Yahoo Local Claimed by ATT/Yellowpages?

[Drudge]

Hi Everyone,

I have a about a dozen clients who I tried to set up their basic Yahoo Local listing for.

But it appears to be claimed by....Yellowpages/ATT. The clients do not recall working with Yellowpages or ATT in the past. Has anyone else run into this? This is the message that comes up:

"Listing provided to Yahoo! Local by ATT/Yellowpages. You must contact ATT/Yellowpages to claim or manage this listing."

Any ideas for workarounds?

Thanks!
Nick
"

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey Drudge,

I run into this a lot with clients who have their corporate office doing some of their online marketing for them.

Not a whole lot can be done because I believe that is a paid listing.

You could try sending a report to Yahoo Local here - http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ll/local_general.html

 

[Whitney]

We have run into this as well and they are paid YP listings. Business owners don't always realize that when they pay for YP print listings, there is usually an online "package" that accompanies it.

A few months ago, we had a client who had a paid YP listing with 50+ reviews. All of the reviews appeared on the Yahoo listing, but the biggest issue was that the YP ad had a tracking phone number which also ended up on the Yahoo listing. When the client canceled the YP ad and tracking phone number, the listing was removed completely from Yahoo (after several weeks), leaving the business with no Yahoo listing. We submitted a free basic listing so there is no longer a tracking phone number, but there are no YP reviews on the listing.

 

[Drudge]

Thanks, Whitney. Do you know if YP will update the Yahoo listing if requested?

 

[Whitney]

Based on my correspondence with YP support, if it is a paid listing, the changes must be made by the business entity through their YP sales rep. If you're a marketing company, the owner of the business has to add you as an admin on their account before the sales rep will speak with you or make any changes you request.

The changes will eventually be pushed to Yahoo, but I'm not sure that they have an estimated time frame. It took at least two months for the Yahoo listing to come down after canceling the paid YP services. These paid listings can get a little dicey because some of them are actually print ads, and copies of the print ad appears on the YP listing. If the business has moved or changed a phone number it will still display the old information until the next phone book is printed.

 

[Dave]

We have run into this as well and they are paid YP listings. Business owners don't always realize that when they pay for YP print listings, there is usually an online "package" that accompanies it.

A few months ago, we had a client who had a paid YP listing with 50+ reviews. All of the reviews appeared on the Yahoo listing, but the biggest issue was that the YP ad had a tracking phone number which also ended up on the Yahoo listing. When the client canceled the YP ad and tracking phone number, the listing was removed completely from Yahoo (after several weeks), leaving the business with no Yahoo listing. We submitted a free basic listing so there is no longer a tracking phone number, but there are no YP reviews on the listing.

cr@p on that. that is a telling story and a lesson for one and all. What a crummy way to lose a lot of reviews (especially if they are good).

 

[Whitney]

We were able to keep the reviews on a YP listing. They just weren't pushed to the Yahoo listing. It's probably important to note that we had to create a new YP listing and call support to have the reviews moved before the paid listing came down. Apparently, if you cancel a paid listing, the listing does not just revert back to a free basic listing - it is removed completely. I think only paid YP listings push to Yahoo, at least for the time being.

 

[Vijay Marathe]

That is not all. The paid YP.com ad pushes through to MercCircle (although this can be easily dealt with), CitySearch (and to Judy's Book and Insiderpages), SuperPages and Local.com, further compounding the problem. So it is a good idea to keep monitoring listings on these all important IYPs too