Wow, so today I decided to try and update the Yelp system with the correct hours of one of my clients. That was a mistake, however it did allow me to talk to their advertising department about how little yelp does.
The first thing the agent had me do was search for towing in Lansing, MI this way we could see where our listing appears, and where an ad would run. Well there we are in position 6 with one terrible fake review. So she goes on to tell me how we could be listed first if we advertise and that they are getting up to 600 searches a month for towing near Lansing.
I stopped her in her tracks at this point as we get 600 searches a day on google for towing in Lansing, MI and 30-60 of those hit our website everyday. So 10x’s the usage as yelp. So I asked about their pricing model and apparently for a little over 300 a month I could advertise to their 600 searches a month, probably capture 1-2% and come out with 6-12 more customers per month.
So apparently Yelp also uses google adsense on their pages, so when you do towing lansing, mi you are given a map on the right and just below it are Ads by Google., guess who is already sitting in position one for their ads,.
So when you advertise with yelp, you pay them to list your ad, then they also run google adsense ads on the page, so you can pay twice for a customer to look at your name. What a great setup, I wish I had thought of it.
Tags: Yelp Reviews are Fake, Yelp Scam, Yelp Towing Lansing MI