YodleReviews 1,688

"I just started working as the Marketing Director for a dental practice and was anxious to have a presence on the internet, so we added Yodle to our marketing mix. We set up that presence with Yodle and started getting the instant gratification of new patients. We are really pleased with the results from Yodle. They built up our presence on the web and have brought in a lot of new business for us -- a nearly 50% increase.

What has been really great about working with Yodle is the regular meetings to review our results and the interface I get to review my contacts, listen to calls that come in and keep up with the leads. I am really able to tell what is working with our online marketing through Yodle and then also figure out what needs to be fixed. I always get the feeling that somebody is going to bat for me and making my dollars work to the maximum. I have constant communication with my team at Yodle."

Wow. What an amazing ripoff. I am an IT project manager in the marketing office of a top university, and am involved with a lot of SEO and internet marketing campaigns. As a help to my sister-in-law, I agreed to look over what Yodle had been doing. First of all, they sell themselves as SEO specialist - Not even remotely the case. After one year of yodle (and about $6000!), her site ranked only a 29 out of 100 on an SEO website grader tool. When I looked at the code, Yodle had not even implemented the most basic of SEO practices. Stay away!

Stay away, huge cost and low returns. You can do your own advertising that's more local with Google, Bing and yahoo. Plus it will cost you 50-70% less. If you want the convenience of having someone else do the work for you then you can use Yodle but keep in mind they will make an exorbitant amount of money off of you. Plus if you cancel them you will lose potential customers that have booked the mirrored site of yours hosted on Yodle's servers. None of the advertising is directed to your business website or phone directly, it's all channeled directly through Yodle first. ("Gotcha!" is what they should be saying)

Looks like somebody is posting some false reviews on this site (Its been reported...?):
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/*******@N03/*******972/

Yodle is a complete joke. Their sales reps b. S. you with all this crap and get you to sign up thinking it is going to be cheap and what a bunch of b. S. that is. Just like the rest of you said the price skyrockets after they get you hooked in and there are many other ways to do this cheaper. I really wish I would have done a bit more research myself before I got involved with this fraudalent company.
DO YOURSELVES A FAVOR AND DONT SIGN UP WITH YODLE!

I am really disappointed for Yodle's service. I signed up for the service two weeks ago and I haven't heard back anything from my sales rep yet. The sales rep was very aggressive in the beginning to have me signed up for the service. However, the first thing that he told me right after I signed up is "Call me tomorrow". It makes me feel very uncomfortable. He only got back to me once for my 10 emails, no return call and I don't even have the login for my account. What kind of company is it? Are they trying to cheat people for business? Where can I complaint? They charged my credit card already and do nothing.

Have used yodle for 2 years and have had poor results. When you have a problem they duck and dive for cover will rarely return phone calls or emails and are full of empty promises. I have now gone through google adwords direct at a fraction of the cost manage my own campaign with great results. You can set it up on the net yourself or ring one of there consultants and they will help you get started. Twenty dollars set up fee you control the budget. Have been with them a month now and have spent $60 and am very happy. Good Luck

Let's face the FACTS!

Google documents have pointed out that more than 70% of the search will go and click directly into the organic area of the page and not the area where the Sponsored Links are found. Also, the conversion rate is much higher from those clicking into the organic search return. Maybe partly due to the sponsored links are well known to be the target of online media sales reps and the sponsored links represent those willing to pay for online media instead of the better roi of hiring a good seo? It just makes sense that they would call those displaying a need for business. My advice... Before spending money with those companies you maybe better off researching Search Engine Optimization in a local city around you. Talk to them and you may learn more than you know about SEO now.

I have to join with the others who were woefully disappointed and wished they could cancel their contract. When you enroll in their program, you must sign a 3-month contract. If their performance is poor, they will NOT let you out early.

When I talked to their sales rep, I liked the concept: their computer algorithm will optimize the bid position and amount and even search engine for your internet cost per click advertising. I understood that Yodle would mark up each click, but the rep assured me that the efficiency of their system would still result in cost savings. When I was talking to the sales rep, I asked what the mark-up was, but he said it was too complicated to figure out. That should have been a warning. I was thinking they would charge a 10 to 20% mark-up, not a 400% to 500% markup.

In my case, I started with $1,000 per month, which was about 1/5 my normal budget. Because Yodle was to supplant my own AdWords, Yahoo and MSN efforts, I felt a little nervous about underfunding the program and so voluntarily increased the first month's budget to $3,000. My average cost per click went from $0.81 when I managed it myself, to about $4.00 under Yodle. I then lowered my commitment to the contractually required $1,000 my second month. The second month saw minimal improvement in efficiency, to about $3.75.

I tried to cancel but they would not let me out. They said they had the 3-month contract so that their algorithm had an opportunity to optimize the ideal position and search engine. I retorted that I had already spent $4,000, which was $1,000 more than the contract called for, and that their computer should learn by the number of clicks rather than by time, but to no avail.

The one nice thing I can say is that the advertising rep (different from the sales rep) with whom I worked was very nice and did try her best to get results. However, the results were just atrocious. I learned, to my dismay, just how many of my existing customers look up my contact information through cost per click... at $4 per call, this was quite annoying. And like the others in this review, I got calls from those trying to sell me things and those looking for a job.

All in all, Yodle was a very poor business choice for me and I cannot recommend them to anyone.

Man, I wish I had checked here before I decided to use them. Spent over $1,000 on their "service" only to get complete crap. They didn't understand the basic concepts of landing pages that lie outside of the site structure. My average click costs were more than 3x what I was paying before. Let's put it this way, my average costs to acquire a client average around $30. I paid Yodle over $1,000 and didn't get a single client. How's that for "value"?

Stay away from them at all costs.

I have to agree with the gentleman before me. As I have talked with yodle they told me you could expect 50-60 clicks with a $900 a month budget. However there are some factors that maybe the people having trouble do not realize. For example: how much of your competition is also using Yodle and not to mention where are you from. If you are in an area with a lot of people offering the same product then your results will vary. However, lets face it, 10 extra calls a day in this time period is better than nothing and Yodle tracks its success if you use it correctly.

Stay Away! - The absolute worst advertising decision I ever made. Unfortunately I signed a 3 month contract and the very minimum budget option you can choose is $500.00 a month with a $57 account management fee. So far I have spent over $900.00 for a total of 139 clicks and 4 contacts that resulted in no business leads. What a joke and a waste of money. I can't wait for my three months to end and I have already contacted Yodle and requested that my account be cancelled at the end of my contract. Go elsewhere if you are looking for results because they will promise the sky while delivering nothing in return, leaving you looking skyward while they take your money.