How Do You Update a Yellow Pages Listing?

[Travis Van Slooten]

I have a client that has a Yellow Pages listing that needs to be updated. There is no "Suggest an Edit" link on the listing and there isn't an option to claim it either. The owner *thought* he claimed it years ago but the login he gave me doesn't work either. As a result, there doesn't appear to be any way to update the listing.

His business also has multiple duplicates on Yellow Pages. For those there was a "Suggest an Edit" link so I marked them as closed. I don't know if YP actually looks at these suggested edits or not.

Travis

P.S. Is there a resource here or anywhere online that provides CURRENT instructions on how to update listings on various directories?

 

[Creativedge]

From my experience, if there's no "Claim this business" button, the listing is already claimed. (Usually updated via Business Listings from YP. Yellow Pages Online Directory. )

Finding out who owns it and what email was used can be a real challenge. For me, it's usually a matter of having the client see if they have contact info from a YP/Dex/Thryv representative.

 

[Patrick Leonard]

Hey Travis,

I've found that if you use their chat support the team will make the requested update on your behalf. Since a lot of my clients don't have their YP login credentials this has been a quick way to make basic edits, suggested edits don't seem to be addressed very quickly at all.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Hey Travis,

I've found that if you use their chat support the team will make the requested update on your behalf. Since a lot of my clients don't have their YP login credentials this has been a quick way to make basic edits, suggested edits don't seem to be addressed very quickly at all.

Thanks. I'll give their live chat a try. For what it's worth, I had my client call YP directly to request the changes we need made and the rep supposedly made them - but so far the profiles haven't been updated.

Thanks,

Travis

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Hey Travis,

YP is a mine field these days.

Is there's no claim button, it's claimed. Call in and ask them to tell you the email associated with the account so you can do a "forgot password" and get the info changed. Once you have the email, just do the forgot password and you should be in.

We have to do this all the time. Did it yesterday actually. You should be good.

By the way, if it's multiple listings, the listings may all be under one email or may be under multiple. You may have to call in again. Or, you can ask the YP rep to look them up.

Also, make sure you guys are talking about the same listing. They've got this habit lately of doing a join.me with you so you can see what they're doing to the listing. Don't just be satisfied with the NAPW matching when you speak to them because you may be talking about 1 listings and the may be talking about another dupe. You need to make sure you're talking about the same listing. In each YP listing's URL there is a number at the end. They call this the "YP ID". Make sure you get them to repeat the ID back to you when they're talking about making changes. If the ID's match, you're talking about the same listing.

I can't tell you how many times in the early days when I was just starting to work with YP that they changed a different listing than I was looking at because there was a dupe I didn't know about. OR there was a dupe in their system that is hidden from the YP site that they were working on by mistake.

Good luck!

 

[Patrick Leonard]

Chat tool works on the Canadian site but the US site doesn't appear to operate in the same way.

https://business.yellowpages.ca/onboarding/#/search

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

@Joshua - thanks for all the great info! I have an update of my own on this.

I tried 2 different numbers listed on the YellowPages.com website for supposed support and they were both dead lines. Finally, I found a number to an agent who was extremely helpful.

As you mentioned, she had me join her via join.me and it was super slick. I could literally watch her make changes to the listing. We also looked for duplicates "together" and she merged/deleted the two we found. Then she helped me connect my client's YP account he created with his new claimed/updated listing. I was super impressed.

Travis

 

[Cherie Dickey]

YP can really be a pain to update. Depending on the country, it can really require multiple hoops and client involvement. I'm glad you got it figured out!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

@Joshua - thanks for all the great info! I have an update of my own on this.

I tried 2 different numbers listed on the YellowPages.com website for supposed support and they were both dead lines. Finally, I found a number to an agent who was extremely helpful.

As you mentioned, she had me join her via join.me and it was super slick. I could literally watch her make changes to the listing. We also looked for duplicates "together" and she merged/deleted the two we found. Then she helped me connect my client's YP account he created with his new claimed/updated listing. I was super impressed.

Travis

It sounds like you got one of the good ones! Nice!

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

I just wanted to update this thread as I had to contact Yellow Pages again for yet another client. I called them and this time the guy just tried to sell me their Yext-like platform as this client had "dozens of duplicates" across multiple sites. He said their system would "easily" fix everything for just $59/month. He also informed me that he couldn't fix the specific Yellow Pages listing I had a question about so he had to give me a number to a different department. He warned me, however, that even if they can fix the listing, it will likely just go back to the current data because all the other data on other websites are wrong, duplicated, etc.

Bottom line, he said I'll be chasing my tail so it's best to sign up for their platform. I've been doing this long enough to understand that what he was telling me was half true as I know inaccurate data on other sites will mess all the data up. But I'm starting to wonder if systems like their's and Yext is worth doing these days. These citations are a major pain in the *ss as it seems they are all moving towards working with Yext anyway. There doesn't seem to be a clean and easy way anymore to manually fix citations.

It's very frustrating. You would think there would be some kind of law that if a website had your data they should be required to give you a free and easy way to manage that data. How these websites can hold your own business data hostage is beyond me. With all the privacy issues these days you would think these directories would be ripe for lawsuits. A business owner shouldn't be required to pay a monthly fee forever just to keep their info accurate on a given directory.

Rant over...but I am curious if anyone else has just thrown in the towel and paid the stupid Yext/Thrive monthly fees to get these citations cleaned up.

Travis

 

[Wirenut]

Rant over...but I am curious if anyone else has just thrown in the towel and paid the stupid Yext/Thrive monthly fees to get these citations cleaned up.

Travis

From what I understand, it seems like people are starting to the throw in the towel in the opposite direction and not worry about citations that much.

I believe it was here that I read many people saying that citations have less weight so they focus on other areas.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

@Wirenut - Yup. I read those threads and I agree completely. The issue is, however, that when you do brand searches there are always a handful of top citation sources on page one of Google and they are always citations that aren't easy to correct/fix - i.e. YellowPages, SuperPages, etc.

 

[daniowens]

I have a client that has a Yellow Pages listing that needs to be updated. There is no "Suggest an Edit" link on the listing and there isn't an option to claim it either. The owner *thought* he claimed it years ago but the login he gave me doesn't work either. As a result, there doesn't appear to be any way to update the listing.

His business also has multiple duplicates on Yellow Pages. For those there was a "Suggest an Edit" link so I marked them as closed. I don't know if YP actually looks at these suggested edits or not.

Travis

P.S. Is there a resource here or anywhere online that provides CURRENT instructions on how to update listings on various directories?

Hi Travis,

That is a very frustrating situation. In regards to your question "Is there a resource here or anywhere online that provides CURRENT instructions on how to update listings on various directories?", yes there are many resources out there. I collaborated with some other local SEOs and created a citation cheat sheet that may help. However, I need to update it. I haven't touched it in about six months: Citation Cheat Sheet | How to Add, Edit & Remove Citations | Pigzilla. It may be worth taking a look at.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I don't foresee myself going the Yext route. YP has become a pain in the last few weeks. Their system to add listings is bugged now, their reps seem to be much less knowledgeable about their own system than usual now, among other issues. Superpages is a relatively easy fix now though.

I just can't justify an annual cost for one time work.