Yellowbot Offers Reputation Tool Too

Unknown to me until recently, Yellowbot has been offering a reputation management tool to the SMB market. Last week I got a demo and was impressed by its capabilities and flexibility.

Here are some screens that reflect features:

The interface isn’t quite as slick as Yext’s tool introduced yesterday. However this is a powerful system that offers merchants the ability to update and correct listings, monitor competitors, see mentions from a pretty comprehensive list of sources and track “buzz” by date ranges. The latter ability provides another sort of analytics tool for SMBs in addition to reputation and presence management.

One could use it for example to track the efficacy of traditional media: did a coupon or direct mail drop result in a spike in online activity? One could also use this in a similar fashion to test the relative performance of different local sites. However those scenarios are probably beyond the scope of what most SMBs are going to do with this platform.

Indeed, the issue as I see it is that Yellowbot’s platform may be too powerful for many time-starved SMBs who won’t exploit its full capabilities. But that doesn’t take anything away from the platform and the true users of this will likely be the sales channels and publishers with SMB advertiser relationships.

Right now, as I understand it, Yellowbot has several partners that are selling the platform. With Yext’s free tool — and MerchantCircle certain to upgrade its free tool — can stand-alone pricing survive?