Thursday, January 31, 2013

Yext Free Scans Good or Scam?


By now many of you have run across an ad for "Yext" , the service that claims it will show you search site you are listed on and what is wrong with the listings for free.  And for a fee, which is at $500 per year now, will fix all of the errors that maybe keeping people from finding you and help your listing stand out.

Now, you go, and you do the free scan and bam - all the listings have something wrong with them.  Ahhh, but do they?

I do all my own listings for my DJ company, 2Wolves DJ Service, have manually posted everyone, from Yelp to Local.com and beyond.  So when this 'free' service tells me all my listings have errors, and they found 139 errors, it caused suspicions to arise.  So I ran the scan again - Now it shows 144 errors.  And one more time for a 140 errors.  Hmm

The main red flag was right at the top.   It stated my listing on Yelp had no photos.  Really now.  I know there are some places they do not allow photos or they charge way to much for the privilege , but I know I was able to add photos to my Yelp listing.  Same with my Merchant Circle account

Even more alarming is when you search "Yext" and Scam together, the pages and pages of articles and complaints about this service.

Feel free to use their "Free Scan" - but I would be wary about signing up for this service.
I simply used the information of the various search sites that they have in their list and added my business myself to the ones I felt were relevant.

Has anyone had dealings with this company - Yext?  Feel free to share your thoughts.