I just wanted to add that mapquest, a direct map service that is still used by a lot of users just went ALL OUT YEXT with no more free option.

What is to say that hotfrog and many others will not be coerced or tempted to do the same after years of offering free options that the majority of business owners who are smart use?

what if yelp did this? What if yahoo closed off its free listing too? What if Google though oh who are we kidding, it costs too much to run a maps api for google plus and local mess, and just takes a nice sweet, technically proficient offer from yext with a fat negotiated pay rate for something that they did not charge for before at all? This spells death of anything known as LOCAL SEO for SEOs... it means we all have to sign up a reseller account with yext, and just be happy we are allowed to do even that...

I am deeply disturbed by this very manipulative and monopolistic approach to this directory market. At any moment, any of these companies can decide to go this route and pull a mapquest on the consumers and businesses. What should one do in that case other than to sign up as a yext partner and start ripping people off "as the way it is" way of doing business which i generally despise of... cuz it only benefits one entity massively and disproportionately, I mean how is it that for years and years these services were free and suddenly in the last year or so, a lot of them, especially the smaller guys are going premium only. I just don't get it. Did they have a wrong business model at first for so long? or did they get bullied/coerced/manipulated/tempted by Yext to go that route. Because we all know Yext HAS NO competitors in any meaningful way...

SEO market is only going to get more like this it seems... driving up the cost, and pushing smaller people out of the market, including smaller customers and clients. in 5 year time, yext can cost as little as 1500 bucks... I know of businesses who are still using win xp machines they bought 8-10 years ago or even longer for $600-700 range who refuse to change it due to budgetary limits even though it gives them a headache every day and wastes at least half hour of their time in stare-at-the-monitor-while-you-wait-and-grown mode...

Time to introduce some government regulation to this industry if you want my take, because it is about to get really nasty if you allow these giant corporations to push you around like this and extort money like a life requirement...

I just wanted to add that mapquest, a direct map service that is still used by a lot of users just went ALL OUT YEXT with no more free option.

What is to say that hotfrog and many others will not be coerced or tempted to do the same after years of offering free options that the majority of business owners who are smart use?

what if yelp did this? What if yahoo closed off its free listing too? What if Google though oh who are we kidding, it costs too much to run a maps api for google plus and local mess, and just takes a nice sweet, technically proficient offer from yext with a fat negotiated pay rate for something that they did not charge for before at all? This spells death of anything known as LOCAL SEO for SEOs... it means we all have to sign up a reseller account with yext, and just be happy we are allowed to do even that...

I am deeply disturbed by this very manipulative and monopolistic approach to this directory market. At any moment, any of these companies can decide to go this route and pull a mapquest on the consumers and businesses. What should one do in that case other than to sign up as a yext partner and start ripping people off "as the way it is" way of doing business which i generally despise of... cuz it only benefits one entity massively and disproportionately, I mean how is it that for years and years these services were free and suddenly in the last year or so, a lot of them, especially the smaller guys are going premium only. I just don't get it. Did they have a wrong business model at first for so long? or did they get bullied/coerced/manipulated/tempted by Yext to go that route. Because we all know Yext HAS NO competitors in any meaningful way...

SEO market is only going to get more like this it seems... driving up the cost, and pushing smaller people out of the market, including smaller customers and clients. in 5 year time, yext can cost as little as 1500 bucks... I know of businesses who are still using win xp machines they bought 8-10 years ago or even longer for $600-700 range who refuse to change it due to budgetary limits even though it gives them a headache every day and wastes at least half hour of their time in stare-at-the-monitor-while-you-wait-and-grown mode...

Time to introduce some government regulation to this industry if you want my take, because it is about to get really nasty if you allow these giant corporations to push you around like this and extort money like a life requirement...