Yodle

Can't believe I allowed their sales guy to sign me up. Alarms should have gone off when he said 'if this doesn't work, you will never trust another salesperson again'. Not the end of the world but they are asking more for cancellation of the contract then it costs to stay.

I gained a few clients through this service, but ultimately the fees were much MUCH higher than the income generated. Near the end of the service they wouldn't take no for an answer and charged me for an additional month that I didn't want.
While I was using the service, the majority of the calls I received were from competing companies - I did ultimately transfer my advertising to one of those competitors.
Too pushy salespeople, not worth the money.

I utilized yodle, was not impressed with the results, obtained no new identifiable business from this advertising spend. Their initial presentation is impressive and convincing, however their follow through is not impressive. When I finally decided to cancel, they significantly dropped my rate and promised to deliver on some additional promises. They never followed up. I went month to month for a while at an aprox $20 rate per month... I never heard from them and kept meaning to cancel. Even when I cancelled they wanted me to pay for the last month. They ultimately waived this charge.

Thomas has been a very pleasant person to work with but the changes we discuss STILL have not been correctly input. Totally could be me, but somehow the agreements we reach in conversations and the word docs I've submitted get changed. I AM VERY FRUSTRATED!

I gave them about 3 months like they asked for and I got nothing but calls for other companies that cancelled with them all over the country. Their staff was super nice, but I had to do all the writing and had to request corrections over and over until done. They have a set system they plug you in to. For some businesses it may work, but totally did not work for me as a Realtor. Not recommended for real estate. So in a market where there are 6000 Realtors... it did not do anything but get me lost in the rest of them and eat up my market budget for a few months.

If you have ZERO web knowledge with NO web presence, this could be an okay deal for you. If you have a facebook, twitter, google, website etc all they want to do is get you to allow them access so they can point it to their basic simple webpage. Then they can tell you that they're getting you traffic... which you're already getting without them.

The tool are simply archaic (old) and way too basic. They created their own review site that is only useful as long as you continuously pay them.

They also give you a phone number they recycle from a previous customer. Expect 50-100% of your calls to be looking for the previous business. They'll then still count this as 'organic leads delivered to your business'.

The SEO is horrible. After several months, I'm on page 3. My normal website without their 'secret SEO formula' is Page 2.

Mail service is bottom basement. $5-$10/month at most email campaign sites.

Overall its a crapper. Take some money and light it on fire.

YODLE IS A RIP-OFF! Their salesmen are top grade, and they will constantly call with their sales school tactics to swindle you into agreeing to advertise with them. We fell for the hype of them increasing business for us as they promised we would receive 20-40 new customers and averaging 20k to 40k in increased revenue! Guaranteed water heater jobs are what the salesman promised... never got any. We had calls come in but they were not quality. There were a total of 8 calls only 1 generated $180.00 revenue. We received a bunch of solicitation calls from other SEO companies trying to get us to advertise with them. A lot of useless calls that lead no where! We never received verification for google as yodle said we would. Salesman said we would profit $1000 minimum a month, to guarantee the advertising campaign with them paid for itself... LIE! We never found ourselves on the first page of Google! We googled plumbers in our area and never came up. We have definitely gained more wrong number calls or customers from far ranging service areas. Calling in to complain has just gotten us passed from representative to representative. Save yourself the headache with these guys.

I had used them for over 2 years paying $200 a month as suggested to my by their sales guy. They provided me with a domain name that I chose for my company's name and setup a website but since them I've been just waiting to get any calls from the customers who are looking for my services. Then I came to know about a similar service Advanton and they gave me a new domain, a new website and the marketing that's really working for me now and it's all free. I am back into business that seemed all lost. I couldn't ask for more. What I had lost with Yodle, I had recovered in just 3 months and a long long way to go.

Not worth the money. I got a couple of new clients - 3 in 5 months. Most of my calls were wrong numbers or people looking for freebies.

First month got one good lead in the 3rd month now nothing but sales calls and wrong numbers also the reps had a hard time giving me the right area code for the number that they put on the website she just had some random area code not a great experience

THE TRUTH ABOUT YODLE! The good and bad.

This has been my experience with yodle. First off the salesman is a great salesman. But wasn't 100% honest, again he's a salesman, I expected that... sadly. So after agreeing to a deal I called a manager to confirm everything, and had to make several changes because he was not telling the truth. The product they offer through the dashboard is alright, nothing super special, just makes it easy to send out emails to customers, which you can do with gmail... It is very hard to get a hold of anyone, most the time you get an answering machine? Huh? The set up call was hardly a set up, they just show you how to use the dashboard, which if you can read you can get. I asked the set up girl if we could walk through the whole website together on the phone since there was TONS of mistakes on it. She said yes but didn't want to, she said "you can just email us if you need any changes", well that'd be fine if the website was even close to represent my company. Well, after 2 minutes of reviewing the website we 'lose connection', so I wait 5 minutes to have her call me back and she never did, so I called the service line and guess what I got an answering machine. So now I got w website that offering warranties and promises that I don't offer. I really dont like how they don't list my phone number but a forwarding number... Which IF I do get any customers from their service I'm pretty much trapped into keep on using their services since all the customers won't have my real phone number... Well, I've only had yodle for 2 weeks and no results yet... ZERO. But I'm gonna give it 3 months and see what happens. After 3 months I'll come back on here and give another review of the product after I have a better idea. By the way, MOST of the 5 star reviews on here are totally fake!
Also, make sure you don't sign up for a 12 month contract... I repeatedly told me sales rep I don't want a 12 month contract, and I'd only try yodle if it was a month to month deal, he assured me time and time and time again it wasn't a 12 month contact. I must have asked him a dozen times. Well once I finally talk to someone a week later they told me I was in a 12 month contract... smh, sales rep was named Corey C from houston. I told the manager I will drive down to houston and find him. They changed me on a month to month. For those who think this is gonna totally change your company and dont already make a good amount on marketing don't do it. I have the money to risk, dont' risk it if 200 a month may hurt you.

I have a small carpenter service, when called to sign up the sales rep. Said there was certain amount of people in my area looking for the type of service I provided. I signed on to yodel with a 2month payment. Now it is 6months later I am still paying but no results.

I was contacted by a Yodle solicitor a couple of weeks ago, (late July 2016), and as a small business owner, I'm always considering more efficient ways to promote my business through the internet medium. What the initial sales rep told me sounded like a good value, though my business cash flow has been slow lately, and I wasn't ready to commit to any new program right now. After telling him that, he told me would turn me over to his manager if I could hold on. As an ex-trained salesman myself, I knew he might be headed for the "TO" as they say. The manager began asking me "closing questions" that pushy salespeople believe will lead to the embarrassment of the customer, who will then feel intellectually obligated to purchase. After trying several "pushy" high pressure questions on me, and not listening to my feelings or circumstances I felt would not permit me to buy anything right now, I decided to hang up on the jerk! I don't buy anything the first time I see it or hear about it! I have learned in life to weigh all decisions carefully and deliberately. This company may have a worthwhile service; although reading many of the reviews here would indicate otherwise. But to employ high pressure tactics to get customers to capitulate, is an insulting and indignifying sales method that I have no respect for! Screw "Yelp"!

I have been using yodle for a year and finally just cancelled- I should have done so long ago. I don't want to say it is a scam, necessarily. However, they promise you the moon and the stars- telling you that you better get ready because they may be sending you more business than you can handle. This is not true. I have never once gotten the amount of called promised by my initial sales rep., although at first, I did see results. Every time I would complain in the past year, I would suddenly see results. I have spent $12k this year on yodle and have broken even, so it isn't like I have lost money, but still, they promise to help you MAKE money. They overcharge severely for what they actually do and toss you to the back burner after a couple of months. I am not tech savvy and am terrified of managing my own website, or else I would have cancelled long ago.

We had Yodle handle our law firm web marketing for almost a year. The results were far, FAR less than they promised. We made it clear we had a limited budget and they assured us they'd work with it. They had a law division which catered to law firms. We reasonably assumed they had an idea what they were doing.

1. They set up their landing website which was very generic, but never told us to provide them with content (i. E. profiles, FAQ's etc) until about 5 months later when I had called to ask them to change some things. The individual asked me why I had never provided content and I told him no one said I could or asked me to.

2. We have our own domain and website, but they did not use it and set up content on their own domain. We had been using Google Adwords for many months and Yodle never mentioned this was a problem, again, until about 5 months after they had started marketing with us. The service guy from Yodle explained that we were essentially competing with Yodle in our adwords buy -- NO ONE had mentioned this at Yodle when we started with them.

3. Because they set up their own domain (which they will not give ownership to you), Google ends up dropping your organic search ratings because they see two domains pointing to the same company.

I ended up cancelling them and raising hell. They finally settled out by refunding the last three months of service and running our ad-site with them for the next 3 months, but frankly, it was simply a wash for us. I really felt they had zero clue what they were doing with us.

On the other hand, if you have ABSOLUTELY NO WEB PRESENCE, then Yodle is probably a good start for you. Just make sure you know exactly what they are going to do and bargain them down in price. Their "plans" are very flexible in price and they will try to stick you into a high-priced plan, but don't go for it. You will find they will bend as much as 50% on those prices.

Go ahead and email me about it. I can show you bills and web logs. We have another service now and are very happy with it -- and the monthly rate is far less.

Do not fall for their "we will buy your domain name with a. Net for you". That way they OWN YOU and you no longer own that domain name. If you do use yodle, please buy your own domain name using godaddy or whatever. For tracking purposes they want you to use their phone number. That is fine, but here is my advice, on your website use a new phone number and merely have it forwarded to their number. That way when you quit using yodle after you get tired of paying extra $$$ for google ad words, you can easily stop their service. It is much harder if they own your phone number. Their service does work and it does bring in business, I give it a 2 stars because of their tactics to keep you as a client.

I just got off the phone with a Rep from Yodle and I was skeptical from the beginning because I know I had already told them "NO" in the past. However, I listened this time just to keep an open mind. We went through the whole "watch this video thing" - which is really annoying and you (Yodle) should really drop that from your sales pitch.

Next, he asked me about our costs to conduct inspections and I explained to him that this is difficult to pin down to an exact cost because of so many variables (i. E. distance to property, size of property, extent of concerns, etc.) but he kept pushing "what is the cost?" - this annoyed me. So, I gave him an approx. Cost.

Next, he asked how many inspections we do a month and about what capacity we were at for inspections... I thought this was a good question. Because of the economy, we are running about 50% capacity. Then he said, "So how long have you been leaving $X, XXX (thousands) per month on the table?" HUH? I asked, what did he mean? He was trying a nice trick and this really irritated me. He was trying to say that because we were NOT at 100% capacity that we were "leaving money on the table" and this was happening because we were NOT using Yodle.

I explained to him that our website is already optimized for various platforms, it is brand new, and that I have been managing Google Adwords for more than a year and half which has quickly become our top money-maker... fortunately, I received a call from a client and had to go because I was about to hang up.

The phone is definely started ringing.

Still some tweaking to do but so far so good.

UPDATE! AFTER MY SECOND AND LAST MONTH!
Yodle goes for the low hanging fruit. The phone rang, but the calls were from the easiest to target and hardest to make any money from. Out of the 50+ calls in the first two months maybe 10 were from my primary business area. I am not talking about conversions. Conversions are my job. These were non revenue calls and complaints. If you want to sit in your office all day and talk to people on the phone all day, give it a shot. If you need to make a living that justifies spending $1000 a month you would be better served with bidding $40 a click on AdWords yourself.

We are getting a lot of calls, but few are quality. Most just want some quick, free legal advice, and are not interested in hiring any lawyer. Still, we have had a few decent ones and have actually picked up a few clients. On balance, the jury is still out on this one. We are not sure if it is even paying for itself. If it is, it is not by much. We are hoping to land some good clients that can be great repeat business, but we will see.

I was promised one big job and one small job a month. It's been going on four months and I got one job the day after I signed up, and that was a fluke. I asked to drop their account because they didn't do as promised. They said I entered a contract and would still have to pay. They just dropped the amount i have to pay. Even though I have not gotten one call and they didn't stand up to their end of the contract, I can't let them go? If I don't do what I say on my contracts with customers, they have every right to drop me. I am wasting my money. NOT ONE JOB OFFER IN ALMOST FOUR MONTHS. I believe legally I can void this contract. I should be refunded after the third payment. They promised I would get jobs after 3 months and My Company's name would be one of the first companies on every page. Isn't this fraud?

Yodle wasn't for me as it turns out. I need my own website marketed since I've had it for 20 years. However, I want to say that their customer service was the BEST ever. They answered my calls quickly and always helped me very curtiously. I am using another avenue to boost my presence on the web. But, their customer service is great!

After a high pressure sales pitch I relented and signed up. In this process I was required to turn over my google+ page to them. After 3 months I decided I wanted to control my online presence myself and we parted ways. I have repeatedly asked them to either delete my google+ page or turn managership over back to me. It has been about a month and they have done neither. DO NOT SIGN OVER YOUR BUSINESS GOOGLE PLUS PAGE TO THESE GUYS!

So earlier today (12/1/15) I finally had time to have a chat with a sales rep after missing him a few times. We went through the video and so on and it seemed like it could benefit my new business but some things I didn't agree with. For example, I have a website that is already managed and designed by a very great company. All updates, designs, apps, etc are done by them. All I have to do is email them or call and tell them what I want for and all I do is pay $40 per month--No Contract. They wanted to give me a mini site but I wondered what the benefit of this would be because he mentioned I could be on the first page of Google but I stated that I was already on the first page of Google for most keywords, also I mentioned that I was already optimized for mobile which he said the mini site would be. None of this stuff I need. Do I need traffic? Yes, of course. Do I need to spend more a month? No, I do not.

Yes, I have to do a lot of marketing and other stuff on my own but its ok because no one knows my business like me. When I deem it necessary to have the responsibly of some jobs outsourced I will but not putting me in a worse financial position.

I own my own domain via 1&1 and just have it routed to my website through the companies servers but if I go with my website I keep my domain because I still own it. Why offer someone a website they don't need?

One thing that didn't sit well with me was when I asked the rep, "What would happen if the company didn't deliver what they promised? Because I can not afford to spend money and it not bring me a return." He first acted as if he couldn't really hear me because he was more than likely thrown off by the question then he repeated the first half of what I ask. I repeated the question and he said they would not want to keep me in an agreement if its not mutual but I would have to pay the startup fee (which is currently being waived) just to be let out of the agreement.

Think I can update my listings for free like Ive been doing.