s office. By the way, for those of you who are intent on ‘saving’ this poor company… for whatever reason (are you really yext posting under cover) – here is what the NY BBB has on their public listing of this company –
    “This business is not currently rated. BBB has recently received numerous complaints against this business, and will issue a rating after it has fully evaluated them.”
    – from http://www.bbb.org/new-york-city/business-reviews/internet-marketing-services/yext-inc-in-new-york-ny-107926/
    More bad news… YEXT Rep – real-time reputation management (from their site) so, we can look forward to YEXT legal department trying to shut down or censor boards and forums like this.
    Bottom line Stay away!!!

  • Darren  July 14, 2010 at 10:41 am

    As a local search company, I have a quick question for the people that are using or have used yext:

    How much time and money are you spending on your website and online presence (Google local business listings, and other business directories) ?

    As ilya previously mentioned, you are not only paying for calls, but paying them to boost their web properties at the cost of your own.

    I feel as a long-term strategy it pays to enhance YOUR brand – your website, tel no, directory listings etc.

  • Alan Cline  July 14, 2010 at 1:01 pm

    I am considering having yext list plumbers on my website in areas that I do not have a plumber signed up for 1-800-PLUMBING.

    Any comments on that? I think 1-800-PLUMBING is a fantastic vanity phone number and it would be great to use my site to generate more revenue to help me grow my business.

  • Andrew Shotland  July 14, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    Alan, I have definitely heard reports of publishers making decent $ taking feeds of Yext phone numbers.

  • Former Yext User  July 15, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    Our original agreement with Yext was that we would only be billed for house call appointments. Then they also started billing us for walk-in customers (which many never showed up). And now starting in July, they bill us for EVERY PHONECALL! We tried to cancel the service but now they are saying we can’t cancel! And although we only agreed to advertise on their Yext website, they have been taking our phone number off ,and putting THEIR phone number on other sites as well WITH OUR COMPANY NAME!

    This company is crooked and their needs to be a class action lawsuit against them.

  • Pitstop Appliance Repair  July 15, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    I get the feeling that a lot of the people complaining on here do not understand how Yext works.

    Like any tool, you must understand what application to use it for and HOW to make it work for you to get the best results.

    I’ve had over 100 successful customers come from Yext in the 5 months that I have been with them.

    Refrigerator Repair Service

  • Former Yext User  July 15, 2010 at 2:50 pm

    Pitstop – you have got to be kidding! Yext will take your phone number off of yahoo local, AOL local, superpages, citysearch, google, local.com, etc. And then put THEIR phone number next to YOUR NAME! Your are now PAYING Yext for calls from those sites that you would have gotten for free if you never signed up with yext. How is this not a copyright violation? Why doest Yext want you to agree not to sue them for a copyright violation?

  • Pitstop Appliance Repair  July 15, 2010 at 3:02 pm

    I have profiles that *I* have set up on numerous site that have the info *I* put there. Yext has not and will not go to my Google places for example and change my info.

    I also see my company name on sites that *Yext* puts up profiles as part of the service and assigns a phone # of their own and tracks the calls to that #. That is exactly how they work. You can go to your Yext settings and change what sites you want to have in the system. For example I turned off a few sites like windshield or auto repair.

    The only thing I have seen is that certain websites (not yext) are designed to make listings for businesses by copying whatever other info they find out on the internet. You have the option to go to these sites and ‘claim’ them as the owner and then you can edit/correct what is there. In these cases it is not Yext making the profile..the website is just grabbing/copying info off the www.

  • Former Yext User  July 15, 2010 at 5:02 pm

    “I also see my company name on sites that *Yext* puts up profiles as part of the service and assigns a phone # of their own and tracks the calls to that #. That is exactly how they work.”

    They do work that way. But before I signed up for Yext, Merchantcircle for example, had my company info listed for free. Yext had them take my phone number off and put theirs in it’s place. What kind of “service” is that? Merchantcircle has all of my competitors original phone numbers listed at no charge to them. In order for us to “claim” the listing now, we have to pay them for it.

  • Andrew Shotland  July 15, 2010 at 8:39 pm

    FYU,

    I pinged MerchantCircle and they confirmed that if a merchant claims their profile that they will not override it with a Yext phone number. I have contacted a couple of other IYPs that work with Yext and asked what their policy is as well. I’ll report back when I find out.

  • Former Yext User  July 16, 2010 at 12:57 am

    My apologies to MerchantCircle. They have indeed changed our number back at no charge. I guess because they didn’t do it right away, I had assumed that they were never going to do it.

    There are a number of other free online advertising sites as well. All the more reason why Yext is unnecessary. Yext was getting free ad space on MerchantCircle and charging us for the calls. How’s that one!

  • Pitstop Appliance Repair  July 16, 2010 at 9:05 am

    “There are a number of other free online advertising sites as well. All the more reason why Yext is unnecessary. Yext was getting free ad space on MerchantCircle and charging us for the calls.”

    Yext does more than just the free sites. They aggressively do paid spots such as the adwords and have their own URL they set up for each type of business.

    For many many business owners who are busy actually doing stuff outside the world of SEO, it is well worth the saved time and effort to set up one account with Yext and let them handle finding the customers from numerous sources.

    Remember, Yext charges only for new callers. Once you get in the door with a customer, you hand them a business card and explain for them to call you direct or go to your real website.

  • Linden Malki  July 16, 2010 at 9:48 am

    My expeneince with Yext was that they were charging $20-50 per call for looky-loos. Their “screening” was biased toward charging for as many calls as they could. Their lead quality was very poor, and their original sales rep misrepresented the deal.

  • Former Yext User  July 16, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    “Remember, Yext charges only for new callers. Once you get in the door with a customer, you hand them a business card and explain for them to call you direct or go to your real website”

    That was the original deal I signed up for. Then Yext decided one day to change their policy and charge for EVERY PHONECALL!

    Example: An existing customer calls and says they cannot pick-up their equipment today. Then they call back and ask if we could deliver it. Then they call back and say it’s 3:00pm are you still coming today. We get charged for all 3 calls. The feature to request credits has been eliminated by Yext.

    We’ve paid Yext $3,000 over the last 10 months. If I had to go back and do it again, I would not have signed up.

    Business owners/managers are busy this is true. Doing your own SEO is new a requirement. There are still several sites advertising our company name with the Yext phone number even though we cancelled Yext. We will have to get that straightened out ourselves.

  • john  July 16, 2010 at 2:39 pm

    Yext charges for every new call to your business. The fees range from $10 – $60 depending on your agreement. You will pay for every call no matter what the conversation is about. A customer could cost you as much as $100 or more to perform a service or sell them something. I want Yext to go public so I can buy their stock. They should be earning millions……
    If I could bang every client $30 a pop for a worthless phone lead, I’d make millions too. By the way, “pitstop appliance repair” has to be a shill for Yext. No one would defend this company that way. As a former Yext service provider, I got 85 total calls in 2 months. 50 calls were junk leads, 35 calls were considered billable. I got a transcript of the calls. Most billable calls lasted 1-2 minutes. Some were 15-17 seconds. I was charged for all 35 calls @$30 each. I belive I personally saw 5 customers total from all those calls. I was billed $1010 total for the 35 calls. My average ticket in my store is $120. So, I paid about $200 to Yext for each customer I eventually saw in my store. Lets say I made a $120 sale. My profit was maybe $60 on each sale. So, let’s see, $200 – $60 = $140. It only cost me $140 for Yext to send me a customer. I am no longer involved with Yext. I am $500 a month ahead, I don’t get annoying, worthless calls from useless, cheap shoppers, and I am at peace. I can do without Yext. I always have & I always will !!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Pitstop Appliance Repair  July 16, 2010 at 3:24 pm

    “Quote from ‘Former Yext User’ –

    That was the original deal I signed up for. Then Yext decided one day to change their policy and charge for EVERY PHONECALL! The feature to request credits has been eliminated by Yext”

    WRONG!! Stop spreading misinformation.

    The feature on the website was indeed removed. If you read this entire blog you will see I wrote about that (and my dislike of it) back on March 12th. You now have to email or call your rep. If you have put any effort into Yext at all, you will have the name, email and phone number of an account rep that you can contact.

    My post from March 12th-

    “Another thing to mention is that they removed the submit ‘manual review’ option from the website to report junk calls to get them credited. (with no notice to us) I had to email my ‘account manager’ to have an out of area call removed from my charges. I’m sure they can handle this by a phone call also, but I liked just having to click a button. I guess this is better in that dealing direct with someone allows US as the end user to have someone to hold accountable to making sure the job gets done. Fair enough”

    Quote from ‘John’-

    “By the way, “pitstop appliance repair” has to be a shill for Yext. No one would defend this company that way”

    You are an idiot. Go back and read when I was complaining about them in Feb/March.

    I’ve since learned how to make the system work for me, lessening the BS calls and how to get them removed when they occur.

    Again- Yext is a tool. It can work for you if you know what it is capable of and how to use it.

  • Former Yext User  July 16, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    “I am no longer involved with Yext. I am $500 a month ahead, I don’t get annoying, worthless calls from useless, cheap shoppers, and I am at peace. I can do without Yext. I always have & I always will !!!!!!!!!!!!”

    I think one of the problems with internet generated clients is that they tend to be younger and flakier. We still have the traditional yellow pages advertising, and these clients tend to be more mature, considerate, and have more patience. Older clients also understand the value of maintenance. Our younger clients are more likely to say “I’ll just by a new one.” A lot of them don’t even know what” the yellow pages” is.

  • Former Yext User  July 16, 2010 at 3:41 pm

    replying to Pitstop –

    I am not spreading misinformation. This is a quote from Yext regarding their change in policy:

    “Effective midnight July 5th we will be moving all our clients over to the new platform where the price for each call will be $7 and we will no longer be issuing credits.”

    This is also a quote from Yext when I signed up for the service last year:

    “Remember, we only charge when you get a GUARANTEED NEW APPT. It’s a one-time fee of $25 and you never pay us again for that customer, no matter how much they spend. And if they don’t book an appointment, no problem, there’s no charge. WE ONLY MAKE MONEY WHEN YOU MAKE MONEY.”

    And I’ve had several different “account reps” over the past year with Yext. Apparently they have a lot of turnover there.

    It sounds like Yext has a different program for everyone, so it’s hard to compare notes.

  • Mike Peterson  July 23, 2010 at 3:13 pm

    Mike name is Mike Peterson from Computer Medics of SW Florida, Inc in Fort Myers, FL. I have thoroughly enjoyed (actually been dismayed) with all of Yext comments over the last 4 months. I have been a Yext customer since 3-1-10. The first 3 weeks were a wild ride. We immediately started receiving phone calls, must to my surprise and delight. However, delight turned into horror when realized that Yext was charging us for “fishing calls” and not just qualified leads. I called Yext and asked them to credit 3 of the first 4 calls ($30/each). The representative was not cordial. She argued with me about how THEY know which calls are billable. I asked to cancel. She said I would have to pay $120 for the 4 calls. After some more arguing, she said she could change us to the “Unlimited Plan” for $39.95/mo. I quickly agreed and after some more haggling, I was able to get 1 month free of the unlimited plan and 1 call credited back.

    I thought everything would be great. We kept receiving 2-3 new calls per week. We were converting them into sales at a normal 30-40% rate. Our average service call billing is $100, so it was a nice ROI.

    However, in April our calls suddenly dropped off to nothing. I did a Google Search using “computer repair fort myers.” Yext was still at the top of the results. I put in our zip code and there were 6 other computer companies in our area and our’s was was off the 1st page and 2nd from the bottom.

    I left everything in place through the summer. Last week I decided to cancel an obviously ineffective advertising service. Since then, I have called them 3 times. The first 2 times I had to hang up after holding for 30 minutes. Today, I called them twice. Both times the nice recording came on asking me to hold for the next representative, then promptly went back to a dialtone. I decided to call American Express and they were able to dispute this month’s $39.95 charge and decline all future charges. The AMEX lady asked if I had agreed to a contract and I told her “no” but and not sure what will happen now.

    I hope some of this information will help others who are thinking of joining Yext.

    Finally, a sales representative from Outrank.com saw our Yext ad and invited us to try their service. It is $99/mo and they promise to put us in the top 3 companies in the organic section. If they do not perform after 60 days, I will not pay until they perform. It sounds good. I think we can all agree Google Search is THE way people are searching for businesses.

    Best Regards,
    Mike Peterson

  • Jonathan  July 28, 2010 at 7:58 am

    Hey – lots of good info here. One question that I am hoping someone can answer. I spoke with a Yext reb (Greg) yesterday and he mentioned nothing about a pay per call, rather it was a flat fee of $200 per month….does that sound correct? He NEVER mentioned anything about paying per call. Just want to check and see if anyone else had a similar conversation and then was charged per call???

  • Custom Muffler  July 28, 2010 at 8:28 am

    Let this dot com die! The nautre of this particular business is going to grow. My advise is to pay companies to have your business listed in the top 10 on a google search. Thats the only TRUE way of marketing on the web. Its also a guarantee “bang for buck” advertising tool.

  • Mark Elliott  July 29, 2010 at 1:46 pm

    I just got a call from them and I’m currently doing my research on Yext right now. I too have been told that they would charge me $200/mo. I’m still up in the air about going through with them. Being that I’m from Asheville. NC, I’m not sure how this would work out considering it’s a small town. The rep said there are currently no flooring companies listed under them at the moment so my chances of getting leads are great. I don’t know…what do you think?

  • Custom Muffler  July 30, 2010 at 6:18 am

    I think you`ll be wasting 200 per month. Not to mention when you get rid of Yext, a competitor will have that phone number. Tell me what you think?

  • Dr. E  August 5, 2010 at 10:45 pm

    Well, well.

    I’ve seen many posts come in to my mailbox about responses to this thread.

    Up till tonight, I was OK with Yext… that was until I got an email from them.

    In a nutshell they said they were adding new and exciting features to Yext… and that one of the features was that they are going to lower the price per call coming in from $40 to $29 for a chiropractor (which I am).

    As a matter of fact… let me just paste the next couple lines on here:

    Effective tonight, we will be lowering our price per call to $29 and removing the ability to request credits for calls. You’ll still have access to all the same great features (and more thanks to the new Dashboard), but now with the lower price for each phone call received.

    UMMMM… removing the ability to request credits for BAD calls???

    I don’t get a lot of calls from Yext… in a little over a year, ONLY SEVEN legit calls, and only FOUR of those legit callers actually came into our office. I WAS happy with Yext because of the four patients that showed, ONE of them was a car accident patient that ended up bringing in a little over $2,000 in services. Total cost for the 15 or so months was about $400… $280 for the 7 calls and $10 a month base fee for the time we used them.

    I just went through and looked at all the BAD calls that were removed after I requested a manual review… 8 of them. Calls that should have been weeded out, but weren’t. Calls from current patients, calls from patients that used the same number on the 2nd call. Calls from patients that wanted a service that we simply don’t provide.

    I will NOT pay $29 for ALL calls that come in, regardless if the call is CRAP. I’d rather pay $40 for a call that has a chance to bring in new business, then get charged $29 because one of my regulars Googled our number and the Yext “support team” missed it as a “Junk Call” which is what they are suppose to consider current patients as.

    I did the math… and I would have paid an extra $155 with their “new” way to add up the costs versus the old.

    As I said, our business does very little as far as business through Yext… I can only imagine what type of increase this means to other chiropractic offices that generate many times the amount of calls we do.

    Oh, and I went on Yext account to remove my business card from the account so they can’t charge me for services I no longer want. Apparently when you try and erase your saved credit card, it won’t erase it unless you put in a valid card in it’s place. Fearing Yext will try and charge me for charges I shouldn’t have to (because I’ve heard it on this board) I tried changing my credit card to a card which I’m about to “retire” anyway… the card is worn out and I just received a replacement card with a different expiration date… so I figured I’d just save the information of this card that is about to be “junk”. For whatever reason, my original credit card remains even after I save the information of the card that is about to be removed from my bank account.

    I will have to post what happens with the account. I have written them and requested for my account to be closed effective IMMEDIATELY… before they can scrape out more money from me.

    Dr. E

  • Chicago SEO  August 6, 2010 at 7:27 am

    @Dr E

    I’m curious, with Yexts current system you would have to pay $555 total for your advertising and you made $2,000 off of one client.

    What did you make from the other 3 clients?

    Let’s say you made $2,500 to $3,000? Would that be fair to say?

    If that’s the case, look at it this way on a larger scale.

    You give Yext $5,500 and you make $30,000.00

    As a business owner (I own a website design and lead generation company) I look at those numbers and figure that’s a 500% return on your money.

    It’s not fantastic, but it’s profitable.

    You also have to consider the lifetime value of a customer in addition to the referrals they generate (if they liked your service).

    Around 40% of my new clients originate from referrals and the rest from search. I have no telemarketers/cold calling.

    The only thing lacking for you was volume.

    I have one Chiropractor as a client and the volume of searches is relatively low compared to other verticals. So to make up for this, we tapped into his existing client base via email marketing which had a greater ROI than search anyway. This increased his revenue by a modest 10%+ in 9 months. Not fantastic, but not bad when coupled with search marketing.

    SMB’s seem to focus more on spending little money for their marketing efforts than they do on the big picture. They would gladly spend $1,200 a year on Starbucks or $400 on an iphone plus a $30 a month data plan, but can’t see spending $555.00 to make $3,000.00

    Where else can you get a 500%+ return on your money nowadays?

    I’m not attacking you Dr. E. It’s just that I deal with SMB’s all the time and it’s this lack of perspective and/or information/analysis that needs to be explained to you guys by your rep.

    Problem is, Yext will not take the time to work with you like this (the way I try to do with my clients and many other internet marketers out there you should be able to find).

    Yext is basically a factory, the Mcdonalds of lead generation.

    I think Yext does a decent job and provides some value. But from the current trend of their pricing changes and their rapid growth I bet they are having major profit issues.

  • Dr. E  August 6, 2010 at 7:49 am

    @ Chicago SEO…

    After calming down a little after the email from Yext, I tend to agree with your analysis.

    EVERY OTHER form of advertising has lead to losing money. Tried the newspaper… a year membership for their “gold” plan cost $270 a week… that was their “middle of the road” plan. I’d say it brought in MAYBE $300 per month… when it was costing almost $1,100 a month.

    If you throw out the one car accident patient I received through Yext (of the 4 that showed up)… I would have essentially broke even (making about $400ish with those patients that came in).

    What I’m irritated about is them changing the plan. Like I mentioned, I’ve had several “BAD” calls that made it through their screening system. Calls that were very easy to see that were bad. Heck… two times I requested the calls be “manually reviewed” and they denied my request… and they were OBVIOUSLY bad calls, so I had to then call in.

    One thing that I could see happening is an increase in bad calls being added to my account, to raise my bill. Purposely or not, I’m certainly not going to like getting a call from a patient that comes in all the time, but calls through Yext because at the last minute they figured they couldn’t make it for their appointment and decided to Google our office number. How many times would you pay $29 for that… before you had enough? The economy is hard enough as it is, and we are a newer office.

    Actually, I bought this practice from my previous boss… and of course you know how that goes… somehow, someway they always seem to screw you. We are paying a ridiculous amount for rent, but our lease is up in two months. We are going to be moving and starting a brand new office 60 miles from here… where we actually live. We had planned to move before, but could never afford to as we are right off I-95… about 20 miles south of Philly.

    I called Yext today, and for now I’m keeping the listing ONLY because as an existing client, I can pay for the basic service $40 per month and not have to worry about these BS calls coming in.

    I have read others complain about the basic service and that the basic service drops you down near the bottom of the list… so you don’t get any calls. Luckily, in the area where we will be setting up the new office, we will be the only chiropractic office in the area using Yext. In the current area, there at several others.

    I’ll comment again later when I get more info. By the way… after calling irritated today, my monthly $10 service fee has been waived. I didn’t ask if it was permanent, but from the phone call and follow up email, I believe it is… which of course I’ll take.

  • richard morris  August 6, 2010 at 4:20 pm

    well just wait. Yext isnt done yet. I beleive they have a lot more ripping off to do. They are flying by the seat of their pants. changing the rules for everyone on the spot. this company cant put out an email saying that and start changing it for only the people who complain. Dr.E, in a couple of months Yext will change your rules again.

  • CtrlZ  August 9, 2010 at 2:52 pm

    I recently opened a computer repair business and received a call from them after only two months of being open. The call happened while I was closed, and the message that was left seemed very professional and promising. Then, after a quick Google search which turned up pages of negative experiences with them, I decided not to give them a call back. A week later they call back with the same sales pitch, and I calmly and politely explain that I researched their company and was only able to find negative information, so I’m going to pass on their services. The sales rep then just said “You need to learn how to run a business.”, and then abruptly hung up. It seems to me that a legitimate company would try and defend their practices rather than resulting to personal insults.

  • Mendel Potok  August 11, 2010 at 10:08 am

    I worked at a call center that used a quite similar service. The only calls we would receive were from a refrigerator repair service. It’s much cheaper just to use a study receiver to hang up on tweed jacketed salsemen and their ilk.

  • Andrew Shotland  August 11, 2010 at 10:25 am

    Mendel, Mendel, Mendel. If you are going to try and get a link in the comments, it helps to use a href 🙂

  • robert west  August 13, 2010 at 4:06 pm

    Yext is a complete scam. Here is their latest pillaging… They are changing existing business’ phone numbers in free web listings to their $8 per call phone numbers. So, if you’ve spent a lot of time building an Internet presence, they are going around behind you and changing your direct phone number to one of their trackable (and charged) numbers.

    What a toatal scam these guys are running. Call them up – they operate out of a NYC boiler room. Listen to the high-pressure sales pitch and maybe you’ll even hear the hoots and hollers of a “salesman” beating down another client.

    If you want to get fleeced, this is the firm that will do it to you. Stay away – YEXT = FRAUD + SCAM.

  • Chicago SEO  August 16, 2010 at 11:57 am

    Update on Yext business model (seems like it’s changing every week now).

    Got a call from Yext yesterday. Now they are charging a monthly (flat fee) of $200 to be listed in their directory.

    They do not guarantee any amount of calls.

  • John Jorges  August 25, 2010 at 11:41 am

    Yext is a scam. Here’s an example of what I paid $25 for. “Hello, J&J.” “Do you repair bent aluminum wheels?” “No, that’s dangerous- they crack.” $25!
    They said ‘genuine leads’ What a crock!

  • Jake  August 27, 2010 at 7:12 pm

    We have received several calls from Yext saleswoman Claire Pyne. We told her we would consider it and let her know but she continued to call. Every call was full of high pressure tactics and supposed customers waiting for our service. That was a big warning sign for us. I am glad we saw this website before we signed up.
    `
    Here is a suggestion for all those advertising/marketing/leads companies.

    If you are so sure your service works, don’t give me a worthless guarantee, just don’t ask for my credit card number.

    If your service works so well I will pay to keep it.

    If your service doesn’t work then you didn’t need my credit card number and I don’t need to talk to you again.

  • Meghan  August 30, 2010 at 8:19 am

    I personally have never dealt with Yext, although I did notice a bunch of folks saying here that Yext would be great if they charged a flat monthly fee. That is what my company, Prospect Genius does, (although we feel we generate fewer spammy calls) and if anyone is interested, feel free to google us or BBB us, or give me a call (518)-708-6767 if you’d like more info.

  • richard morris  August 30, 2010 at 11:05 pm

    That is what we need. We need to start posting the names of the yext reps you talk to and what they did. I wish I would have remembered mine. Maybe that will teach some of these people a small lesson. To have their names and how bad they acted posted on a website for all to see for a very long time.

    One day companies and corporations will figure it out that you shouldnt screw the consumer. Before the internet there was no way to really tell anyone about a bad experience with a company but now if someone has a bad experience they can tell the world. It only takes 1 person to start a complaint and before you know that company is gone. Goodbye Yext

  • Angelica  September 1, 2010 at 2:51 pm

    YEXT!!! YAK!! We did get calls over the year we used them and they promptly provided the service as advertised they would do. I was given credit when I did request it and all was fine. Now with the changes I am getting ridiculous calls. Call that people looking for their credit history, calls from more solicitors that can be counted on their spread sheets. I don’t mind paying for a service, but their quality of service fell to an enormous black hole of wrong numbers unqualified calls you can just forget it! Their only solution for these wrong numbers was to provide me with credit of $10 per month for a year. Hell NO!!! that doesnt even touch the amount of calls that was hit with this month! Its not even a fourth! So you can imagine what the cost is for me. So beware everyone that is considering Yext dont do it! They are the worse in appreciating customers for using their service.

  • Dr. E  September 1, 2010 at 6:15 pm

    Note: I am a chiropractor, so my results may be MUCH different than yours. Calls had cost me $40 per “good lead”… but they’ve changed it recently to $29, but with limited chances to have bad calls taken off our end of month invoice.

    Angelica… there is somewhere on the Yext profile page within your account where you can change the settings to limit the calls you get in a month. The minimum is $100 per month. That means if you get charged $29 per call, then the most calls you can get charged for is 3 for the month. After the 3rd call, you listings basically disappear until the next month starts.

    I get that nobody wasn’t to pay for crappy advertising that’s bringing in false or bogus leads… but if that’s happening to anyone else out there using Yext, immediately change your settings and perhaps you can limit the damage.

    Just to let everyone know… I’ve paid approximately $600 for a little over a year with Yext and it’s brought in over $3,000 worth of service. I don’t believe ANY of the other advertising we tried EVEN made a PROFIT. We have tried the newspaper at $270 a week (for a year contract… which we had pulled after a couple months) as it was bringing in MAYBE $270 in results per MONTH… a quarter of what we were paying. We tried Ad Cart… where you have a nice ad made by them and they put it on 150 grocery carts for a 6 month period for $2,700… which brought in NOT ONE CUSTOMER. One of our patients had actually noticed it though… ah, how nice.

    We tried telemarketing at about $850 a month… and that brought in about $400 a month in results.

    Perhaps this service doesn’t work for everyone… or hardly anyone.. but it’s the only thing that has worked for us.

    Good luck whatever you do guys… because it’s nothing but a crap shoot.

  • Dr. Jeff Dougal  September 1, 2010 at 9:46 pm

    I use a company called Global Market Exposure. They have me on the first page and often first on every important search term on Google, Yahoo, Bing…

    At first I did sponsored links to get on the first page immediately. At the same time they started optimizing my website (which they built) and I am now on the first page of everything I want.

    I am getting more than enough business and am constantly expanding thanks to them.

    I highly recommend them.

    Dr. Jeff Dougal D.C.

  • Dr. E  September 1, 2010 at 10:06 pm

    Dr. Dougal,

    Can you tell me how much you pay per month for Global Market Exposure? Do you pay a set rate, or does it depend on calls you get? What would you say your rate of return is? I will check them out, and if I sign up I will certainly list you as directing me to them… maybe it gets you something.

    Funny… as I read your post, I realized you’re using your name. I would like to use mine, but have a fear of that here, as some of the posting members could call my office through Yext just to prove a point that I could get charged for BS calls.

    Thanks for the info,

    Dr. E… ,D.C.

  • Dr. Jeff Dougal  September 3, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    Dr. E,
    The price varies depending on the area you work in and the phrases that you want to be on. There is no pay per click, or pay per call. Global Market Exposure also built my website (portlanddeeptissuemassage) , which you should check out. They use the most Google compliant software.

    What I did was pay them to be on the sponsored links, so I could be on the first page of Google/Yahoo/Bing immediately, and then I paid for SEO to work myself up to the top of the organic sections.

    Go to Google and type in “Portland Massage” and I am 4th down (Portland Massage and Chiropractic Services). Type in “Portland Deep Tissue Massage” and I am first and third. This may only work in the Portland area, I am not sure.

    They can also put you in the sponsored links on the Google maps.

    I don’t understand why I wouldn’t use my name. I don’t know what anyone could do to me.

    As for Yext, I got a good amount of business in the few days I was with them. But I was overcharged about $500 and had to spend a lot of time dealing with them.

    Now I am happy with the amount of business I get, and I have control of what they do for me.

    Best Regards,
    Dr. Jeff Dougal D.C., L.M.T.

  • Marco  September 4, 2010 at 2:40 am

    I was called by chad korpeck.a dn he had told me about their service. But he didn’t tell me it was pay per call. He had told me it was pay per job we actually get. Make the appointment the whole thine. I asked him quite a few time to make sure if it was per job we get. And he kept sayong yes. I agreed to it gave him my card number without doing a bit of research.i couldn’t check my login or anything for about 2 weks. We had a gred on 13.50 per job we get. I got about 40 calls in that time I didn’t check the login page. And I was being billed 33 of those calls. So I called chad back and I ask him why am I being billed for all the calls. The rest had been junk calls. And he said that we had agreed on it being a pay per call chrage.. I say to him what we had agreed on and he starts to yell and yell and saying that’s not how they work. So he then says he has the recording of when we agreed and I ask him to play. He refuses and says I can’t hear it over the phone. He says that it’s saved on his computer and I won’t be able to hear it. So I say to put me on speaker and play the call and he starts to yell even more saying I’m only gonna hear people in the background and not hear the recording. So he says he will email an mpt version of the recodring. And it’s been 5 days and I still havent heard from him. Out of those 33 calls I actually got like 5 or 6 of the jobs. I so regret agreeing to work with them. By the way I’m from an auto glass repair shop

  • Andrew Shotland  September 4, 2010 at 8:29 am

    Thanks for posting this Marco. I am curious, customer service issues aside, if you paid $400 for 5-6 jobs is that worth it for you?

    I ask because it seems like unhappy Yext advertisers fall into two categories – those who did not get the value they expected from the service and those who got the value but didn’t realize it because of their focus on the junk calls instead of the total ROI.

  • Marco  September 4, 2010 at 9:20 am

    no it wasn’t worth it. We made about 600 from the jobs. . All that we were left with was pretty much enough to pay for the materials

  • rick  September 6, 2010 at 4:40 pm

    it seems like another way to scam people out of thier money…

  • rick  September 6, 2010 at 4:43 pm

    yext will call you posing as a customer and maybe call you several times a week. yext is a bunch of scam artist and SHOULD NOT be trusted

  • Paul  September 19, 2010 at 3:35 pm

    YEXT IS A SCAM, they took over my free listings and put their phone number in my ads which i spent time creating, now i am getting ripped off $30/ per time a customer calls, whne those same listings used to give me free results. DO NOT TRUST THESE SCAM ARTISTS>> ITS AWUFL STAY AWAY YOU WILL REGRET IT>

  • JustFYI  September 23, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    Just an FYI for all you Yext people that are worried about their numbers being wrong all over the net. There is a company out there that updates all these for you. It is advertising, but it is a very reputable company. They have over 200 partners (including over 20 mobile directories) (Yext uses them to distribute your business information). They have a direct link with Info USA which actually supplies your information to most if not all these directory sites. CityGrid Media which owns Citysearch.com, InsiderPages.com, UrbanSpoon.com, etc. They offer no contractual agreement and have both flat fee and pay per click models for advertising. I know someone who works there and if you would like to contact him let me know at theblackmax at g mail

  • Andrew Shotland  September 24, 2010 at 7:34 am

    Hey JustFYI you could have just said the company is called UBL.org. Localeze has a similar program.

  • Dave  September 29, 2010 at 10:52 am

    Got calls completely outside of my area of work. Called and sent emails to both the account manager and Yext Support, about the calls prior to the next billing cycle. Received no response. The billing cycle came due and Yext charged us for these calls. Again I send emails to the account manager, Yext Support and made phone calls asking what they would do with the calls charges, , again no response. Finally we sent anther email to all and called again telling Yext that if they could not respond prior to a certain date to cancel all accounts. Yext did not respond but instead canceled the accounts. At that point we had no choice but to file with the NYC BBB against Yext. Still it took two request from the BBB to get a response out of Yext. They refunded the call charges. However when I called to have the accounts reactivated, Yext informed me that the accounts were not eligible to reactivate because I had requested them canceled and they had to issue a refund. I reminded them that it was their failure to act that caused the accounts to be canceled, and we had to file a complaint to get any response out of Yext.. It took a two months to get a simple response form Yext. Stay away form them.

  • Richard Morris  September 29, 2010 at 1:33 pm

    Anybody remember that song “bye bye love” by the everly brothers?

    bye bye yext
    bye bye rejects
    hello , lawsuit
    i think im gonna laugh

    bye bye yext
    dont act perplexed
    a lawsuit is next
    I feel like i could smile
    think ill smile for awhile

    there goes my money
    to another scam
    i wish i’d learn
    but im just a man
    but i do know
    how to sue you
    and when im done
    you will be through

    bye bye yext
    bye bye rejects
    hello , lawsuit
    i think im gonna laugh

    bye bye yext
    dont act perplexed
    a lawsuit is next
    I feel like i could smile
    think ill smile for awhile

    Sorry still a work in progress. i just couldnt help myself. dont flame it too bad im not really a song writer thank goodness. hopefully someone here can make it funnier.

    Yext you could have done people right and maybe had a good good company. instead you resorted to ripping people off.

    and you know youre ripping people off because you have never tried to defend yourself. not that you could defend any of these actions anyhow.

  • Andrew Shotland  September 29, 2010 at 7:34 pm

    Richard, you just took the award for most out there comment. Surprised you went with the Everly Bros. So many other more relevant tunes you could have picked:

    Blondie – Hanging on the Telephone, Call Me
    The Clash – London Calling
    Plastic Bertrand – Telephone a Telephone, Mon Bijou!
    Lady Gaga & Beyonce – Telephone
    Al Green – Call Me
    ELO – Telephone Line
    10CC – Don’t Hang Up
    Anything by the Jerky Boys 🙂

  • Andrew Shotland  September 29, 2010 at 7:34 pm

    btw Richard congrats on being comment 200!

  • Richard Morris  September 29, 2010 at 11:29 pm

    Sorry Andrew, the lyrics could have been better too. instead of bye bye yext it could have been lie lie yext. Its kind of fitting though.

  • Matt  October 1, 2010 at 8:24 am

    I’d just like to say this is a TERRIFIC thread on Yext. I read about Yext in a publication and went to Google to check out what others were saying and this page is number one for “Yext Review” and is in position five for simply “Yext”. This page is chock full of useful info.

    I have never used them and now probably won’t. Although initially I was going to use them for reputation management, which is what they are touting on their site as a free service. Maybe they get you to sign up for the free reputation management, and then sell you the advertising on the back end.

    Too bad this would be a good service if it worked, or if they had better customer service policies. But with the stories above I’m not sure it’s worth the risk. I’m surprised nobody from Yext company has replied to this thread. Apparently they don’t monitor their own online reputation 🙂

  • Mike Peterson  October 1, 2010 at 8:50 am

    I would like to add to a previous post I made. I was at the point where I called my credit card company to dispute the $40/month flat rate Yext charge . I tried to call Yext to cancel, but could not get a hold of anyone in customer service after trying 3 times.

    My credit card company (AMEX) was very easy to work with and disputed 1 monthly charge and promised to block any future charges from Yext.

    Yext called a month later and and asked me for a new credit card number because my AMEX number was declined. I explained that I was not interested in their service and to please cancel my service. They insisted on having a new credit card number to bill for the charge that was declined. I tried to explain how I tried to cancel and had not received a legitmate Yext phone call for 2 months. The Yext representative then turned hostile. I had no choice but to hang up on that rude representative.

    I have tried two other SEO companies. One has been very successful. It is call 411locals.com. They promised to place our company onto the Google Maps sections when someone does a Google Serch for Computer Repair Fort Myers and 5 other search strings that I chose. It has been working very well for 1 year. We paid $400/year for this service and I just renewed it for another year. They said all new customers are being charged $600/year. I would estimate 5-10 new phone calls per week from this service. The second company is called Outrank.com and they claim to help put our company into the top 5 in the organic section of Google Search. I agreed to pay them $99/month, with no contracts. It worked for about 3 months, then has not worked for 1 month. I emailed my sales rep and a technician called within 2 hours. She said that she is going to look into the problem. I am going to start searching for an Outrank.com form to see what others have experienced.

    Goodbye Yext

  • Richard Morris  October 3, 2010 at 12:24 pm

    Hi again i have sent emails to the following email addresses at yext inviting them to come here and fix their reputation and address these concerns that we all have. Hopefully this time they will come and talk to us. i will also include the body of the email so that people will see what i wrote to them.

    pr@yext.com
    info@yext.com
    network@yext.com
    support@yext.com
    ads@yext.com

    I have also sent messages to Howard Lerman,Brian Distelburger, Alok Bhushan and Tom Dixon through Facebook. I could have sent it to everyone on their friends list but i did not. However if they dont respond ill call up some friends and we will send it to everyone in a short amount of time. Then they will also get a bunch of calls from their friends asking whats going on. So maybe they will go ahead and come visit us here on localseoguide.com

    Here is what i wrote in the messages and emails :

    Hi are you going to address these complaints located at the following websites :

    https://www.localseoguide.com/yext-are-half-your-phone-leads-junk/

    http://www.complaintsboard.com/bycompany/yext-a217274.html

    You have been damaging your reputation left and right and I invite you now to come to https://www.localseoguide.com/yext-are-half-your-phone-leads-junk/ and help yourselves fix your reputation. I have invited you before but you have never showed up or responded. I will post these emails being sent to you at https://www.localseoguide.com/yext-are-half-your-phone-leads-junk/ so that everyone can see that i have invited you again.

    Now lets see if this gets any kind of response at all. If not then my friends and I will send the same message to everybody on these 4 peoples facebook profiles. all their friends.

  • Richard Morris  October 3, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    Delivery satus failed on the email I sent to ads@yaxt.com

  • Richard Morris  October 3, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    the email was actually sent to ads@yext.com when it failed. i only mispelled it in the previous post. sorry about that

  • Kevin  October 4, 2010 at 7:27 am

    After getting calls several times weekly about trying out Yext I finally tried the service reluctantly. We started with a $150 cap for incoming calls, the first month we received a couple calls from potential customers but soon after we started getting calls from people who were already long time customers of ours, they just lost our phone number. Since these people could not find our phone number they went online and searched which every advertising site had our number changed the the “800” number Yext set up. We were not only getting charged for “junk” calls the ads that were placed around the net were poorly done. After calling the billing department regarding the calls, they flagged a few as “junk” for us but still made us pay for the other calls which should have been considered “junk”. Even some months we received no calls at all we were still charged the $150.00 fee. I will never use their service again and will not recommend them to my worst enemy.

  • Richard Morris - Yext Finally Calls Me  October 4, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    Well, I dont really know where to start. But 23 posts later and today I finally get a call from Yext. Apparently I have been making some tiny waves over there.

    I wonder what happened to Charles. He completely disappeared after post 132.

    In preparation for writing this post I went back and reread all the posts here.
    I dont know how i feel yet about the phone call from Yext today but Ill try my best to leave emotion and negativity out of it. Except for a couple of things.

    It took 7 months and 23 posts for yext to call me. Also a first round of emails and a second round of emails. Beyond that maybe now is the time that Yext realizes they have to cleanup what they have done or maybe they have been concerned but lack of information in our posts have led to them not bieng able to get ahold of us. That really dont hold water though. They could have contacted Andrew and asked Andrew to post something here for them so that they could get a hold of us. Or they could have done it themselves. Aside from all of that they may be trying now.

    I want to start off by saying that CLAIRE MCCARTHY should possibly be put in charge of dealing with the complaints here on localseo guide and elsewhere. Pay her a little more and put her in the pr department as a true customer relations representative. She was very nice on the phone and seemed to have a genuine want to fix my issue with yext. If this was done for her Yext would benefit greatly. It would be up to her to know when a complaint has appeared on the internet and it would be up to her to deal with it fast and rectify any negativity being posted about her company. Yext you need this.
    Imagine someone who is mad enough (me as an example) to come on here to localseo guide and write my feelings and experiences down on the very first post and the very next day somebody calls me to try and fix the situation like CLAIRE MCCARTHY . I would be forced to possibly take back what I originally wrote and write a second post detailing a how Yext had called me and fixed my problems. What a way for yext to handle things. They should implement this right away. And dont give her a little raise, Give her a decent raise because dealing with angry customers can be a very stressing job if you do it ona daily basis I read somewhere that people in india who work in call centers have a extremely high suicide rate because of the way people talk to them. So she would need a good raise.

    Now I dont know if claire can do anything or not or wether or not everybody was just curious but we will see.

    I’d like to think that most of my posts here have been pretty logical. I really have done any ranting. Charles seem to think….well I really dont know what charles thought but we havent seen him for awhile and it makes me wonder if whether he worked for yext or not.

    Anyway on to the conversation with Claire.

    Claire calls and we introduce ourselves and she explains that she is in the distrubution line to receive the emails that i have sent. we talked for a couple of minutes then i start asking questions

    These are not word for word so please dont quote because I may have forgotten something

    Q: Do you monitor these websites?
    A: yes we have always monitored these websites.

    Q: how come you never came on here to localseo guide to
    comment
    A: We didnt want to take part in ourselves getting bashed. We like to try and fix problems one on one.

    Q: A lot of people here havent gotten their problems resolved. how come?
    A: well sometimes there is not enough information in these posts to determine who it is we have to call. we have contacted some people who has posted their experiences because they managed to leave us enough information so that we were able to get ahold of them.

    ( for example i only ever posted my name Richard Morris. and they may have 100 Richard Morrises in the database. They dont know which one to call)

    Q: so does everyone read the posts here?
    A: a lot of people do. we follow what is being said here.

    Q: So then you yourself has read all the entires?
    A: yes

    Q: Did anybody ever wonder who i was and what did they think about some guy who just kept posting stuff? Did it sound like I was ranting.
    A: No you never sounded like you were ranting. And everybody did wonder who you were and what they did to make you so angry.

    ( Honestly i didnt think about this one at the time but if they would have read the first post it might have gave them an idea)
    (anyway i went ahead and retold her the story and she said that never should have happened)

    Q: back to getting ahold of other people. i tried to get other commentors here to write down who it was they talked to when they had the problem that made them mad enough to post about it. I told everyone this exactly at post 185
    “That is what we need. We need to start posting the names of the yext reps you talk to and what they did. I wish I would have remembered mine. Maybe that will teach some of these people a small lesson. To have their names and how bad they acted posted on a website for all to see for a very long time.”
    A: yes that is a good idea because we will bring them in and tell them look what kind of reputation you are giving us on the internet. Look this is what you did. it would not be good for that person.

    Q: So yext doesnt want to come on here and talk. Why doesnt a yext representative just come on here and post 1 comment requesting people to leave more information and the name of the person they are having problems with. You know somebody with some stature so everyone would see that their complaints will not be ignored?
    A: that is a very good idea. Something short and simple I am going to bring that up.

    ( Maybe a newly promoted “Internet relations Advisor”)

    that was pretty much all i could muster as far as questions go. I was eating dinner and my food was in front of me getting cold but i knew i wanted to try and cover everything.
    I asked if she could see the person who i had talked to and she said she would have to dig a little deeper. She said she would like to make reparations but i was never charged for anything so she just couldnt cut me a check. And I told her that even if i had been charged for something it was never about the money. It was about human decency. I dont talk to people any old way i want to and I dont expect it to be done to me. I said i know that if i was treated this way by someone at your company i know there have been others who have also been treated this way. This blog here at localseoguide is full of people. What I want is 2 things.

    The first thing is that everybody who has commented here needs to be contacted and have their problems discussed for possible solutions. Can you do that? And the answer was yes.

    The second thing i want is for the person who was responsible for talking to me in the way he did was to call me and apologize. can you do that. and she said that if the person still worked for this company that she might be able to do that. I told her that i didnt want her or anyone else besides him to apologize to me. Only he is the one to cause this problem for you not anyone else. And if has already been fired then he probably got what he deserved.

    i am sure we said more but i am getting hungry again and sick of typing. i have typed more in the last 5 days than i have my entire life. I hate typing. Voice dictation needs to improve quickly.

    She is suppose to be in contact with me on tuesday mornig. october 5th 2010. I will come back and post anything that is said and whatever outcome happens.

    I asked her if she saw the parody song comment and she said yes that was very creative. lol

    I also asked if she minded if i post our conversation to localseoguide and she said she did not mind.

    I really hope they fix everybodies problems here. I really do. But i hope a little more that they make that guy call me and apologize to me. I hope he is still there. But if not then i would like everybody here to post what information they need and then give us a status update to see if yext is really trying to fix these problems.

    Claire, I think I have been as logical as i could with this post. Please tell me if I got anything wrong. I think i brought up some pretty good points and hopefully someone actually takes 1 or 2 or all to heart and appoint someone to “Internet relations Advisor”) And it might ought to be you.

    Charles, Where did you go? Did you finally start having problems with yext? If so come back and put your information here so they can contact you. I dont care that you really didnt like what i had to say. My problem is not or has it ever been with you but with yext. Unless of course you are achill for yext and was only here to try and discredit me.

  • Richard  October 4, 2010 at 6:58 pm

    I had the same problem. I was registerd with city search, yahoo, and a bunch of listings they changed all my phone numbers and information. I am still working on that. I am not paying them a cent.

  • Richard Morris - Yext Finally Calls Me  October 4, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    Richard, please read my post and leave some extra information so yext’s newest internet relations advisor can contact you about the problem youre having

  • Claire McCarthy  October 5, 2010 at 10:40 am

    Hi Richard,

    I thought in the spirit of our conversation it would be nice to reply via email as well as on the forum here.

    As always, we are very concerned whenever we hear about a client having problems with their account and I’m glad we were able to go over your concerns yesterday. I want to take a moment to directly apologize to you for your experience during the cancellation process. To us, the way we end our relationship is just as important as the way it is begun. I love your passion for seeing problems corrected, because I have it too!

    We will continue to work on providing a great experience for our customers and I wish you the best of luck in the future.

    To any customers who may be reading this forum, we are still working out the best way to interact on these forums, in the interim please do feel free to contact our support ream at 1-800-321-YEXT and via email at support@yext.com with any have any questions you may have about your account.

    Sincerely,
    Claire

  • Andrew Shotland  October 5, 2010 at 12:32 pm

    Very nice to see you here Claire! Thanks for stopping by and thanks to Richard for inviting you.

  • Richard Morris - Yext Finally Calls Me  October 5, 2010 at 1:39 pm

    well, I can no longer post here. My issues with yext have been resolved. I no longer can complain. I might watch this column for a while longer just out of curiousity but that is all i can do.
    It is now up to everyone to see their problems get resolved on their own. You have to be vigilant if you ever hope to accomplish things.
    Thank you Claire for joining this column and for helping other people here. You have effectively headed me off at the pass, so to speak.
    I really do believe that most companies out there should have a special department to handle internet complaints. in this day and age, corporations should start seeing that the online reputation is something that needs to be protected at all costs. Before the internet, companies could rip people off whenever they wanted to. they really had no way to voice their opinion. Now because of the internet people can make or break a company with just the pwoer of their words.You have to ask herself, was this just a tiny column that really didnt accomplish much or did this column actually make huge waves over at yext. This site is ranked in the first spot on google search for yext reviews just like matt said in a previous post. So that would mean that anybody who searched for yext ended up here. This site could have put a dent into their ability to attract new customers.
    or maybe it didnt do much at all. there are still people and businesses out there who really dont know how to use the internet.

    An “internet Relations Advisor” is a cool idea and should be implemented by all companies. Take care of your customers. Without them You have nothing.

    Thanks again Claire and good luck to you and all here on this column. Sorry for being a little longwinded at times.

  • Charles  October 5, 2010 at 1:53 pm

    yo Morris,

    Get a life BRO.

  • Richard Morris - Yext Finally Calls Me  October 5, 2010 at 2:38 pm

    Post # 92##########

    Charles // May 18, 2010 at 6:54 pm

    I think a lot of people are missing the point of yext. It is not a perfect advertising service but for the 10 years I have owned my business, not a single marketing venture we have done has produced a 100% conversion rate, it just does not work that way people.

    We as a company have spent many thousands of dollars on creating a website, trying to buy adwords on our own, hiring a guy to handle our SEO and SEM with little to no results. Yext not only puts you at the top of Google but almost 20 other major search engines. This provides our business the maximum amount of internet exposure we need.

    Now in regards to the call recordings and the “relevant” leads they send our way, yeah sometimes crappy one’s get through but their support team has been nothing short of professional and prompt in their responses. Not every lead turns into a job and it certainly bugs me, but my company is much better off with Yext than without.

    If you are too afraid to invest a couple hundred bucks to see if a very worthwhile and legitimate service actually helps your business than keep moping about a young aggressive sales force trying to get you to sign up

    Post #115###########

    Charles // Jun 4, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Hello everyone,

    Just wanted to update everyone with my Yext experience but before doing so wanted to respond to Mr. Morris’ personal crusade against Yext.

    You seem really unintelligent, belligerent and I can understand 100% why a service like this wouldn’t work for you. From my perspective I don’t even think you actually used Yext because if my theories are correct we work in the same industry and the “leads” are not 40 dollars a pop. Could be wrong but thats just the vibe I get from your posts.

    Now in response to post 102, I will give ACTUAL results, not just some theoretical #’s you thought would strengthen your argument:

    In 86 days of Yext service we have received 97 phone calls, of the 97 calls 34 of them were deemed relevant leads by Yext’s calling system. In listening to all of our calls we felt that 2 “relevant” leads they sent to us were not up to our standards so in a calm and professional manner we e-mailed them the call, gave our rebuttal as to why we did not think it can be considered a lead and 3 days later the leads were credited.

    Of the 32 billable leads we were given, we converted 20 jobs that generated revenue. For argument’s sake our average Yext job goes for about 100 bucks, that means we got 2000 dollars worth of revenue on 640 dollars of advertising. Not terrible ROI for my business.

    Now for those who think I am drinking the Yext cool-aid, you are wrong. I find it very tedious going back and checking calls and making sure they become jobs. Its annoying as hell but in this ever changing internet marketing environment and more importantly volatile economic conditions, I will do whatever it takes to keep my business going.

    P.S. Richard I did your challenge to Google Yext and yeah I found some complaints but I also saw something that seems to me that they are growing a hell of a lot faster than you are building your “class action”lawsuit against them.

    http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/02/yext-superpage/

    Good luck to all and I will keep everyone updated

    Post #117##########

    Charles // Jun 4, 2010 at 5:00 pm

    I apologize, no whines here. I just think that if you are going to play in the big leagues with trying to expand your business through using the internet you need to understand the rules beforehand, be willing to invest a decent amount of money and evaluate your ROI based upon the numbers, not emotional reactions to day to day results. That is all

    Post #121##########

    Charles // Jun 4, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    Heavy Handed? Read Richard’s out of control post, # 113 and tell me who is belligerent . I come to these forums and many others to find ways to improve my business through communicating with other owners about sales and marketing strategies.

    Throwing random numbers out and constantly talking about how terrible of a company it is detracts from the point of these websites, which is to educate the uneducated.

    2 years ago I knew nothing about SEO, SEM, adwords, nothing but by going to sites like these and having open discussions with more knowledgeable people about what works and what doesn’t work has helped my business evolve.

    I did not mean to offend you Richard and I’m sorry for using such harsh language, I just don’t think that this forum should be your soap box to bash Yext.

    Post #125##########

    Charles // Jun 6, 2010 at 1:10 pm

    Post # 92 was mine if you read my previous comments. My job as a business owner is to expand my business and keep it open. Yeah listening to calls takes away from my time but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get through.

    Post #130##########

    Charles // Jun 8, 2010 at 9:19 pm

    Wait a minute, Richard you never even used Yext? I went back and read everything because I assumed that you had been scammed out of money or whatever you are ranting about and the only evidence I get from you is that you don’t like how they talked to you??? Maybe you don’t like the fact that you were sold by someone younger than you, but I really do not understand why you are so passionate about something you never even tried.

    There are a good points to Yext and bad points just like every company in the world, do a Google search about Goldman Sachs or General Electric or BP for that matter and tell me what results you find?? Also look in the mirror, you are so high on great, honest business practices but I am sure that you have probably pissed off a customer or two, I sure know that I have.

    But anyways, this forum is for people that actually USED the service and want to discuss the benefits and pitfalls of a different advertising venue, not for some guy to make 15 posts because he didn’t like how he was talked too.

    Last but not least spare me your business advice, I have a very profitable business that is expanding in the worst recession since the Great Depression, if I gotta listen to a few phone calls a week to make sure we are converting jobs than so be it, getting the job done is what being a business owner is all about

    Post #217##########

    Charles // Oct 5, 2010 at 1:53 pm

    yo Morris,

    Get a life BRO

    Who we have here is a person that has not provided anything about themselves. no last name. no company name. no nothing. Notice in post #115 while he is talking about leads. it appears that he was very careful in not mentiong anything about what type of company he has. he talks about leads and things of that nature but nowhere in his entire history here has he said anything personal about himself.

    So what is it youy do charles? Why not post anything about yourself. You are the most anonymous person here and you are running off at the mouth about how yext is great and how I am such a bad person.
    Is there something youre hiding? Why be so rude and ignorant?
    #########################################

    What you need to do honestly is come back here and tell everyone who you are. Because until you do your comments here will be diregarded by everybody as ignorant and a possible schill for yext. Then that will mean you have actually wasted your life by coming here in the first place and accomplishing nothing. So not only do you waste your life going through junk calls you have also wasted your life in this forum.
    You have accomplished nothing charles where as i have managed to get yext to come to these forums to help people.

    So maybe it is you who needs to get a life and not hide behind some anonymous name. what do you tell your family when you go home at night. “honey today i wasted more of my life going through junk calls oh and i posted more anonymous posts on a blog, are you proud of me?” So charles if you dont want to stand behind what it is you say on the internet then maybe you shouldnt be here at all. it is you who needs to get a life.
    I have taken your bad posts about me and have for the most part ignored them. But I decided to just this once point out that you are an idiot who wants to hide and not tell people who he is.

  • Joshua Steimle  October 6, 2010 at 9:14 am

    My company was contacted by Yext yesterday about placing their listings on our directories (we have a subsidiary named DeclareMedia that manages about 2,500 local business directories). The idea is that they would give us javascript so that they can publish their 20,000 listings on our directories.

    My questions are; has anyone here had an experience with Yext from this side of things, vs. being a customer, and it seems to me that if I’m publishing a bunch of their listings on my directories, doesn’t that mean I’ve got a ton of dup content that’s also on 50 other websites out there?

  • Pitstop Appliance Repair  October 6, 2010 at 4:45 pm

    If you allow Yext into your database, not only will you be hosting dup content, but the phone numbers will not be the true numbers for that company… they will be Yext numbers..making Yext money.

    BTW, you need an Appliance Repair category and I want to be on it.. 🙂

  • Joshua Steimle  October 6, 2010 at 9:00 pm

    The Yext number would be making us money too, but the dup thing concerns me. The question is would it hurt our directories or just be a neutral effect? That is, would Google just ignore it, or actualize penalize us for some reason? Seems like they would just ignore it.

    Regarding the appliance repair suggestion, that may be a good one. Would you mind making that suggestion here? That way it’ll be easy to let you know once we add it. And make sure to include where you’re located.

  • Andrew Shotland  October 11, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    Hey readers,

    If you have found this post valuable, I’d really appreciate a link back to this URL with “Yext” in the anchor text. There’s no reason why TechCrunch and Crunchbase should be outranking me. #bastards!

  • Sherwin  October 12, 2010 at 7:37 am

    Thanks for this interesting post. I would really love to try Yext into my database. Hope it works well for me as much as it did with you guys.

  • miniga  October 25, 2010 at 4:08 am

    Yext gets most of its call volume from search engine advertising and distribution via local search directories, which is not too different than how other agencies that sell calls operate. ..

    data recovery

  • Robin  November 16, 2010 at 9:06 am

    DO NOT USE THE YEXT SERVICE!! IT IS A RIPOFF!!!

    I can’t believe you wrote this article without doing a little research and reading all the complaints online. WOW. How do people get paid to half ass everything? I could only assume you have something to do with the Yext company… otherwise why would you be so ignorant when reviewing a company? Amazing.

    Just search “YEXT COMPLAINTS” or “YEXT SCAM” in yahoo or google and THERE IS THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT YEXT.

  • Robin  November 16, 2010 at 9:12 am

    And Andrew? Stop asking us to spam for you. Seriously.

    EVERYONE SEARCH “YEXT SCAM” OR “YEXT COMPLAINTS”” IN GOOGLE, YAHOO OR OTHER SEARCH ENGINE. THE REAL ANSWERS TO THE RIPOFF COMPANY WILL BE FOUND THERE!

  • Andrew Shotland  November 16, 2010 at 11:07 am

    Robin, you are absolutely right. Everyone, if you have found this post valuable, please link to it with the anchor text = “Robin is a little cranky this morning”

    Too bad you didn’t add your email or website to your comment so we could all send you happy faces. 🙂

  • Patty  November 22, 2010 at 3:45 am

    CONS about YEXT:
    1. A ton of junk calls
    2. Very expensive for what you end up with.
    3. If you stop using their service, they leave all of the pages with your company info they scattered all over the internet but add a statement in bold red saying this page is no longer updated and a few other sayings.
    4. Much of those pages have bad information about your company.

    PROS about YEXT:
    1. If you have problems paying the huge bill you have with them for just one month (one and only) they are very nice and work with you until you are able to pay it off.
    2. If you pay attention to how they set you up and where they put your info, you can learn a lot about this sort of local marketing.

  • Pitstop Appliance Repair  November 22, 2010 at 6:34 am

    The problem with not using Yext is created with the customer themselves, not Yext.

    Yext has numerous websites set up that ask the searcher to type in a zip code and find local service. It then brings up a list of the Yext accounts in that area.

    The customer doesn’t realize that they are looking at an advertising company’s directory. They are happy to just type in some digits and click.

    I ask people all the time where they found us and the blanket response 99% of the time is- “On the internet”. That is like asking where your teenage daughter went and getting an answer of ‘Outside”. The internet/world is a big place.

    So.. I take the time to explain to the customer about Yext, about advertising methods and give our real contact info for the future. You would be amazed how many think a simple Yext blurb profile somewhere is our website.

    If you aren’t using Yext, you may be avoiding some headaches but you are also missing a tremendous % of the customers who never scroll down enough to find you. Competing with their rankings is tough in my mind. At least for a very small business with low advertising budgets.

  • Fresno Plumber  January 2, 2011 at 10:07 am

    I think this using Yext is a profitable thing when we compare with other systems.

  • Stewart  January 5, 2011 at 12:21 am

    I tried Yext for (3) months last summer and the results were very poor. I converted (1) sale for a nominal amount out of what was reported as 30+ leads. The leads were not filtered properly and while Yext did work with me to remove many of the invalid leads, this was a waste of my time and not why I signed up with Yext.

    Yext is a good concept with very poor execution.

  • SEO Land  January 10, 2011 at 12:28 pm

    we are leading SEO Company, we bought phone leads in starting of our business, and most of those leads were fake leads, they just do simple question and never shows interest to buy our services but we were charged for each leads.

  • Drsadov  January 15, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    I have to respectfully say that this wasn’t a very thorough review of the issues at hand. Nor was it unbiased.

    In ‘theory’ what they are doing should work however they lack in their execution. First of all they snagged up a hefty 25 mill in venture funds which means they are in a high pressure sales environment.

    They employ youngs kids to aggressively market their product and that’s where the breakdown occurs.

    A. Half these kids don’t understand the product themselves.

    B. They are all about the sale. The more calls they bill for the more they make

    C. They practice what I believe to be ‘listing arbitrage’

    Because of their affiliations and Partner network with other search platforms their algorith will basically claim your listings and replace your number with one of their cloaking numbers and bill you for a call they may not really deserve credit for.

  • Drsadov  January 15, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    @Joshua I would stay away. Something like that – if goes wrong could spread through your business like a cancer and be fatal.

    A company like that will trample you on their way to the ‘top’ and not even know it.

  • Stewart  January 16, 2011 at 10:36 am

    Joshua,

    They is absolutely no backlink SEO value when signing up with Yext since all listings go to a separate page created by Yext rather than you own site. Plus, if they do provide a link back to your site it goes through a Yext redirect rather than a direct link to your URL. Spiders / bots will not go past the redirect so you get no backlink value whatsoever.

    Save your money.

  • Mckenz Utah SEO Consultant  February 25, 2011 at 2:48 pm

    Yext may have some bad contacts but at the same time they have some good contact. They can be very helpful to find contacts to help jump start your business.

  • Linden Malki  February 25, 2011 at 2:53 pm

    Sounds like the “SEO Consultant” sounds like a consultant rather than an actual user. I wonder if he gets anything out of steering business their way.

  • John Jorges  February 26, 2011 at 6:51 am

    Got 30 calls……….1 (one) (uno) (single) (solitary) job. If they call for directions, you pay for the call. Waste of time and money. I believe yext calls to boost their income. I know other yext ‘customers’ call to see how it works. There’s no way to know who’s on the other end of the line and their intentions. Save your money

  • Ex-Yext (er)  March 14, 2011 at 6:47 pm

    Just dumped their entire sales floor. Couldn’t afford to pay the kids even $30k per year. Bet the company folds within a year.

  • Bryan Super  March 15, 2011 at 8:26 am

    I think that may turn out to be a waste, but I guess it’s worth a shot to see if it works.

  • TheFlooringExpert  March 16, 2011 at 9:17 pm

    I used their new service, Yext Tags, because someone called me and told me that since I had a Google Tag, I needed to “expand” it to the rest of the networks. I was told that it was $200 for the setup and $150 per month. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? But the salesgirl said it was really important and didn’t let me off the phone until I agreed. Since we just did a 3,000 sq ft floor that got done the day before the phone call, I was willing to try it. IT DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! The Tags don’t even look like the Google Tag on a lot of the sites. It was a waste of money and I didn’t like the pressure of the salesgirl either. Cancelled after 1 month.

  • nate  March 19, 2011 at 5:31 am

    Anyone have any additional information/experience with YextTags? I’ve been getting calls from Yext…concept sounds good (but they always do). It sounded too good to be true so I wanted to investigate. The 411 would be appreciated.

  • Dan  April 15, 2011 at 2:59 pm

    It seems there a lot of negative reviews. Have anyone had any positive ROI from their Yext investment? We are trying to create a database of these local internet marketing companies and see which niche they actually work for, if at all. The issue we are seeing is that they put so much pressure on their sales rep that they often sell the quick deal rather then the right deal. Any positive experiences out there to share?

  • Richard Morris  April 17, 2011 at 3:11 am

    I would say probably not! lol

  • Former Yext User  May 7, 2011 at 8:45 pm

    @Dan

    To answer your question yes we did initially. It was when they changed their system to pay-per-call, instead of pay-per-new-customer, that it didn’t make sense. The “real” reason that Yext changed the system was that they claimed some companies were requesting credits for every call. To which we replied – WE are not requesting credits for every call, why not just drop those companies that are? Nevermind, it’s too late for Yext.

    We also tried Google Tags for a month, which didn’t generate too many new clients, but it was only $25/month.

    Now we are using Google Boost. This is a great service! We have as many calls as Yext did, for 1/2 the price. Every small business should try Google Boost.

  • Former Yext User  May 7, 2011 at 8:47 pm

    Also, forgot to mention that Google Boost and Google Places promotes YOUR company phone number, YOUR company name, and YOUR company website, not theirs.

  • Ed Lichtig  May 22, 2011 at 8:48 am

    What Yext is doing is robbing our industry and getting rich one call at at time . Yext,Sears and the National Chain Auto Glass company all are making money off my company and ruining my reputation one call at a time.

    This service is a rip off and needs to be shut down.

  • John Jorges  May 23, 2011 at 5:14 am

    Yext is a joke. They charge for junk calls. They’re nasty. It’s a scam……….

  • John  May 29, 2011 at 2:50 pm

    The yext service providers in my zip code has dropped from 18 to 3 in the last 12 months. Hey guys, you doing a great job! You ran everybody off with your ridiculous charges & fees.

  • John Jorges  May 31, 2011 at 5:31 am

    They ‘sucked’ all they could. People do finally learn………….. “Hi. Do you fix bent, cracked wheels? NO!. That’ll be $25! What a scam!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Adam Chronister  June 1, 2011 at 2:39 pm

    My experience with phone leads is they are just a new take affiliate marketing only more spammy and facilitated via the phone. If anyone knows of a company that actually delivers valuable phone leads I would like to hear your experience.

  • Chris Banzet  August 11, 2011 at 4:58 pm

    The unfortunate thing about Yext is EXACTLY what’s mentioned here. They only care about the next sale and if that means you have to swallow a bunch of junk calls, then so be it. As for me, I was (smart) or thought I was, I signed up for their BASE charge of $99 a month. However, when I do a local search under copier repair I find myself, but its not at the bottom of the list of all my competitors. Might as well be in the Yellow Pages with a business name beginning with the letter Z. Yext also made a promise when I first started service with them that has now been documented as untrue. They said they would “ONLY” solicit “3” like services in any given area. Well, there’s a lot more than that. But regardless, I still rate everything on ROI. In this case, its NOT there!! So goodbye Yext, your NOT the YEXT big deal, you’re just money hungry SEO’s with a good idea and a bad execution!!!

  • John Jorges  August 12, 2011 at 5:07 am

    You’re right….. yext sucks

  • Matthew  August 30, 2011 at 6:26 pm

    Whether using Yext, service magic, or any other Pay Per Lead or Pay per call you will always loose. The truth is that if you want targeted leads you need to advertise where people are already looking for your service. Regardless of what people think Craigslist is a good place to advertise.

  • Linden Malki  August 31, 2011 at 11:56 am

    I tried the Yext service a couple of years ago and found that I got charged for a bunch of calls that were useless, and cancelled. Now recently I’ve been getting emails with an “analysis of your account” trying to sell a renewal, in a format that hopes I will think we already have an current account. Something to watch for–

  • bill  September 21, 2011 at 10:35 am

    We get calls from SEO’s that are going to place us #1 with Yahoo, Google etc. It’s all nonsense. We tell them the same thing that we told the YEXT rep. “We’ll be delighted to pay a large referral fee on any deals that we complete through your auspices but nver anyting up front or on the come”. (We are commercial funding brokers) .Also we NEVER would give them credit card information. Their answer is always that it is not their policy to work that way. Our answer is that you have your policy and we have our and that we will never change ours!

  • John Jorges  September 21, 2011 at 10:49 am

    They actually said they “guaranteed” I’d get business using them. I guess “business” means answering junk phone calls.

  • Chris Banzet  September 21, 2011 at 5:52 pm

    OK, I read all these cases about Yext, and I wanted to tell you that I have been actively using Yext for over a year and a half now. You’re right, those who sign up for their Pay Per Call are going to get WHAMMIED with tons of calls. However, Yext doesn’t want you to know about this, but they also have a “BASE” rate plan as well. 🙂 I am an office equipment dealer and in the Washington DC area I am averaging about 10 to 15 new clients a month and I only pay $99 a month for a 50 mile radius.

    When you FIRST get switched over, they will give you a SMALL radius. Just accept it, and then call back in and complain, and they will slowly increase it.

    Now, of course they will put all their Pay Per Call users at the top of the list, BUT if you make your ad strategically, you’ll be surprised how many prospects will actually read through the entire list FIRST, and then select who they think is best.
    Also, there is a competing company out there that builds you a website (6 pages) and guarantees that it will be on the first page of the major search engines. My TOTAL advertising costs between both of these services is less than $250.00 a month. And I average about 15 to 25 new clients each month. That is GREAT ROI.

  • Red Wall Marketing  October 10, 2011 at 11:01 pm

    Paying per lead is not a bad thing. I am surprised that so many think that just because the lead does not make a purchase that they should not pay. If a customer calls and is looking for your service and you can’t sell them or tell them to go somewhere else for a cheaper price, that is not Yext’s fault.

    The biggest issue however with a company like Yext is that you do not own any of the listings. It is their phone # and their website. So once you stop paying those listings are using your company name and a different phone # and website.

    This can also be a problem for your map listing with Google. They like to see all the same information in the directories you are in. Having directories with a different phone # and website address can hurt you.

    All that said, I think Yext has a great model. Personally I recommend clients work on a more long term strategy that they own.

  • Linden Malki  October 11, 2011 at 8:34 am

    It’s not a case of calls that we “ought” to be able to turn into sales, but calls that are not potential customers at all. That was the original idea of Yext–that they would screen out the wrong numbers and inapplicable inquiries-but that isn’t the way it worked in the real world.

  • John Jorges  October 12, 2011 at 4:56 am

    If you own a pizza shop and don’t mind a $25 fee to tell someone you’re open till 10, or a mechanic who doesn’t mind $25 to tell someone that it’s dangerous to weld an aluminum wheel, yext is for you. $250 for no viable job- yext is for you!!!!!!

  • Richard Morris  October 12, 2011 at 6:04 am

    Apparently Claire has flown the coop. We should all just let yext die. We all know it does not work. Andrew change the title to Yext Sucks So when someone searches for yext this page comes up first thing. The only momentum yext has right now is banking off the fact that they are making money by ripping people off. We already know they make fake phone calls to their customers which is evidenced here by a lot of people. We know they are rude and belligerent to people when they say no. We know that this model is not working that is why they keep changing their policies. They lie, manipulate, and just plain dont care about you at all. just whether or not they can trick you out of money. Oh and charles still is nowhere to be found. Doesnt want to own up to the stuff he was spewing.

  • Richard Morris  October 12, 2011 at 6:06 am

    Please people! dont go for yext because it will just cause you heartache and grief. Read all the comments here before you even think about yext

  • Tom Psillas  October 19, 2011 at 8:06 am

    Why don’t service providers learn? Ever since the good old days of the old fashioned yellow pages, you knew the phone company was going to screw you.
    Now, it is a hodge-podge of SEO and Lead rippoffs that permeate the web. Service providers keep looking for the holy grail; paying hundreds of dollars per month, only to pick up 5 or 6 tire kickers.

  • Tommy  August 13, 2012 at 12:48 pm

    I have been looking into this company because I am currently working on adding/updating my company’s information on various business directories. What I find really offputting is that they have special agreements with a number of directories where you can ONLY update their directory through Yext, and Yext charges you a MONTHLY fee for each directory that you want to update. That does not sound very scrupulous to me.

  • Brock  October 17, 2012 at 9:19 pm

    So let me get this straight, yext wants to take control of your local listings that already exists, with a pay per call number they control, and this sounds like a good idea to you Andrew? Furthermore, if they are not taking control of the big three local listings, (google,yahoo,bing) there is a good chance google and the others creates an additional listing with new ppc number. I saw it for years when I was with yellow book. AT&T customers ended up with duplicate listings more times than not. You wanna pay for someone that’s just googling your name to call you to business, then this sounds like the deal for you. Otherwise, I suggest stay away from tracking numbers you do not own. Period.

  • Andrew Shotland  October 17, 2012 at 9:42 pm

    Better late than never Brock. As you can see this post is over two years old. Since then Yext has sold its pay per call biz to Citygrid and is now focused on business listings management.

    While I agree there are potential SEO issues with tracking numbers, SEO aside, Yext’s solution was a novel approach to solving the garbage calls issue.

  • Patty  November 29, 2012 at 12:08 am

    Has anyone worked with the new company Felix that now owns the “Pay Per Call” portion previously part of Yext? I would assume after a couple years of practice and a management change it could be a lot different. With a “month-to-month” approach and assuming a company is capable of of converting potential customers it may be worth checking out again. What do you think?