Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Yahoo Splitting Off Yahoo Small Business – Promises Equally Sharp Focus?
Just received this late Friday night email. Must be they are trying to avoid the news cycle.
One has to wonder who writes this s%^t?
Even brighter future? Sharp focus?
Yes, right after minimum wage goes to $25/hr, all wars end and nuclear arms are mothballed.
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I’d be happy if I could get 5 year old business listings out of their index.
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
18 Comments
Your snark is deeply appreciated 🙂
Sadly, how many unknowing SMBs will respond to this crap?
@scott
I wonder at this point if any do? This reminds me of the famous Nixon Checker’s speech.
The press release should have said:
We can not figure out how to generate share holder value in the SMB marketplace. We want out. And are tired of being picked on.
We are spinning SMB services into its own corporation so that you won’t have Yahoo to kick around any more.
We arn’t going to adequately fund the new corporation either, so the future is about as dim as the past but maybe we can get somebody to bite and take it off our hands.
Sincerely
Yahoo
Amen on the “better” email.
It still surprises me how many people think they NEED to be on Yahoo’s directory, and ask about Localworks. We know better because we watch them closely, but most SMBs simply know them because of their name. Let’s call it the Donald Trump rule of citations 🙂
Scott
Yes its pretty useless. I am sure that a citation there has 1)no impact on Google and 2)will generate 0 traffic directly.
PS I should have added to my version of the letter:
“We named it Aabaco so that we could rank first in the phone book.”
Love the timing and these comments! So much for Marissa’s “commitment to local”, eh?
Aabaco is not an original name, if you can believe that – Aabaco Environmental: Oil spill clean up and remediation. Somehow I see that as an appropriate name for this clean up job.
Aabaco? Are they trying to show up first in a phone book with that name?
Seems likely
Haw haw of the day reading this post. Thanks, Mike. I needed that.
It appears Yahoo pages are also disconnecting from the Yelp API. Here is an example below. The cached version of the Yahoo page shows the Yelp review(s). The current Yahoo page is now displaying all of the old Yahoo reviews again.
Current Page: https://local.yahoo.com/info-45173132-cocoa-couture-hershey
Cached Page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YDpCo7Umfq0J:https://local.yahoo.com/info-45173132-cocoa-couture-hershey+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
It warms my heart to read this thread. Suffering does build camaraderie among the sufferers!
However, I was disappointed that no one took a shot at Yext while we’re at it.
Aabaco, ha ha… couldn’t ask for a more ridiculous name. Maybe they’re hoping William Morris will buy them and get that premium phone book spot.
Loved reading all of the comments – a hoot 😉
Looks like another change at Yahoo Local. It’s been about a month since I signed into a client’s Yahoo Dashboard. I had hopes that with Luminate/Aabaco we’d at least have the ability to update the free listing like we used to be able to do. But now it looks like they’ve scrubbed the whole ‘free listing’ idea and have turned to Yext to handle it – it’s no longer free. I’m assuming they will still be updating their database with information from aggregators, but if you want to change or enhance anything, you’re out of luck unless you pay. We saw this before with MapQuest and they have since offered great customer services for updating basic information at no charge. Maybe we’ll see that here as well. Although, does it really matter? Here’s a screen shot of my client’s dashboard:
http://www.wedolocal.com/blog/yahoo-who-is-it-going-to-be-luminate-aabaco-or-yext
@Rob – Yahoo continues to amaze. I got an email on 9/5 that my submission (that I made in April!) was approved, and then on 9/9 I got another email that my listing was still being reviewed. In either case, my listing never showed up on Yahoo Local, even on 9/5.
The frustration (at least from my perspective) is that it’s wildly clear to me that Yahoo and others (Superpages, InsiderPages, CitySearch come to mind) have abandoned their focused efforts on maintaining quality local business listings – but because they still get SEO “juice” from their listings, they are letting it run on fumes. The easy answer is for all of us to ignore these sites, but that’s not likely a viable answer. But I can keep trying 🙂
Definitely frustrating. Maybe there’s a middleware market for someone to build a simple architecture that lets these fumbling sites easily incorporate and verify crowdsourced data.
@ Scott, good luck. Try comparing Yahoo listings to MySpace if your client is mentally flexible. Plus, Yahoo itself isn’t showing much confidence with them closing Yahoo Maps: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/its-the-end-of-the-road-for-yahoos-maps-site/
This is the worst place to deal with!!!! We have tried to get one thing done since 11-23-15 and it still is not done between my boss and I we have spent over 4 hours on the phone with these people and nothing!!!! They always ask for credit card info to verify an acct. on top of everything else they could possibly ask. !!!accept our blood type!!
*NO HELP UNTIL CREDIT CARD INFO IS GIVEN*
Well when you have multiple cc’s within your company and the owner only holds two. This is impossible. SO so far this has turned out to be crap…. and we are now moving to another company that will definitely give better customer service and help with our account..
No Thank you,
The Owner
After more than 3 hours, and calls to Yahoo and Aabaco, my account is finally canceled.
Aabaco’s customer service department was zero help. They were more interested in harvesting my personal information (for “verification” purposes) than fulfilling my request to stop billing me for services.
If you’re in the same situation, I would strongly recommend that you get in contact with a supervisor in their billing department. It was through him, and a lot of pushing, that my account was canceled.
On a side note, more than one representative suggested that I file a fraud report with the bank to stop the charges. It seems like Aabaco is in big trouble.
Aabaco small business is a disaster. Best advice I can give anyone is to AVOID them!! I stayed and was converted from yahoo thinking things would go seamless. WRONG. At times my website will completely become unavailable. At times my website will loose critical functionality that is key to my business. They are awful! Call their customer service and after 45 minutes you talk to someone who only notes what the problem is, does nothing and says nothing of value. “their engineers are working on the issue, is there anything else they can help with”. YES get my website working. Over 5 years w/ yahoo and ever one issue. Less than a month with this Micky Mouse company and two critical ones. *** AVOID AABACO ***
They are holding my domain name hostage!!! NO CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!! If anyone has filed a class action lawsuit against this fraud or Yahoo, please let me know so I can join in. I cannot get my domain name transferred because these crooks have stolen it!!! Yahoo! SUCKS for doing this to countless small business owners!!!!
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