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The YP.com trap - BEWARE!

by piney94
12 replies
Hi Warriors -

I wanted to caution you if you happen to find local businesses who have their websites under the control of YP.com (formerly AT&T) to beware of a bear trap.

First of all - if you try to sell a mobile website to a local business who has YP.com, you can't. YP.com is not like other hosts who say "sure, we will place your line of redirect code within our client's website header." It's impossible. YP.com says - if you want a mobile website - we will do it for you.

Secondly - if you happen to talk your new client to break free from YP.com? - then good for you - BUT - it takes hundreds of phone calls, lots of hoops to jump through, calls to your new client from YP.com trying to convince them otherwise, and many weeks of doing so.

Third (and most damaging) - once you get the agreement from YP.com to transfer the domain (after a signed statement by your new client faxed to them) - then the domain will go to register.com. From there, you can switch it to your host preference (i.e. Hostgator or whatever). But, the "best" part? The new client's website DISAPPEARS! I mean all traces of it. It can't even be found on the wayback machine Internet archive! And after a call to YP.com - they say that the former website is their copyright and no one has access to it anymore. Isn't THAT special?

One saving grace - the emails connected to the original website can be secured to be transferrable. But the entire website has to be done from scratch.

Yes - this was my experience w/ YP.com and I wanted to forewarn any marketers out there that this is what could happen. I told my new client that this experience will turn out to be a blessing in disguise all around. Not only am I saving them approx $1,200 a yr, but they will be getting a really sharp NEW interactive website. With the help of an outsourcer, it should be down only for about a week and the email forwarding works.

Hope this helps others.
#beware #internet marketing #trap #website #yp.com #ypcom
  • Profile picture of the author ronr
    I'm sure that yp does everything possible to keep them. It probably seemed like hundreds of calls but approx. how many did it actually take?

    One other thing I've notice you can't always tell if they are hosted by them. An ugly site that looks like a kid made it is one giveaway but you often can't find anything on the site or in the code that says are hosted by them.

    Ron

    Originally Posted by piney94 View Post

    Hi Warriors -

    I wanted to caution you if you happen to find local businesses who have their websites under the control of YP.com (formerly AT&T) to beware of a bear trap.

    First of all - if you try to sell a mobile website to a local business who has YP.com, you can't. YP.com is not like other hosts who say "sure, we will place your line of redirect code within our client's website header." It's impossible. YP.com says - if you want a mobile website - we will do it for you.

    Secondly - if you happen to talk your new client to break free from YP.com? - then good for you - BUT - it takes hundreds of phone calls, lots of hoops to jump through, calls to your new client from YP.com trying to convince them otherwise, and many weeks of doing so.

    Third (and most damaging) - once you get the agreement from YP.com to transfer the domain (after a signed statement by your new client faxed to them) - then the domain will go to register.com. From there, you can switch it to your host preference (i.e. Hostgator or whatever). But, the "best" part? The new client's website DISAPPEARS! I mean all traces of it. It can't even be found on the wayback machine Internet archive! And after a call to YP.com - they say that the former website is their copyright and no one has access to it anymore. Isn't THAT special?

    One saving grace - the emails connected to the original website can be secured to be transferrable. But the entire website has to be done from scratch.

    Yes - this was my experience w/ YP.com and I wanted to forewarn any marketers out there that this is what could happen. I told my new client that this experience will turn out to be a blessing in disguise all around. Not only am I saving them approx $1,200 a yr, but they will be getting a really sharp NEW interactive website. With the help of an outsourcer, it should be down only for about a week and the email forwarding works.

    Hope this helps others.
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    • Profile picture of the author piney94
      Originally Posted by ronr View Post

      I'm sure that yp does everything possible to keep them. It probably seemed like hundreds of calls but approx. how many did it actually take?

      One other thing I've notice you can't always tell if they are hosted by them. An ugly site that looks like a kid made it is one giveaway but you often can't find anything on the site or in the code that says are hosted by them.

      Ron
      It took about 8-10 total calls from both myself and the client.

      Yes, sometimes it's difficult to tell, but check "view source" or sometimes it's blatantly at the bottom of the page.
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      • Profile picture of the author ronr
        The last two times I ran into this problem there was nothing on the site or in the source code to identify it as a att or yp site.
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      • Profile picture of the author Brian Alaway
        Thanks for the heads up. I wouldn't bother with their current domain, just wait for their current hosting agreement to expire. Instead just get a new keyword domain, include the cost in your offer and focus on that instead. Once it outranks their yp.com domain, which shouldn't be too hard, it won't matter.
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  • Profile picture of the author bawls
    The trick is to show the client the importance of dumping YP and controlling their own properties.
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    • Profile picture of the author ronr
      Agreed that is normally not that hard to do but did have one situation where the clients site was ranking #1 for important keywords with his terrible att site. I couldn't in good conscience recommend changing so we made another website on another domain for for other keywords.

      Originally Posted by bawls View Post

      The trick is to show the client the importance of dumping YP and controlling their on properties.
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      • Profile picture of the author bawls
        Originally Posted by ronr View Post

        Agreed that is normally not that hard to do but did have one situation where the clients site was ranking #1 for important keywords with his terrible att site. I couldn't in good conscience recommend changing so we made another website on another domain for for other keywords.

        Yeah I would guess that would be a bit sticky in a situation like that, but only two solutions I guess, the first is exactly what you laid out, the other would be to develop a new property to take its ranking place.
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  • Profile picture of the author aduttonater
    I ran an ad with YP.Com. They are a great service as far as advertisement, not to sure about utilizing them for websites for hosting.
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  • Profile picture of the author micksss
    Man what a nightmare... When a company is ripping someone off they will try with all their might to hold on. Thanks for the heads up on YP.
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  • Profile picture of the author Creativegirl
    That's not a surprise but good to know, just the same.

    Businesses continue to get trapped in these proprietary site builders and no doubt they bought into the brand and may have gotten the website as a lost leader.

    Thanks for the real experience...good luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author NewParadigm
    I say thank goodness for ripoffs like YP, they get many businesses online that would never consider and get them to pay nice fees, then you can rescue them and deliver real results.
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  • Profile picture of the author SashaLee
    HI there,

    You can prepare by simply scraping the old site. Then you have an offline version of their "old" content. While this content is usually not very user friendly, it saves you from "starting from scratch".

    All the best,

    Sasha.
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