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Which of These Online Advertising Companies Is Right for You?

Last Updated: June 15, 2016

Have you decided that hiring outside help for your local SEO needs is the best move for your small business? Good. You’re on the right track, but that’s only step one.
Step two is deciding what type of outside help you need. Should you hire an individual contractor, a small Internet marketing firm, or a large online advertising agency? Online advertising companies can be drastically different depending on their size, so you’ll need to figure out what’s important to you.
To help you with your decision, we’ve highlighted the pros and cons of each option. Obviously, we had to keep this general because no two online advertising companies are exactly the same, and there are always exceptions to the rule. However, you’ll find that these points are generally true for the majority of Internet marketing companies.
Ready to discover which of these online advertising options is right for your small business? Let’s get started!

Individual Online Advertising Contractors

Pros:

Since it’s only one person, they probably have fewer clients overall, which means this person is essentially available on demand. You get immediate attention. When you need to update your website’s content, publish a press release, or start a new AdWords campaign, you won’t have to wait.
More individual attention also means better customer service in general. Your contractor will actually have the time to chat with you about your needs and get a clear picture of what your long-term advertising goals are. This one person will have intimate knowledge of your business.
With an individual contractor, you’ll get lots of customization because this person is only taking care of a handful of clients. You can expect lots of time devoted to building a wholly unique campaign for your business.

Cons:

An individual contractor will be working with only a small number of clients, which means a small number of data points. This may make it difficult for them to detect Google algorithm updates or spot wide-reaching trends that impact your company’s campaign. It also makes A/B testing less reliable.
Individual contractors tend to be more expensive than agencies because they’re devoting much more time and many more resources to your campaign.
Generally speaking, an individual contractor is going to have limited resources compared with an agency that has multiple team members. The contractor is relying on their own personal experience and skill set, and they don’t have anyone else to collaborate with.

Small Online Advertising Companies

(Note: Prospect Genius belongs to this category.)

Pros:

Multiple team members mean multiple approaches to doing things. Generally speaking, this means small online advertising companies have more experience and expertise with which to devise their strategies.
The company has hundreds of clients and, therefore, hundreds of data points to look at. With more data points, they’re able to A/B test constantly and get more accurate results. In turn, this maximizes the potency of their clients’ campaigns—including yours.
Having access to lots of data points also means they notice trends faster than an individual contractor would. Since they’re keeping tabs on a larger number of cases, they can tell when an occurrence is isolated or if it’s due to a broader Google update. This means they can act quickly and keep your campaign in good standing.
With small online advertising and SEO companies, a moderate amount of customization is possible. Their ratio of manpower to clients is high enough that they can create original content and build personalized websites for clients.

Cons:

You’ll have to wait a day or two for them to make changes or updates to your website or campaign because they’re juggling more clients than an individual contractor is. That being said, a small agency will likely have a faster turnaround than a large one.
While they have multiple specialists on their team, rather than just one, they don’t have as many as a large agency does. In general, fewer specialists mean a narrower knowledge base.
Because their services offer a greater degree of customization, small online advertising companies can often be more expensive than large agencies.

Large Online Advertising Companies

Pros:

The more team members a company has, the more experience it has to draw from. Therefore, it stands to reason that large agencies and their online advertising services are supported by the biggest pool of knowledge and resources.
Like smaller agencies, they have hundreds (if not thousands) of data points to pull from, which makes their capacity for testing and trend-spotting much greater.
They are often the least expensive option because they have created one-size-fits-all solutions that suit the needs of a wide range of clients. Less customization means less overhead.

Cons:

With a vast number of clients to take care of, large agencies aren’t able to provide fast turnaround for on-demand work. If you need to update something on your website or publish a time-sensitive blog post, you’ll be waiting several days.
Because large agencies tend to focus on packages or solutions that fit the most clients, there’s very little room (if any) for customization. They keep costs low by providing all of their clients with cookie-cutter landing pages and nearly identical content.
Most, but not all, large agencies are notorious for offering poor customer service. Like any large corporation, they deal with such a high volume of customers that they simply don’t need to care about each one.

Making a Decision

Your choice ultimately depends on your business’s online advertising needs. If you’re a small, local service provider, you’re probably just looking to increase your presence in a specific geographic area. A small or large agency, depending on its selection of packages and price points, will work just fine for your needs.
But your work doesn’t stop here. Once you’ve narrowed down the type of online advertising company you’re looking for, you’ll obviously need to find the best one for the job. You’ll need to vet your prospective advertiser to be certain you’re making a wise investment. Read “Questions to Ask When You’re Vetting a New Online Advertiser” for guidance on how to make sure you’ve found the right fit for your business.

Is Yelp's Review Filter Hiding Your Positive Reviews?

Last Updated: June 7, 2016

Are you like the countless other small business owners who have been feeling frustrated—to say the least—with Yelp’s review filter?
It’s okay if you are. Prospect Genius certainly is, too.
Half of the frustration comes from how much Yelp’s review filter obviously favors paid advertisers. The other half comes from how skillfully Yelp seems to be covering it up.

Have any of these happened to your business?

Some of your customers have left you positive reviews, but they’ve been filtered out and hidden from your page.
You don’t have many negative reviews, but for some strange reason, these are the reviews that don’t get filtered out.
Yelp has called and offered to “help” with those hidden reviews if you just sign up for their advertising services.

We don’t know about you, but something doesn’t feel quite right. Of course, Yelp refutes any favoritism towards businesses that pay for advertising versus those that don’t. In fact, Yelp has dedicated an entire “Advertiser FAQ” page to doing just that.
But are Yelp’s claims what they seem? Yelp certainly chooses its words carefully. Let’s take a closer look at a couple of these claims and find out.

1. Yelp Doesn’t “Remove” Reviews…

…But it does filter them out. And filtering is as good as removing them, because filtered reviews are completely hidden from your page.
We have heard from other small businesses that Yelp’s review filter has a tendency to hide negative reviews for paying advertisers and to hide positive reviews for those who aren’t paying.
Obviously, this isn’t an exact rule for popular businesses (like trendy restaurants) that have hundreds and hundreds of reviews. In those cases, the sheer volume of positive reviews wins out. But when a business has a smaller following and isn’t a brick-and-mortar establishment that attracts a lot of in-person visitors, the number of reviews is much smaller—which makes the review filter all the more potent.
For example, Prospect Genius used to have a Yelp page (which has since been deleted), and we ran into this exact problem. We had several five-star reviews, all of which were buried by the filter. Meanwhile, the one and only negative review was left front and center on our page, causing us to have a one-star rating. To make matters worse, the negative review was written by an individual who had also used his own name to write positive reviews for his own business. Isn’t Yelp’s review filter supposed to be cutting down on this kind of shady behavior?
And it’s not just us. We’ve spoken to numerous clients and other small business owners who have had strikingly similar experiences. We’ve even been told by multiple clients of ours that Yelp called them and offered to “help” with negative reviews if they would sign up for advertising services.
FYI: You can read any business’s filtered reviews by scrolling all the way to the bottom of the displayed reviews and clicking on the tiny, grey link that says something like, “23 other reviews that are not currently recommended.”

2. You Don’t Automatically Get “Five Stars” for Paying…

…But you probably won’t get fewer than three.
On its “Advertiser FAQ” page, Yelp says,

“If advertisers could control their reviews, then you’d expect them all to have perfect 5-star ratings on Yelp. Spoiler alert: They don’t.”

This is true. They don’t all have perfect, five-star ratings. But how often do you see a Yelp ad for a business with fewer than three stars?
Our theory is, when a business becomes a paying advertiser, Yelp filters out just enough of their negative reviews to give them a sufficiently favorable rating. Since filtered reviews don’t impact a business’s star rating, this would do the trick.
We tested our hunch by searching Google for Yelp advertiser listings. (You can try it yourself by using this search term: site:yelp.com/biz “yelp advertiser”.) We pored over 21 pages of results and counted how many Yelp advertisers had each star rating (1 through 5). To keep our data consistent with Yelp’s, we rounded up half-star ratings to the next whole star. So 3.5 stars became 4, 4.5 stars became 5, and so on.
The results may shock you, but they shouldn’t. Out of a total 210 Yelp advertisers, 202 of them had ratings of 3 or more stars. That’s 96%.
Here’s a breakdown of our findings:

Our data shows Yelp advertisers overwhelmingly receive high ratings:

5 stars: 79%
4 stars: 16%
3 stars: 1%
2 stars: 0%
1 star: 1%
Hidden: 2%

Now compare this with data from Yelp’s fact sheet, which accounts for all businesses, not just advertisers:

5 stars: 44%
4 stars: 23%
3 stars: 11%
2 stars: 7%
1 star: 15%

When you take a look at all businesses, the distribution of star ratings seems a bit more even. What does that tell you?

Conclusion: It Pays to Pay

We obviously aren’t privy to the algorithm of Yelp’s review filter or what its sales team’s strategy looks like, but we do know that Yelp’s paid advertisers appear to have unlocked the secret to success. Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to get a good rating on Yelp if you become an advertiser.

Have You Been Duped by Yext's PowerListings Scan?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Has Yext recently told you there’s incorrect or missing information about your business online?
Yext has been sending reports to small business owners claiming that they aren’t listed on certain sites. These reports contain the alleged “results” of a scan of your business’s directory listings. They are completely inaccurate. Their sole function, at best, is to be a misleading sales tactic.
Yext’s PowerListings scan tells you your business is not listed on major sites like Google, Bing, Yelp, and Yahoo (among many others). However, if you take just one or two minutes to search for your business on these sites, you’ll see that you are, in fact, listed. It’s insanely easy to debunk these reports.
Yext is hoping an official-looking “report”—peppered with big, red letters and intimidating alerts—will scare you into signing up for its services. Don’t fall for it.

What’s a PowerListings Scan, Anyway?

As part of its services for small businesses, Yext submits its clients’ information to a network of online directories. The vast majority of local SEO companies do this, as well, because directories are integral to local search optimization. However, Yext calls its own brand of directory listings PowerListings.
To get you to sign up for PowerListings, Yext will conduct a “PowerListings Scan” for your business. The results appear in a grid so you can see which sites you’re listed on and which sites have accurate information about your business. Unsurprisingly, these results typically claim less than half of your listings are “optimized.”
Here’s an example that came directly from one of our clients*:

*Business name redacted for privacy.

A representative from Yelp may contact you with this report. A portion of the e-mail might look something like this:

“As you saw, [insert your business name] has a variety of incorrect and missing information on our partner sites. I can fix this for you and offer you some discounts on our services!”

It has the potential to be an effective sales pitch—but only if you fall for it.

Debunking Yext’s PowerListings Scan

Again, it’s simple to prove Yext’s scan report wrong. To show you how easy it is to do for your own business, we submitted a scan of Prospect Genius via our Yahoo listing (Yext and Yahoo are partners).
In the very brief video below, you’ll see our scan results and—gasp!—a few listings Yext claims don’t exist.

In the video, you see us:

Highlight where the report says our Google listing does not exist.
Navigate straight to our Google listing, which obviously does exist.
Do the same thing again with our Whitepages listing.

(We could’ve easily gone into every single listing, but we wanted to keep this video short and sweet.)
To run this check for your own business:

Choose any of the websites where Yext claims you aren’t listed.
Go directly to these websites.
Search for your business name or phone number.

If you’re a Prospect Genius Core or Premium client, or you’ve signed up for Directory Dominator, then your listings should appear with no problem.
Having trouble finding your listings? Don’t hesitate to call us for help.

11 Ways to Fight the Locksmith Scam and Win

Last Updated: May 25, 2016

Google’s lackluster attempts to beat back the locksmith scam are misfiring and hitting honest locksmith companies instead.
Don’t you feel frustrated when you play by the rules but still get targeted by Google? The unfortunate reality is, due to how widespread the scam is, Google automatically puts locksmiths under the microscope simply for being locksmiths. This means locksmiths must follow every rule to the letter. You have to be extremely thorough and careful when creating or updating your listings.
Do these sound familiar?

Getting verified by Google is an uphill battle.
Your listing keeps getting suspended for no clear reason.
You’re having trouble getting new customers because the scams have made everyone more suspicious.

We feel for you. That’s why we’ve put together some actionable advice for honest locksmiths to help you stay in Google’s good graces. We’ve also compiled some suggestions for proving your trustworthiness to local customers.
So without any further ado, let’s get started.

Don’t Make Yourself a Target

Like we said, Google is already scrutinizing your every move because you’re a locksmith. Even the smallest transgression will get you flagged.
Here are some ways to keep that bull’s-eye off your back:

Don’t stuff your listing full of keywords. Write naturally, only using keywords where they actually fit.
Stick to one, local service area. Fight the temptation to list every city in a 200-mile radius.
If you work with an SEO company, be cooperative and don’t do anything against their advice. Better yet, don’t even touch your Google listing and let your marketer handle all of your updates.
Don’t do anything that could possibly be mistaken for spam.

Basically, be conservative. Don’t push the limits at all. As a locksmith, gray areas are off limits to you.

Put Your Trustworthiness Front and Center

As info about the scam spreads, people are increasingly wary of locksmiths they find online. In fact, most news stories are advising people to ask friends and family for locksmith referrals instead of doing a local Google search for one.
What does this mean for you? It means your job is a lot harder now. You must win over the skeptics and prove you’re a locksmith they can trust.
Here are some ideas to help you do that:

Have a physical storefront and use a picture of it on your Google listing, website, and social media.
- A van or truck with your logo is better than nothing, but a storefront is much more effective.
List your physical address so people know you’re local.
Have a logo or some form of consistent branding across the web.
Include high-quality photos of yourself and your team members on your Google listing, website, and social media.
Post precise business hours and emergency services instead of just claiming to be open “24/7.” Even if you are open 24 hours a day, people see that as a red flag.
Include upfront pricing that’s based on a flat rate for each job. Do not charge per hour.
Share information and warnings about locksmith scams with your customers. Post links to news articles about the scam right on your website and social media.

As we discussed in our previous blog post, “Google’s Incompetence: Hell for Legit Locksmiths, Great for Locksmith Scams,” these scams have complicated matters for locksmith companies everywhere. We can’t expect Google to come up with a fail-safe solution to this problem overnight, so it’s best to take action yourself.
By following the recommendations we’ve listed above, you’ll prove your professionalism and honesty, increase your compliance with Google, and reassure a nervous customer base.
Interested in advice that’s tailored to your own, unique business? Call or e-mail us for a pressure-free chat!

Google's Incompetence: Hell for Legit Locksmiths, Great for Locksmith Scams

Last Updated: May 20, 2016

There’s an ongoing, nation-wide locksmith scam that no one seems able to stop—not even the “almighty” Google. Perhaps you’ve heard of this scam already. After all, it’s been a frequent topic for local news outlets in large and midsize cities spanning every corner of the country.

A Brief Summary of the Scam

The scam goes something like this:

You lock yourself out of your car or house late at night.
In a panic, you google emergency locksmiths nearby and call the first one you find.
The person who answers your call gives you a price quote (anywhere from $20 to $90).
A locksmith shows up and tells you the job will be more complicated than they thought. The price is now double what you were quoted.
You agree to the higher price because it’s late, you’re tired, and you have no other options.
The locksmith successfully opens your car or house door (sometimes even drilling into the lock, thus requiring the installation of a new one), but now tells you the price is even higher. He demands payment in cash.
Since he has your keys, you’re not in a position to argue.
You begrudgingly accept the final price because you feel like you’re out of options, even though you know you’re being ripped off.

As this New York Times article from January 2016 explains, these scams are carried out by call centers all across the country. They operate by manipulating Google Maps listings and paying large sums of money to advertise with AdWords. This allows them to capture the attention of panicked, locked-out locals and dispatch unqualified subcontractors to their locations. And that’s when they get you.
It’s one of the most successful get-rich-quick schemes out there.

Google Is Not Doing Enough

Unfortunately, Google has been enabling these scams, intentionally or not. Google has established extra precautions when it comes to verifying the legitimacy of locksmith listings, but these measures have only made it more difficult for honest locksmiths. Meanwhile, the shady locksmith companies run rampant, finding loopholes simply by using AdWords.
Given the wide reach of the scams, Google treats locksmith companies with suspicion right out of the gate. Locksmith listings are under constant scrutiny, as Google monitors them closely for any spam-like behavior or other red flags. There’s even a special, involved process when verifying new or updated listings.
The extra review makes life more difficult for legitimate locksmiths, but it would be worth the trouble if it actually did anything to reduce the frequency of scams. Unfortunately, it hasn’t had this effect. Not even close.
As long as shady locksmiths are able to advertise with Google AdWords, post photos of fake storefronts, and weasel their way to the top of local search results, the scams will continue.
Of course, it’s impossible for Google to identify scams with 100% accuracy. However, it’s Google. It has more resources, manpower, and control than any of us can even imagine. How is it possible that it hasn’t implemented more effective safeguards against locksmith scams?
Here’s how Prospect Genius thinks Google should be handling this problem:

Post a general warning about the scam on all locksmith listings, including red flags to watch out for, so customers are on high alert.
Require all locksmiths to display certain credentials (e.g. business license, membership with the Associated Locksmiths of America).
Use existing technology to warn customers when they’re calling a number on a VoIP line (which is what many of these scam artists use).
Leverage Google Pay to mandate pre-payment for emergency locksmith services so the customer doesn’t get ripped off at the last minute.
Verify addresses and storefronts for locksmiths by driving to their physical locations in the Street View Car.

It’s baffling that a small team like Prospect Genius can come up with more productive solutions than Google can.

It’s Up to You

Obviously, we can’t count on Google to make significant changes any time soon. For now, it’s up to honest locksmiths to educate your communities.

Spread the word about this scam.
Band together with nearby locksmiths and inform your customers about realistic price points.
Add a price list to your website.
Share news stories about the scam on social media.
If you know a specific company in your area is scamming people, call them out!

We can’t single-handedly stop these locksmith scams, but if we spread as much information as possible, we can at least reduce the number of victims.
Here are some news stories to get you started:

Prospect Genius

Which of These Online Advertising Companies Is Right for You?

Individual Online Advertising Contractors

Pros:

Cons:

Small Online Advertising Companies

Pros:

Cons:

Large Online Advertising Companies

Pros:

Cons:

Making a Decision

Is Yelp's Review Filter Hiding Your Positive Reviews?

1. Yelp Doesn’t “Remove” Reviews…

2. You Don’t Automatically Get “Five Stars” for Paying…

Conclusion: It Pays to Pay

11 Ways to Fight the Locksmith Scam and Win

Don’t Make Yourself a Target

Put Your Trustworthiness Front and Center

Google's Incompetence: Hell for Legit Locksmiths, Great for Locksmith Scams

A Brief Summary of the Scam

Google Is Not Doing Enough

It’s Up to You

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