Any traffic or benefit from yellow pages web placement?

We just had a visit from our local yellow pages sales dude. I hesitate to say what we pay for the print ads.

Over the last few years its impact, like that of all print, has dropped and the impact of our web site has dramatically improved.

What kind of impact have you gotten from yellow pages on the web, if any?. What about other sources for local advertising?

I keep asking this question. I just try and learn from the rest of you?

To date our yellow page and local visits through google and yahoo are pretty miniscule. I sense its growing, but only marginally. Frankly most of our local traffic is generated by locally flavored searches (that convert pretty well) and from placement in a couple of local forums. Actually craigslist works quite well.

Dave

I don't think we've had a single lead come through an on-line yellow page listing ever. That's going back almost 2 years at least.

Thanks Bernard. I put some questions out there to learn what your experiences are out there. Our business is older than the web and is regional. Traditionally we got a significant amount of inquiries and sales through the hard yellow pages. Of late we see some traffic through 1 yellow pages listing. We work hard to attract regional traffic to our site. Just wondering if anyone has experience with this? Does it pay? What works best for regional sites?


We are also picking up traffic from regional searches in google and yahoo. If anyone has experience chip in.

Dave

Yellowpages.com really suckered me! I started a new Notary business last year and they signed me up for a $205 per month contract. I gained about $40 in revenues from this advertising. The sales rep who promised me so much never returned any of my calls after the first month. Then the regular AT&T Print Yellowpages did something really deceptive and dishonest to me- beware of this. About 2 weeks after signing up with Yellowpages.com, a representative from Yellowpages named "Dernise" called me about advertising in their Los Angeles and Glendale, CA directories. She advised me that I had about 5 months to modify or cancel the ad. When the ad copy came to me in the mail for review, I saw that they had misspelled my business name, and I knew that I was going to have to change that. Shortly thereafter, I noticed that I was not getting any response to my Yellowpages.com ad. I was paying a lot of money, and getting no return. I started to get doubts about Yellowpages.com, and, of course, I was inclined to not trust Yellowpages either. I was going to call Dernise on the phone to cancel the advertising, when lo and behold, one day she called me to ask me if I had had a chance to review the advertising. I said that I did, but that it didn't matter, because I had decided to cancel the advertising with Yellow Pages. I explained that I was paying so much for Yellowpages.com and getting no results, that I had a bad feeling about paying that company anything else. She said that she understood, and advised me that she would cancel my print advertising. Well, guess what? About Six months later, I started getting a bill for advertising in the Glendale, CA directory, and then I started getting billed for the Los Angeles directory a month later. I'm paying $59 a month for both directories. I was outraged that Dernise, the sales rep, had said that she would cancel the advertising, and she did not. I called Dernise on the phone, and she told me that I needed to take the issue up with customer service. When I did that, they said that they needed to get Dernise's side of the story, so they put us on a 3-way call. Dernise said that I was lying on her, and that she knew that she never told me that she was going to cancel my ad, because, in her words, "I would have done it". I was thinking to myself, "Oh, so you're perfect and don't make mistakes". Anyway, AT&T Yellow Pages customer service believed Dernise, and would not remove my charges (they record you on the phone, and it's an "oral contract". They can record you, but you would never think that you have to record them). I was advised my customer service that I was bound by the contract because I had not submitted to them in writing my request to cancel. BUYER BEWARE when dealing with this company. For me, there are 3 reasons. Both Yellowpages.com and Yellowpages took my money, and I am not seeing any kind of a return at all for what I have paid- it is a big waste of money, especially compared to where you could put your money towards. Secondly, there were mistakes on my online ad (they put an invalid link to my website, and for the print ad put the wrong company name). Finally, their customer service is completely lacking- no follow up once you are signed up as a customer to make sure that ads are working for you, and I was unable to get Karen, the sales rep from Yellowpages.com, on the phone at all after I first expressed concerns about my low statistics for my website. I have complained to Yellowpages about my print ads, and they refuse to budge on giving me any kind of refund. As a matter of fact, Yellowpages.com continues to add insult to injury by periodically calling me on the phone, asking me to advertise with them again, and promising that the results will be different this time. I asked them if I could have a money-back guarantee or a trial period, and, of course, they say 'no'. I don't want to deal with them anymore, I believe that Yellow Pages is a "Power of the Past", and, for the most part, is irrelevant in today's modern technological market. I can get more hits on my site from my blog that I could with paying Yellowpages.com.