Can cancelling Yell.com contract negatively affect Adwords campaign?

[Stefani]

Hello everyone,
My partner has a small business and had a contract with yell.com. It was vert costly, though, and wasn't bringing him any new clients, so as soon as he realised yell.com is not working he started using Adwords Express, which did wonders - for months clients wouldn't stop calling!
At one point, after long discussions with Yell staff and finding out he cannot cancel his contract prematurely, he decided Yell was too much of a waste of money and cancelled his company's direct debit with them. A couple of months after, he was contacted by a debt collector firm on behalf of Yell, and agreed with them to pay out all that was owed for those few months and have the contract with yell.com cancelled in rerurn.
From this point on, though, everything went downhill - his adwords campaign practically stopped working, amd he wasn't getting almost any calls, even though he invested hundreds of pounds per month. It recentlt occured to us that Yell may have had something to do with that. I am just trying to find out whether anybody else had a similar experience, or whether anyone knows if Yell can somehow coincide with GoogleAdwords to affect your ad negatively, if one cancels their contract prematurely like my partner did?
Please share any insights you may have into the subject - all we want is to simply fins out what could have gone wrong.
Thanks!

 

[Tony Tomlinson]

Hello everyone,
My partner has a small business and had a contract with yell.com. It was vert costly, though, and wasn't bringing him any new clients, so as soon as he realised yell.com is not working he started using Adwords Express, which did wonders - for months clients wouldn't stop calling!
At one point, after long discussions with Yell staff and finding out he cannot cancel his contract prematurely, he decided Yell was too much of a waste of money and cancelled his company's direct debit with them. A couple of months after, he was contacted by a debt collector firm on behalf of Yell, and agreed with them to pay out all that was owed for those few months and have the contract with yell.com cancelled in rerurn.
From this point on, though, everything went downhill - his adwords campaign practically stopped working, amd he wasn't getting almost any calls, even though he invested hundreds of pounds per month. It recentlt occured to us that Yell may have had something to do with that. I am just trying to find out whether anybody else had a similar experience, or whether anyone knows if Yell can somehow coincide with GoogleAdwords to affect your ad negatively, if one cancels their contract prematurely like my partner did?
Please share any insights you may have into the subject - all we want is to simply fins out what could have gone wrong.
Thanks!

Your contract with Yell won't have anything to do with your Adwords account, the only way it would be is if Yell also host your website and/or manage your adwords account for you, in that case they may have suspended due to lack of payment.

 

[Stefani]

Hello Tony,
Thanks for replying.
Yell weren't managing any other accounts for us, and I am aware that the Yell and Adwords accounts are not usually connected, and that it wouldn't make sense for one to affect the other.
Just trying to find out whether on this case something like that could've happened, as everything took place at the same time.

 

[TomJ83]

@Stefani

The situation you describe doesn't sound pleasant. Could it be that you have got new competitors that also utilize adwords? Or maybe some local businesses have started to utilize adwords.

 

[Tony Tomlinson]

Hello Tony,
Thanks for replying.
Yell weren't managing any other accounts for us, and I am aware that the Yell and Adwords accounts are not usually connected, and that it wouldn't make sense for one to affect the other.
Just trying to find out whether on this case something like that could've happened, as everything took place at the same time.

Sorry I was just checking to see if your site was hosted with Yell as that would affect it and also checking if yell managed the adwords campaign as they do offer that, it sounds like the adwords account just needs a new push, express manages itself practically therefore if local competitors have jumped on board it would cause a negative effect, perhaps look at PPC and also increase the budget slightly on express.

 

[Erno Horvath]

I suggest your friend to stop using Google Adwords Express.. he can't have full control over his ads and harder to find the real problem. I know it won't make the campaigns betters straight away, but standard Adwords & reportings can uncovers things that Google Adwords Express won't.

Possible explanations to what happened:
- new competitor or after summer holidays many businesses restarted their campaign.
- a competitor started clicking on his ads (I've seen couple of times, usually it can filtered out by postcode level negative locations)
- end of season for that service or start of the season for that service.

 

[Website Design Ltd]

I don't know how you had conversion tracking set up, but could it be possible that actually, it was the work yell were doing that was bringing in the leads rather than your own AdWords express account?

From my experience, the AdWords accounts that big companies like Yell & BT run are generally quite poor, but I guess it could be that after you spoke to them about your discontent they put more effort into making the account perform to its best, which happened to coincide with you setting up your own AdWords account.

I could be wrong, but it's a possibility if you weren't tracking conversions properly.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

Maybe people saw the Yell entry as well as the adwords ad and perceived the business as more legit than one that just had a ad...?

Multiple entries in the SERPs can have this effect...

 

[webgeek]

Yell was running Adwords for him - that's the problem. He cut them off - so he cut off his ads.

Spend a few quid and get in someone to look at their analytics and adwords campaign histories to see what REALLY was going on. Then get them to set up the adwords campaigns and optimise them.

 

[Oliver King]

Hi there. Your Partner would be better off using the 'full fat' Adwords definitely. It may be co-incidental that the competitors have been more aggressive or the overall campaign quality has reduced.. Yell would have no direct impact on Adwords. Were the leads definitely coming from Adwords and not Yell?

 

[UKSBD]

his adwords campaign practically stopped working, amd he wasn't getting almost any calls, even though he invested hundreds of pounds per month.

Do you mean he was still spending hundreds of pounds per month but no longer getting any calls or do you mean he invested hundreds of pounds setting it up but then stopped having to pay for any AdWords?

 

[aaron web designer]

Hi, I worked at Yell so know all the ins and outs! Yell adwords are not the best, they are rush and not set up properly with negative keywords, etc. They manage tens of thousands of accounts so they do not have time to fine tune your campaign. Also a couple of hundred pound is not much with Yell because they take 40% as a fee!

 

[aaron web designer]

So long as you set it up properly from the start and monitor which keywords are performing well and remove any keywords that you do not want to appear for as negative keywords then you are good to do it yourself.

 

[Tony Tomlinson]

Hi, I worked at Yell so know all the ins and outs! Yell adwords are not the best, they are rush and not set up properly with negative keywords, etc. They manage tens of thousands of accounts so they do not have time to fine tune your campaign. Also a couple of hundred pound is not much with Yell because they take 40% as a fee!

Yell charge 40% for managing AdWords campaigns?

 

[aaron web designer]

Yep, something which they try not to tell the customers. Don't get me started on their websites!

 

[Tony Tomlinson]

Yep, something which they try not to tell the customers. Don't get me started on their websites!

Wow, especially when around 10% is the industry standard really (assuming thousands arent spent on adwords) thats outrageous

 

[TomJ83]

Yep, something which they try not to tell the customers. Don't get me started on their websites!

Are their websites built on the same template?

 

[JonesOvenCleaner]

I used Yell a few years ago and they are a complete rip off - and it's 40% + VAT which is even worse for me. I switched to a much cheaper company and it's been fine ever since. As far as I'm aware stopping an account with Yell and starting another one should have no effect whatsoever (apart from different methods of the companies running your ads). Agree on other points about Express - it seems a money pit. Thankfully I didn't have a Yell website as I've heard it's difficult to remove yourself from them if you do!

 

[fisicx]

As far as I'm aware stopping an account with Yell and starting another one should have no effect whatsoever (apart from different methods of the companies running your ads).

Except of course all your adverts will disappear.

 

[JonesOvenCleaner]

They are replaced by the new provider......so they won't disappear.

 

[webgeek]

When you cancel Yell PPC, you don't automagically get a new provider. You have to hire one and pay them too.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

When you cancel Yell PPC, you don't automagically get a new provider. You have to hire one and pay them too.

Where does OP say that their adwords were managed by Yell...?

She said:

Yell weren't managing any other accounts for us

 

[webgeek]

They had Yell, which we know from experience does PPC whenever possible to drive traffic.

They cancelled Yell and their PPC sales dropped drastically.

It doesn't take much science to figure out this one. That's how I know. Experience + logic = best guess.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

so as soon as he realised yell.com is not working he started using Adwords Express, which did wonders - for months clients wouldn't stop calling!

No mention of Yell managing their adwords...

 

[webgeek]

They either didn't mention it or didn't know it, but it explains what happened.

Why else do you figure their Adwords conversions stopped when their Yell payments stopped?

Just one plausible explanation that doesn't involve the word coincidence.

 

[JonesOvenCleaner]

Obviously I am aware that you don't get a provider automatically. I was referring (very obviously) to getting a new provider off your own back to run your Adwords after you have finished with Yell. One account closes and another opens providing the same service at a much lower cost. In my case the cost was drastically reduced and I received far more phone calls when I switched from Yell to a small company.

 

[webgeek]

Of course, because Yell is terrible at PPC management and 'custom' websites as well. Most people would get better results by randomly picking an SEO/PPC person with their eyes closed.

 

[aaron web designer]

Definately true above about Yell. Only thing worth considering is the yell.com directoy - however you would need a sponsored position for any enquiries and again depending on your sector.