How YP Ruined My Month

[warrenpd]

I'm writing this more as a precautionary tale and as an opportunity to vent my frustrations. Several months ago I took on a client that was experiencing some hard times with their local and organic SEO.

They had what most would consider a freaking local search nightmare. Pretty much zero NAP consistency across all the major aggregators and a plethora of duplicate accounts. On top of all of this they where using several lead tracking phone numbers.

Here is where YP gets involved. Their premium YP account had a unique tracking phone number. As a data aggregator that provides hundreds of other websites with NAP information this phone number was blasted across the internet. So after months of fixing these citations and finally convincing the client to change the YP listing number to his main number things were starting to look up. I was steadily climbing the local rankings and all the riches and glory I had been seeking when I took on this job would soon be mine.

Here's where the plot takes a twist worse than an M Night Shyamalan script. The YP rep changed the phone number to one that isn't even associated with our business. This caused hundreds of other sites to create duplicate listings with that number. Our Yelp profile even changed to that number. I want to yell at the YP Rep and my computer and possibly the cat that walks around the office but it wont do any good. This is how YP ruined my month.

 

[Digitaldar]

My suggestion is not going to fix your phone number issue but I would push for a year of free website hosting or whatever service you are paying for.

1) They should not be changing your website without your permission
2) They are costing you a great deal of time to fix this - you don't want them to fix it so they should offer you something else in lieu

grrr

 

[Linda Buquet]

Grrr... Warren. What a mess!

That's the thing with the local echo system. One piece of bad data just replicates and is such a nightmare to clean up.