On Friday, November 2, I listed MightyMerchant with SuperPages.com, which is like an online Yellow Pages for finding local businesses. With SuperPages you can also review businesses and read reviews other people have left. It’s free for local listings, and I wanted to be able to recommend this service based on my own experience, so I signed up for a business listing.
Well, I’m only partially happy with it, but I’m still recommending it. The set up process was relatively painless, and today my listing is there for anyone who searches on our company name, MightyMerchant eCommerce Hosted Shopping Cart. Searching for “ecommerce” is less effective-you have to click on the related category of “electronic commerce” to find MightyMerchant appearing on the second page of results. But, searching for “ecommerce” and clicking on the related category of “web site design” doesn’t bring up the MightyMerchant listing, even though that is an integral part of the services we offer, and it says so in our business description.
I easily updated our profile to add MightyMerchant to the “web site design” and “web site development” categories, as well as “Internet Marketing Services” category, only to discover that I was limited to 5 categories. I can live with that.
Part of my dissatisfaction comes with how much they charge for enhancements. To add red, italics, or bold to your ad is $20 a month. Highlights are $25 a month. For “preferred placement,” as they say, to “move your listing closer to the top of the search results,” they charge $101 a month. There is no explanation of how they determine placement beyond that. What happens if everyone in your category is paying for preferred placement? Someone still has to be last. To have my listing appear in the directory of my town is free, a listing covering my county is $45 a month, my city’s metro area is $85 a month, and a listing covering all of Oregon is $235 a month. As if that’s not enough extra charges, to add a company logo and promotional message is $23 a month. That’s $292 a month for an Oregon listing with red and bold, a logo and promo text. Sorry SuperPages, I think that’s way too much! But, they know that local search is probably the next big thing in search technology, as both brick-and-mortar businesses, and small online business strive to tailor their results to an increasing desire to find locally available products and services.
On the bright side, even with a free account you can see the number of impressions, which is people who viewed the page your results appear on, and the number of clicks, which is people who clicked on your entry.
Here is a screenshot of our free listing:
There are a few outlets for free listings for local business searches, such as Google Maps, and YellowPages.com. It definitely can’t hurt to have your business in as many of these free local listings as possible. Whether a red listing is worth $20 a month, I’ll leave that for you to decide!
Posted on November 9th, 2007 by Vanessa
Filed under: Marketing and Promotion, Search
Your following remarks show that the SuperPages just do not get it:
“To add red, italics, or bold to your ad is $20 a month. Highlights are $25 a month. For “preferred placement” … they charge $101 a month… What happens if everyone in your category is paying for preferred placement? Someone still has to be last.”
They are planning to compete in the local web ad world using these tactics?
Wow!