Infoserve/City Visitor

[giblets]

We've had two calls from these 'nice people' and during the first call I thought "I've been here before with Iomart Internet and it took me ages to get my money back!".

They gave me the same spiel, but this one was for Yahoo, not Google.

When the pushy sales technique started I knew just the question to ask them. I agreed in principal to the deal, but refused to pay over the telephone by credit card like they asked (always a bad sign). I asked them to put the agreement in writing and post it to me along with a copy of their T's & C's, a colour, printed brochure, a breakdown of the service being offered AND and invoice.

Guess what the reply was? "We are an internet company and we don't send out things on paper! That's how things are done these days."

I told them that if they could not back up their claims and details with printed material like companies had done for centuries and still continued to do, like our 200+ suppliers and manufacturers for example, we did not wish to proceed.

Two days later, they phoned back and asked to speak to my fellow director - I immediately got the call transferred to myself and listened to them repeat the spiel.

At this point, and in no uncertain terms, I told them by which method and at which location they should tranfer their offer of service, and how much force to use.

I have no doubt they will call back. My sincere recommendation to anyone reading these posts is to steer well clear of these cowboys.

[eddy82]

[

SIZE="4"]Hi,

I used to work for infoserve and would just like to point out that the attitude of alot of people is that online advertising does not work but dont knock it until you try it more and more people search for a wide range of services online. to be honest there are some businesses that advertising with infoserve just wont work for or justify th amount spent on advertising but try it first if you are going to ask for more info call and speak to Andy Critchley oin the darlington office unlike most of the other staff there he wont have your eyes out or to put it another way take advantage of your enquiry.
[/size]

[lucasmartin]

Hi All,
It is harsh to pash judgement on company such as Infoserve if you don't know much about the internet.
I am a internet research consultant, and have worked with infoserve many times before, both within university and work.
Infoserve are one of the biggest online key players and have a well established history.

They enable companies to appear either naturally or as a sponsored link on google without having to pay CPC (Cost Per Click), which saves companies large amounts of money.

If you would like to appear on google without having to spend up to thousands of ponds a year, i would highly recommend them to anyone who was interested in investing onto google.

for an example of how effective they are, they have enabled the majority of their customers to have their websites found up 97.3%% more being a listing with them on their sites.

£250 is the standard price for there listing with infoserve (city-visitor). Without there help, £250 would only get your company a week on google in some cases if your luckly.

In comparison to Yell, infoserve have more power with google than yell, Yell is a waste of money, and i can say that as i am researching them curently, especialy for the price you pay for yell.

They also provide all the local listings for Yahoo! Local, which is a massive achievement in the internet world.

All in all I would highly recomend Infoserve to any company interested in getting their websites found on the two biggest search engines in world, (Google, Yahoo).

Many thanks

[lucasmartin]

Hi All,
It is harsh to pash judgement on infoserve if you know little about the internet and how it works.
I am an internet research consultant, and i have dealt with infoserve many times before, both in university and work.

They are a well established key internet player, which allows companies to promote themselves on google, without having to do a CPC payment plan (CPC- Cost Per Click). This method is very expensive and can cost vast amounts of money.
Infoserve's standard price on City-Vistor is £250 for a year! This would proably get you a week for some key words on google, if you were to do it yourself.

The internet is growing daily, it grenrates 76% of peoples first point of contact for local services.

Infserve also own the exclusive rights to yahoo! local, and classify all of the listings which is a massive achievement.

My advise, infoserve know what their doing, allow them to help your company get found on the internet, unless you want to do it yourself, however, if you decide to do it yourself, be prepared to spend alot of money!

Thanks

[Jim Thompson]

Hi Guys,

Just to clear this up for you. Having worked at a few of these companies before I know what really happens and how much traffic you'll get (or should i say WONT get) from a "Priority Listing".

There are tonnes of these business directories popping up all over the UK all with the same business model, and many even starting out with the same business data. So its usually the same companies (SME's) who get bombarded by them. Thats why it may seem its every other day that someone from a different directory is trying to sell you a Priority Listing.

The business model is pretty straight forward:

1. Buy a load of business data.
2. Submit them to your business directory
3. Set up a call centre of sales people to call the companies on your directory to tell them they have been submitted to the directory - and then HARD SELL them a priority listing.

The problem you have is that none of these directories get enough traffic to ever give you a return on your investment. Lets face it, if you were looking for a plumber in sunderland, would you go to any of these directories to find one? The only one worth even considering is Yell.com and even that wont work for every type of business. You would be far better setting up Google PPC and sponsoring the keywords Plumber in Sunderland (even GEO target so only people within 50miles of sunderland find you). For the few that do use Google to search for plumbers in sunderland via google (rather than looking in the yellow pages or yell.com) it will cost you around 10p per visitor. Whereas a priority listing that at best may generate 1 or 2 visitors a YEAR (if your lucky!) works out around £175-£200 per visitor depending on which directory it is.

There are lots of directories out there who will gladly take your money, and many of them have very good sales staff who can be convincing so BE CAREFUL. My personal advice is to NEVER buy anything from any company that needs to employ a call centre of hardcore sales people in order to sell their service. They will tell you that they are partnered with people they arent partnered with (or a very very distant link on some sub site somewhere). They will make up stats on the spot of how many people use their sites and how much business it will bring. They have lots of ways of convincing you that YOU NEED to have this priority listing, and its going to have such a HUGE IMPACT on your business. Truth is that its all just a big scam, dont waste your money!

Here are a few to look out for (or listen out for):

Askalix (a.k.a Miami International Sales, Askalex, Enable Media), Infoserve, City Visitor, Thebestof, Scoot, Citylocal, Useekus and 100s of others. Some of the more convincing ones have now merged or teamed up with bigger sites - they still will get you little/no traffic or business. These include Scoot, ITV Local etc.

But in summary, save your money and never buy priority listings (or enhanced listings) on any business directory. Save your money for the one that you would use yourself (yellow pages/yell.com) as thats about the only one that will pay for itself. Spend your money on PPC (pay per click) advertising instead like google adwords, that way you only pay for the traffic you get (and you can track it therefore prove R.O.I).

Hope this helps.