• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
(800) 689-1273
Facebook Twitter Youtube Linkedin
Prospect Genius logo

Prospect Genius

Menu
  • Services
    • Websites
      • CoreSite
      • Free Google Business Profile Website Alternative
    • SEO
      • CleanSlate
      • Directory Dominator
      • SEO Content Writing Services
    • A.I.
      • AI Optimization Quick Start
      • GEO – Generative Engine Optimization
      • AEO – Answer Engine Optimization
    • Social Media
      • SocialStart
      • SocialBuzz
      • SocialStream
    • Pay Per Click
      • Google Adwords
      • Facebook / Instagram Ads
      • Remarketing
    • Email Marketing
      • EmailStream
      • ReviewStream
    • Tools
      • PhoneSwap
      • CallTrax
      • Spaminator
      • EmailMask
      • WebFax
      • AdTrax
      • MapTrax
    • Google Business Profile
      • Google Business Profile Rescue
      • Google Review Rescue
      • Google Business Profile Optimization
      • Google Review StarSaver
  • Reviews
  • FAQ
  • About Us
    • Charity
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
Log In
You are here: Home / Archives for yahoo

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*:

yext listings scan

*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.

Shocking News: Russia Buys Google

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

So, this is pretty unbelievable news.
Very quietly, over the last two weeks, some of our country’s biggest search engine companies have moved their operations over to Russia. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing are among these companies. The news hasn’t been publicly announced yet, but we managed to get an early scoop.
Why the move? Our sources tell us it boils down to money—specifically, taxes. The owners of Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and other Internet companies escaped to Russia for tax benefits. President Vladimir Putin allowed them to establish operations there and enjoy tax-free status, but only under one condition: that they rename their companies after him.
Here’s a sneak peek at the companies’ new branding.
Google is now “Puugle”:Puugle
Yahoo! is now “Yahpu!”:Yahpu!
Bing is now “Puting”:puting
And we actually managed to get an exclusive look at the new Puugle home page! Check it out at www.puugle.com.
Needless to say, this is going to have unpredictable, far-reaching ramifications for the whole online advertising industry. So stay tuned for updates as this story develops.

Addressing a Few Common Campaign Concerns

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

No matter how many success stories we create, virtually no campaign ever runs as smoothly as we’d like. That’s just the nature of online advertising. Working in conjunction with independent entities like search engines, phone companies, and business directories means there’s a lot that’s out of our control. All anyone can do is keep an eye out for sudden changes and adapt accordingly.
In this newsletter, we’ll address a few of the pain-points and campaign concerns that Prospect Genius clients have encountered lately and explain what we’re doing to mitigate them.

Faulty Yahoo! PINs

Many clients have had trouble recently with their Yahoo! PINs. When your PIN gets sent to you, you turn it in to us, but when we try to input it on Yahoo! it just doesn’t work. While we’re not sure of what’s causing this problem, we are aware that it exists and we have been staying on top of it. We’ve spoken to Yahoo! but we haven’t had any luck resolving the problem.
While this may sound like a huge setback, it’s actually not. Frankly, Yahoo! is not a major search engine; very few Internet users actually rely on it as their search engine of choice. In fact, according to comScore, Yahoo’s market share has dropped to just 10.1%, a record low, as of March 2014.
Moreover, we do hundreds of other off-page tasks to support all of our search engine work. With everything else that we do for your campaign, a missing Yahoo! PIN is not the end of the world.
As always, we’re staying on top of this issue and will update you as additional information becomes available.

Call-Time Upgrades

Contrary to popular belief, phone minutes are not free. Even Verizon and AT&T have to pay line charges for minutes used on the networks that blanket the country. So when clients voice concern over having their call-time packages upgraded, it’s because they don’t understand the reason behind it.
Many clients complain about having their call-time packages upgraded, but they don’t understand what it actually is.
Prospect Genius institutes a call-time upgrade when clients get so many calls that they exceed the allotted number of minutes in their original phone packages. We often refer to it as a “homerun tax” because it’s caused by the fact that their campaigns are generating such a massive volume of leads.
We begin every one of our campaigns with the smallest phone package because it doesn’t make sense to charge our clients for a larger package if they aren’t going to use all of those minutes. Upgrading your phone package is necessary because you’re spending more time on the phone with customers than the original package allows.
The upgrade is a pass-through cost; it’s not designed to profit Prospect Genius in any way. We pass this minimal cost ($9/month) on to you because, if we didn’t, we would not have any incentive to make your campaign successful. Think about it: If we had to pay out of pocket for extra phone minutes that resulted from too many leads, then why would we want to keep sending you more leads? By passing the cost on to you, we are protecting both of our best interests.

Yelp Reviews Not Sticking

We also hear concerns from clients about their Yelp reviews. With Yelp’s strict filters, which are powered by confounding algorithms, many businesses are realizing that random customer reviews aren’t appearing on their pages. It’s a very valid concern, given how many businesses use Yelp as part of their overall online advertising campaign.
From what we’ve learned of Yelp’s review filtering policies, we can tell you that it primarily filters out reviews posted by brand-new accounts. In other words, if a user created a brand-new account to leave you a review or just didn’t leave many other reviews before leaving one on your page, Yelp will likely filter it out of your list of reviews. The filter system is intended to prevent potential spamming, but the result is that it also affects new, honest users.
While Prospect Genius doesn’t have the power to change Yelp’s policies, we do have recommendations for getting around them. For starters, only ask customers to leave you a review on Yelp if they have a well established account. Additionally, we’re fortunate to have several other prominent online platforms that also show ratings and reviews. Facebook and Google+ pages are both great alternatives to Yelp, so take advantage of them.
As always, if you have any campaign concerns that you’d like to address, call your campaign coordinator or account manager. We’ll listen carefully and accommodate whatever needs you have.

Prospect Genius logo

Contact Us

Prospect Genius
279 Troy Rd
Ste 9 #102
Rensselaer, NY 12144

Business Hours

Mon – Fri: 9am – 6pm ET

 (800) 689-1273
 hello@prospectgenius.com

Let’s Connect!

Facebook Twitter Youtube Linkedin

What Drives Us?

Our passion is helping small businesses thrive. It’s why we get out of bed every day. Too many business owners are cheated and lied to every day so we see it as our duty to be a beacon of truth, a safe harbor, in an often unscrupulous industry.

Client Portal App


Helpful Links

  • Case Studies
    • Negative Review Attack
    • Resiliency of SEO Strategies
    • Facebook Ads for Growth
    • Google PPC Ads Double Calls
    • Facebook Ads vs Google Ads
    • SEO Brings Online Success
    • GBP Optimization
    • Prospect Genius > Home Advisor
    • CleanSlate Creates NAP Win
  • Professional Answering Services
  • Integrity Pledge
  • Porting a CallTrax Phone Number
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • About
  • FAQ
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Sign up for our newsletter!

Join our mailing list and receive regular updates on how to effectively market your small business, along with exclusive service promotions.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.
Suspended Map Listing?

Just 2 failed attempts at reinstatement and your listing is gone forever! Luckily, we have a nearly 100% success rate!!

Google Business Profile Rescue

Don't Waste Your PPC Budget

PPC ads will quickly drain your budget if you don’t optimize them well.

Learn About Our PPC Services