The free Yelp listing is genuinely worth claiming. The paid ads commonly run a few hundred to over a thousand a month — and deserve harder questions than Yelp's sales calls invite. Both halves, honestly.
A claimed, completed Yelp profile costs nothing and matters beyond Yelp itself: search engines and AI assistants read Yelp data when deciding whom to recommend. Photos, hours, services, and honest review responses — that part is pure upside, no purchase required.
Yelp ads commonly run from a few hundred dollars a month upward, often sold in packages by an aggressive sales team. You pay for placement above competitors and on their pages. Whether that converts depends heavily on your category and city: strong for some services people already search Yelp for (restaurants, home services in Yelp-heavy metros), weak where your customers simply don't use Yelp.
Ask what a click costs and what you can cap it at. Ask for category-and-city performance data, not national averages. Ask about the cancellation terms — contract lock-ins are a common complaint. And run the evidence test that beats every pitch: ask your last ten customers whether they've ever hired anyone through Yelp. If none have, the answer was in front of you.
Category-dependent. Where customers genuinely search Yelp — restaurants, some home services, some metros — it can pay. Where they don't, no ad spend fixes that. Ask your actual customers how they found you; advertise where the answers already point.
Because outbound sales is core to Yelp's ads business. The calls often lead with your competitors advertising, or free-credit offers that convert to paid. You're allowed to keep the free listing and decline the ads indefinitely — the listing doesn't suffer for it.
Yes — Yelp is one of the data sources search engines and AI assistants read when assessing a business. That's why the free profile is worth maintaining even if you never buy ads: reviews and consistent info there feed the systems doing the recommending.
Read the terms before signing — some Yelp ad programs bill monthly with cancellation friction, and contract disputes are among the most common advertiser complaints. Get the cancellation process in writing on day one.