Yahoo! Free Business Listings - What You Get For Free, and For a Fee

The listing comes at either the free level (a basic listing and a 5 page website) or at $9.95/month (an enhanced listing and the same website). Both are primarily a phone and address directory, with the web site allowing space to describe services or staff. Local reports tell the owners how many clicks their pages have received, but as some people point out, this may not mean anything to business owners. Those who aren’t selling anything on the internet may be less concerned with clicks, which do not translate to customers, than they would be with referrals.

Besides allowing small companies to make a debut on the internet, this offering could also allow them to manipulate their presence in the Yahoo! Local listings if they are not satisfied with it. However, if considering the paid option, it might be a better idea to stay away from this until Yahoo works on making it more enticing.

Yahoo’s more established paid services are too much competition for their own new service. The price difference is about $2.00, which is too little to justify the lack of features in the new service. Again, the enhanced listing is $9.95 and includes a slightly fancier listing (including a map and a few more places to enter information, like pictures and links to offers...things easily incorporated into a better website) and a simplistic 5-page website. Yahoo’s most affordable business website starts at $11.95 and includes benefits like an included domain name (plus up to 100 subdomains), 25 email addresses, 2 GB of web space, plenty of tools to help build the website, and 24-hour phone support to help you if you get stuck.

It wouldn’t make sense for people to pay for the new listing service unless Yahoo makes it a more like its other offers or slashes the price in half.

Next: Why Is Yahoo Being So Nice? >>
 

More Search Engine News Articles
More By Developer Shed