Yodle

Such an easy website to navigate! Even if you need help it walks you right through what you need STEP by STEP on the site or you can speak directly to a representative, like our good friend Bonnie!

When they initially contacted me I told them that I was very skeptical that their system would work for real estate agents. I could see where it may benefit other service industry professionals - where their clients would expect to find a generic landing page online with just hours, address and a general business overview - but when people go online looking for an agent they are generally looking for very specific market information. Yodle assured me that they knew better than I how to generate web traffic and given enough time their system would work. Well... after months and no traffic I think we know who was right and who wasn't. They tried desperately to keep me paying... offering to do optimization reports and to optimize my page for optimum results... but wasn't this what they were supposed to be doing all along? After the initial set up I received no meaningful contact. And the lack of effort on their part shows in the results. The cherry on top was when they kept me holding on waiting for them to do an optimization report to see if something was wrong with the site only to finally get my report after the next billing cycle was posted. Apparently the report came back that there was an issue (though they never would actually say what the issue was) and they were going to re-optimize it! Oh goody! They could offer no specifics or articulate any plan or strategy as to how they would remedy the complete lack of results (we're not talking about not getting top placement in results a search... we're talking about not being on one of the first few PAGES of search results using their key search words (no one ever even asked if those words were pertinent to my business). Since my bill had been posted I was told there was no way to get a refund... 3 phone calls and much wasted time later they tell me they will refund the final payment (I'm cautiously optimistic). I'm not saying Yodle won't work for you. I'm just saying don't believe everything the sales people will tell you. Customer service will give you a much more realistic overview of the service after the fact. I don't think this service works for all business types however and would recommend real estate agents and brokers take a pass.

After patiently listening to the presentation, I had concerns. The company claims to be able to almost instantaneously get you on the first page of a google search in the competitive market of Real Estate for only $249 a month! That's ridiculous. Then I said two things: 1) I will need to speak to my broker to review this opportunity and 2) your products seems to me to be a fountain of youth and I wanted a satisfaction guarantee.

His comment was this "there is no guarantee in sale/marketing", which is true, but a level of satisfaction can be guaranteed and then he said "At the beginning of this call, you told me that you were the sole person to make a decisions for your business and now you're saying something else needs to be part of it" basically calling me a liar.

Bottom line, when something like this is presented, getting more information is a good idea and they should promote this as much as they can, especially how unrealistic their offering is. People/Businesses spend Tens, if not Hundreds of Thousands of $$$ on getting their website # 1 on Google.

How can they possibly claim to be able to do it for $249 a month.

Lastly, the real estate company they used for their ideal example for my business "walker realty, texas", Yodle says reviews, reviews, reviews! Which I concur, but this Walker Realty, if they were excelling so well with Yodle at the Helm, why did they have only 2 reviews over 3 years old. If Yodle was so great, they would be doing better. $#*!, I have over 25 reviews since January 2015.

If you need an agent in St Petersburg, FL, check out my Veteran Owned & Operated Realty firm www.stpetefloridarealty.com. Thanks and Best of Luck with Yodle.com.

Talk about pushy sales reps. This company preys on other companies that have no knowledge in technology. They makeup their own pricing on the fly. The price they came up with was a cut and paste of different services from godaddy, yellow pages and other that came to over $1100 a month LOL. 6 MONTH REQUIRED TERMS MINIMUM. Advertising so good they lock you into a 6 month contract.

You should NEVER do business with a company that will take control of you web presence. They will make you use SEPARATE DOMAIN NAME, SCREW YOUR BRAND. If you part ways with this company all the link juice (backlinks, social mentions, etc) you would have had is GONE. Im surprised they dont require you to use a different phone number as well.

I had no intention of leaving a review until the sales rep decided to try and force the sale.

UPDATE. 1-6-2016
If you receive a call from yodle I suggest you tell them you are out of business.
Now they are calling every week.
First they tell you that they don't want to take your valuable time, then its IM NOT TRYING TO SELL YOU ANYTHING but now that I have you on the phone I want to take 60 secs to tell you blah blah.
Yodle is adding fake 5 star reviews to pad all the bad reviews! Look at all the one sentence reviews about the site. FAKE FAKE FAKE. +1200 reviews LOL?

Thank you all for taking the time out of your day to help someone else not become a victim to these type of businesses that promise results and we get nothing in return "ROI". And promote bad business practices... i called for the first time today to learn more about there product and i was going though the DEMO DEMONSTRATION with Brian which was very nice. We started the joinme presentation and He ask if i was the decision maker for the company, so he could move forward with the DEMO DEMONSTRATION when i told him i was not going to make a decision today i needed to my due diligence on the company he stop the DEMO presentation and would not continue "Company Policy"he needed to transfer me to another department. That was a red flag for me, so i went online and found all of these bad reviews. I'm so glad i didn't make an abrupt decision! We are a small company so everything counts. CONSUMER BEWARE! If any know of a good reputable marketing company please share. They all seem to pray off our desire to be successful in our businesses. SO SAD..

I've asked to terminate my contract due to not only a data problem but with the overall results Yodle provides. I have comparative data from others in the industry and in close proximity. Their results for PPC are significantly better.

Yodle is a set it and forget it. The account rep has changed at least three times in one year and there is no consistency between what each recommends. You really need to provide your own analysis and recommendations to them to optimize your results. If they will do it. Unfortunately my account is locked down so I cannot increase the frequency of report generation (weekly and monthly) and add other metrics for comparison as other vendors provide.

I have a signed contract for 12 months and I am asking to be let out of it two months early. Unfortunately they are not willing to do that. They did offer to try for one more month but I felt like my case warranted immediate termination.

The message below was received from Yodle in March 2015. They admit to data problems. We are only now realizing the extent of the problem. They will not admit to the data issues being a breach of contract.

"I wanted to reach out and let you know of a recent analysis we did on your website. When testing some back end formulas we realized that the contact form on your website is not routing properly into the Yodle Live website.
What this means for you= the email leads are still being routed to the email address you have on file with us, however it is not synching with the Yodle Live dashboard. Therefore you can't get an exact lead total or ROI because the email leads are not being counted."

I would not use Yodle again. The price is too high, service to low and lack of accountability by anyone in the organization speaks to their level of customer service.

So far all I've done is spend money. They claim they track their results to prove to you what they are doing, but before they even launched the site there was a "new lead"
They claimed they could consolidate my reviews. They copied and pasted them with different formats and all onto a page. I called to tell them it looked really bad. They agreed. Apologized and did nothing. Called again. Agreed again. And similar results. I called again. Finally a better format, but no one proofed it because one of the reviews was me thanking someone for their review.
The default copy they've created is also not proofed. I called several times pointing out that the language uses the wrong pronouns. So they changed the pronouns, but still didn't proof read it because the text still didn't flow.
I mostly work out of my home, but my home is private. Not an open office. I was extremely explicit about wanting to advertise my business in the city, but not my actual address. A couple weeks into using the program I googled my name and top google hit showed a map with my exact address. They blamed google and said they would fix it.
It feels to me that they outsource their coding to people who don't care. The people on the phone are always very empathetic, but the results of those phone calls continually fall short.
I wouldn't advertise my page to anyone I knew. It's embarrassing. Not something I'm proud of. And the cost is huge.
Be warned when someone spends a lot of time recording you saying you understand the payments and contract. That should have been my first red flag. Run! If your product was good. I don't feel like you'd have to spend as much time building "evidence" of contract.
Seriously not worth a dime. With the time I've spent on the phone and cost. I could have done exactly what they've done, which is basically submitting my business to google and yelp with far superior results.