[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

Well I must say i was most surprised and delighted!

had my visit from my YP rep. What a breath of fresh air he was.

I've got a great deal this year. I've maintained my relative advert size (Sixth of a page in the new reduced size brochure) but gone full colour and also got "heavyweight presence" on Yell and a presence on 118247. And for only a fractional increase in my bill!

Now I know there are some here who would never give Yp the time of day, and I'm sure it may well be the case that conurbations do better than less populated areas, but I thought that as YP often seems to get a bad press it is only fair to praise where praise is due.

(I also know that thanks to a certain peice of software that many of us have- and , no, Kevin loomes, I am not going to advertise your product-that YP alone brings in twice as much NEW business every year compared to the cost of the advert. And that's before the benefits of Yell and making my name easily accessible for those who want to find me because they have used me before.)

You'll all know I'm a fan of YP as earlier posts of mine testify. Of course it might simply be that my YP man is very good at his job

Roger

[Paul Redden Countryfresh]

Their desparate  :

[adimarsh]

!


Now I know there are some here who would never give Yp the time of day..

(

Roger

Couldn't have put it better myself Roger.

[The Great One]

Hi

i use YP a lot

To prop doors open while I am cleaning.

Regards

Martin

[derek west]

i use mine when i need to find a book on fly fishing.

[richy27]

i cut a hole in mine to stash my cash in one would look in there

[clinton]

Mine is under the cat litter tray.



 

[Shaun_Ashmore]

I still make a profit on YP the average person who buys tends to be 55+ which I find are my ideal customers.

Shaun

[Jim_77]

Still works OK where I am, I think the general trend is in London and bigger cities people are more into their technology, probably younger average age too, which means they use the net for almost everything.

Although my web page is a crappy one page site, it's amongst the first few natural ranking "proper" results on google for my area (proper = actually a carpet cleaner and not a free online directory like accessplace/zettai/upmystreet etc).  I get a few jobs a year from it, probably could do a lot better if the site was better but still nowhere near any other marketing I do.

[garry22]

Interesting Jim,

Mine pay for themselves but maybe some industries are better than others.

I was talking to my osteopath yesterday.

He said if his sites went down, his business would really suffer. Apparently, one lady is coming from Greece to be treated by him (staying with relatives for two weeks).

He is actually getting a lot of clients from abroad. I realise that carpet cleaning is different but there certainly is a lot of business to be had from the web.

Garry

[Simon@arenaclean]

It's still worth having simply because repeat customers look in there for my number. I send reminders, leave invoices and a card which all seem to get lost. It works on that level and I do still get new customers from it. I only have a 1/4 column though, big ads are a thing of the past for me.

[Adam P]

i'm up and down with yellow pages in deciding whether or not to give it a go. at the moment i'm very tempted to as i think it will work well with our site as they're decent sites so should hopefully do better then competition for that reason alone.

it's so expensive though going for more then one category.

@Jim Neal:  just a few a year. definitely consider plumping some more cash into improving your site as we get almost 100% of our business from our website. in the first few months that's all we did to get noticed (plus google adwords) and we had enough work from that alone, though i'm talking about domestic work and not carpet cleaning.

[Jim_77]

Yes but that's the point... your area and your target market probably differ greatly from mine.  I'm sure I'll get a few more jobs out of my website once I eventually improve it but the hits on it are LOW, even with it being near the top of google.

I also find that internet-based enquiries are the lowest quality leads, time wasters and price shoppers, so I don't really lose much sleep over it

[Adam P]

fair enough. keep an open mind about it though as it's increasing and increasing so worth one day trying to increase your effort with it. perhaps the issue you have is simply because customers don't trust paying you that little bit extra as you've only got a 1 page site etc. full site with bespoke design will definitely help increase conversions as all your competitors are right there for the customers to see, so they need a reason to chose 1/2 to try, and a decent site is how to be the one they chose

[Goldfinch PCS]

Quick one before I pop off to do a survey, I am finding yell to be a right pain in the rear. They can't spell, when you try to correct stuff online it takes days to update so you have to call them and get them to do it there and then. The SEO page takes forever to be done and well the whole service is poope.

That's my experience. On the plus side I have received work from the advert I had with yell.com last year. I wouldn't touch the directory. I guess it depends and where you live and your target market, nannies wont be fun of a google search. I find my leaflets take care of that so no need to use yell.

Do remember Yell is fighting back, and they have done a major deal with the enemy (google). Now search on google for your service and you see yell on the front page. Click on it and it takes you straight through to yell's site and straight to the relevant category and all the advertisers are displayed.

[Adam P]

you sure yell has done a deal with google? google don't sell their organic search results, so what deal could be in place? i can only imagine what yell have done is pay someone to make it so their site is better ranked so google naturally places them higher, just like with any other site.

i see no benefit of google giving the top position away to yell when less people are using it?

also when you say do a search for your services, do you mean the services i offer, e.g. office cleaning, or do you mean my name e.g. search for green clean solution? if the latter why would i want yell to be first result and not my site?