ReachLocal.com is a scam!!! Their sales people are extremely rude, they use techniques that are absolutely ridiculous! Once you sign their contracts you will find out that what you are actually getting from them. Complete scam! Ask them how much their mark ups are and how much you are actually getting for your investment. $1 means $0.50 or less when buying your pay-per-clicks from ReachLocal.com. Do not believe or trust this company!!! They will knock on your door as much as they can, but they also knock on your competitions door and tell them and sell them on everything and anything they know from you. They don't shy back selling to you and all of your competition as well. They are not loyal, they are not trust worthy. They are a scam!

In over 30 years of being in the service industry, I have never been so amazed at the lack of business ethics shown by a major internet advertising company. The company had us sign a contract for 4 cycles of internet adword advertising at $8K per cycle. Each cycle was to take between 28 and 35 days. They also agreed to target our ads in our geographic area. They ended up using all our cash for the first 3 cycles (which should have been over 3 months) in 2 months. Their response when questioned? Oops - sorry. Then we did an analysis of the web events they claim came from their adwords. Over 30% of the events came from outside our trading area - and in fact came from all over North America. They tried to tell me that this was random searches by individuals. Finally, we asked them not to use our company name as a keyword search, but they did. Even after we repeated our request that they stop, they told us they had stopped, but a check found that they didn't. Guess what the best performing keyword was? Our company name - they were preaching to the converted, and using my money to do it. We had additionally signed up for a Facebook advertising program ($2K per cycle). There was still 2 cycles left when we discovered how they were screwing us in the adword campaign. We told them to stop all our campaigns, as they not only misled us, but mismanaged the job as well. They insisted that we complete the Facebook campaign as well - even though they knew they had lost a customer, and definately had no credability left in dealing with us. Unbelievable. I understand now that their sales reps have very high targets, and their objective is short term scamming as opposed to long term customer satisfaction. You would be better off finding a SEO person on Craigslist to help you with an internet marketing campaign rather than Reach Local.

This isnt a complaint...this it to say that we have used reachlocal for nearly a year and we have gotten results. I think that result are a direct result of the rep that you are working with and I can say that my rep is very knowledgable, goes above and beyond, offers value added service and has been great. I would recommend reachlocal through this rep anyday.

Why do you think it is a shame when everyone believes what they read?
I could prove that their Internet Consulting Service has a “rotten smell” on my five fingers.
I’m a businessman from Toronto. I do conduct my Google Adwards program for many years. It is so simple you could train monkey to do that. Recently I became being bomb ordered by their so called “Internet Consultants” through unauthorized calling, who were trying to promote their “gimmicks” without basic understanding what they were talking about. O.K. I told to myself maybe it’s is just a sales personal. But when I checked their own advertising program on Google Adwards I became furious how negligently they burning others businesses money (they proudly declare it as 300, 000 + campaigns), if they don’t know how to manage its own expenses. I have included two screen capturers about their own advertising programs from Google Adwords.
Anyone with a basic SEM knowledge knows that to keep Cost Per Click as much lower as possible you have to have relevant content on your directed to web page and relevant advertising copy wording. And my question: Is it not a scam to charge others for the stuff they themselves have no any glue about.
What you could see from the picture of Markup Validation Service, their directed to Web Page www.reachlocal.ca has 44 code errors and (most important) 24 code warnings. It means that Google charges them extra for their clumsy page maintenance for their own PPC program. You could go to Google Adwords Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines to find out why Google increases cost per clicks. But the previous opponent (a big possibility to be a representative from ReachLocal) who declares that:

“1st off- Reachlocal does nothing with SEO. Its SEM.
SEO and SEM are completely 2 different worlds. In no way does SEM(ppc) affect your SEO (organic/natural listings) on the page. You can contact Google directly and they will say the same thing. “

is purposely lying or once again doesn’t know what is talking about.
From next screen capture analysis even worse. Any marketing student will tell you that to find the best ad copy you need to spend 90% of your time on testing, testing and testing.
Unfortunately the screen capture shows only 8 their ads, in reality there 1, 377 same Ad Copies for different keywords that means in most cases they paid extra for non-relevancy with time frame almost 280 days per year. They vigorously were thrashing their money (how stupid it is) without any test or experiment to get a cheaper price for its own pay-per-click program. Do I have to trust them that other 300, 000 compains for other businesses are run differently and more professionally?
And the last point. Please don’t call yourself Internet Marketing Consultants if you proudly admit that you don’t do anything with SEO (organic/natural listing). I have checked 20 most searched keywords in their field and their presence was only for one keyword and it was place number 40 on Google, no presence on Yahoo or Bing at all. The most businesses, they run advertising program, have its own web sites and do I need so called “Internet Marketing Consultant” from ReachLocal who does not know how to increase my web standing organically to get traffic for free. It is like going to heart surgery specialist who admits that he does not know anything about anatomy or physiology.
By the way, why should they strive to bring more leads to your business doorstep, if their business formula is very simple: Cost pay-per-click + their markup is paid by YOU, no questions to ask.

Tried for quite some time to cancel ReachLocal's service. Got the runaround, then finally learned my (then ex-) employee was being commissioned by them as their "sales agent, " when someone at ReachLocal finally said to cancel service, you need to contact _____ (my ex-employee!). Has anyone else experienced difficulty terminating their relationship with ReachLocal?
Gary Kawesch
[email protected]