Yahoo Local Business Listings Hijacked
-
We are a solar company with three locations. When claiming our business listings on Yahoo (Yext), we noticed that one of them had already been claimed. The name of our company and our phone number were changed to a lead generation company. Upon further inspection, this company has hijacked hundreds of listings throughout the state and the country.
Or, just search in Yahoo's Local search section for "Solar Connector Irvine" or pretty much any city in California.
On every hijacked listing, the company name is changed to "Solar Connector" and the phone number is changed to a unique local number, but all the other information is left the same. Now when people think they are calling our business, they get a shady lead gen company instead. I have submitted a request to Yext and have tried (and failed) to find a support phone number. This is a widespread, blatant fraud, and I would hope they would have interest in fixing it.
Solar Connector (fake name) is associated with SolarAmerica.com, which is run by Clean Energy Experts, which was purchased by Sunrun (a publicly traded company).
My specific question is, does anyone have any insight on the best method for getting help from Yahoo/Yext? Other than through their "help portal" on the website. I need to speak with a human being.
-
Hi SSDigital,
Ooof...listing hijacking is truly awful. I'm so sorry for the trouble you're experiencing, and even sorrier to have to mention that it's not uncommon. Here's a phone number for Yext: 888-444-2988. Hope it helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Local Landing Page Optimization and Multiple GMB Listings
Hello, We’re building out a site for our business that has close to 100 office locations in different cities. Many of these are ‘partner brands’ that we have acquired under our brand. Similar to a franchise model. We want to be able to help users find offices near their location. Each office will have it’s own landing page with a physical address and contact information. We know we’ll have to build out unique copy and markup customized to the office/location. We’ve already read through https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages as well. We’re also considering ‘silos’ to build out pages for each location. To preserve authority and avoid cannibalization; our thought was having each location as sub-folders off of our domain (i.e. domain.com/locations/Partner#1/). The other option would be using a sub-domain (i.e. Partner.Domain.com/) which we noticed competitors doing and treating each sub-domain as their own independent site. Is all of the above the correct strategy? Any further suggestions? Should we fill out a separate GMB for each office and should they all use the same brand name? (in other words “BrandA” vs. “BrandA” - Brooklyn Office). In addition to GMB; would each location need local listings created (also all under the same name)? Any help or insight would be very much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance. Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R0 -
What could be stopping us from ranking locally?
We do most of our business in national SEO and we do reasonably well, but we are entering a niche where search engine results are served locally. This is the page we are trying to get ranked: https://idearocketanimation.com/video-production-company/ The page has been indexed We beat all the rankers in Domain Authority We're competitive in terms of reviews We're strongly competitive in terms of load time We are a SAB, but other SABs seem to rank, and even companies with no GMB listing rank We have mentioned our locality on the page and meta title It's not that we are not ranking well... we're not even in the top 50. Is there something I've done wrong, or forgotten to do? What might be stopping Google from ranking us locally?
Local Listings | | Wagster2 -
Local SEO - 2 Locations
Hi SEO pros, If I'm undertaking SEO for a company which has a single website (no location specific pages) and 2 office locations I'm curious on a couple of points: 1. Obviously setting up 2 locations in GMB is a must, but in terms of citation building is it just a case of needing to input 2 citations into every directory (one for each address) 2. Link building - assuming this doesn't change much from when you're ranking for one location? 3. Schema markup - Do i need to create 2 x local business schema and input both into the headers? 4. On-page SEO - trying to rank for 2 locations I'm assuming is much more difficult as you can't optimise both location keywords throughout the site - does anyone know a way around this?
Local Listings | | Jack11661 -
Our website ranks first in SERP but is not listed in google local list
Hi, Our website is currently (and has been) ranking 1st for a number of keywords but is not listed under the Google Local list. I have double check that all the (physical) info is correct. I do not have a duplicate page. When I order the Google Local results in rating order, we then appear on top! Has anyone come across such a situation and would you have tips on how to solve this issue? Thanks!
Local Listings | | GVZH1 -
Duplicate Google Plus and Google My Business Listings
My business has duplicate listings for both Google + and Google Places or Maps or My Business or whatever it's called today. Of course the listings that I want to show are marked as duplicates, and the only option is to remove the duplicates. Is there any way to merge these listings or switch which one Google recognizes?
Local Listings | | lmsybiatb0 -
Do canonical links effect local search rankings?
Hello, I have just been doing some reading about canonical links. Part of my role at my family business is to look after all of the SEO and digital marketing for our business. I've been really pleased with the results i've managed to get as we currently rank in the top 3 in the organic search for all of the keywords we've been trying for. My question is though, The Moz scan of my site came back and said we have some duplicate content. Although i've written every page completely from scratch I am sort of saying the same thing. We cover a few different areas for our business and we are in the service industry and i've always thought it was better to have a page dedicated to an area. We are a removals company and I would always type in for example 'Removal companies in London' I wouldn't just type in Removal Companies. It is very location specific which we've found out by asking our customers what they have/would type in. Because of this, I was thinking perhaps this duplicate content is harming our sites SEO so I wondering, if i implemented a canonical link from all of my local area pages to my main House Removals page to say that there is where the content originated.Would it negatively affect the current ranking of my local pages (as it's pretty good) or would it actually increase the strength of our SEO and improve it? Any help would be hugely appreciated 🙂 Cheers, Robert P.S i'm only self taught and i'm trying to learn as much as i can, please be kind.
Local Listings | | BearPaw880 -
Getting listing in Google map results
Hi all A website i'm current working on isn't showing up in the google map list results on normal search page, anybody know of any reasons this may be? I've never had any issues previously i just registered on google places but since changes to google business it doesn't seem to be automatic any more. Currently i have two different other websites showing in these listings for the search term however my client is questioning why they are not showing up here also as they have the same business type related to the search term.
Local Listings | | mari-rose0 -
Issues with Claiming a G+ Business Page
We are working with a client and their marketing consultant who set up a Local Listing service to help local citations, Yahoo, Google+, etc, etc... We have their G+ business page and it is verified, however, as we are new to helping them out, we don't have access to the page to make edits. Here's the catch, neither does the client, or the consultant or the listing company/people. Question: How can we go about claiming this as "our" page in order to help the client out, get it edited/optimized and then keep record of it so this doesn't happen again? PS - Typically, there is an option for a business page to "Is this your page?" or "Manage this page?" at the bottom, but I don't see one of those buttons. Any help or advice would be appreciated. Patrick
Local Listings | | WhiteboardCreations0