Under its new leadership, Yahoo Local has been adding paid programs and features. It has also partnered up to take paid submissions via Yext. If you’re going to make me pay, you have to give me something of value and I’ve not seen any significant impact from being listed on Yahoo Local in several years
In the meantime, support has become extremely painful for those unwilling to pay for enhanced listings at Yahoo Local. In the past, email and phone support was available to those with free listings, even if you had to wait a while for help, but that is no longer being offered.
Now, if you have a free basic listing, you must fill out a separate form for each listing that you’d like to have either removed or modified:
Yahoo Listing Removal Form
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/local/personal_info.html
Local Listings Help Form
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ll/local_general.html
In my opinion, this is a big step backwards for Yahoo, especially at a time when Google has so greatly improved its support for people using its free Google Places business listings, which can have a huge impact on website and foot traffic for local businesses.
One person’s perspective: Google Places support has improved immensely since Marissa Mayer left and Yahoo Local has slipped since she has taken over the helm there.
