Short/Long story…

I have seen more people in my industry asking about Lead Gorilla. Lead Gorilla is a software that will crawl behind the scenes and pull out business information from Facebook and Google. At first glance, it seems like a smart business tool.

I personally don’t like their business model or values Or to be fair, I do not like what the consumers have done with this tool. I am not sure if the software provider has suggested the data be dealt with in this manner or not but this is what is happening.

And here’s why. I got a call today that said ” Wait! don’t hang up, you have not claimed your Google business listing and we have been trying to get in touch with you. “

So the way I am I of course press 1 to speak to someone and hear how they are approaching business owners with no knowledge.

I get on the phone with a telemarketer who immediately is implying that he works with Google and I need to rush to claim my listing (this is what I do, so I know my listing is claimed)

He wanted to charge me a HUGE discount rate of $399 to complete my listing and transfer it back to me. He walked me through the steps of Google sending me my verification postcard (claiming that it will come from their corporate office)which I rebutted “that comes from Google”. He responded, “Yes because we work for the front end for Google.”

I called him out on being a Google Partner or employee and he became very uncomfortable and quickly started to back peddle and drop the price.

Now I charge to optimize, claim, and manage Google My Business accounts but what this company and this service are promoting is to hold business listings, hostage, in a sense. You can request to get them back for free, but if you are not familiar with the process, you may become very frustrated or overwhelmed.

I would be happy to help any of you do this or learn the basics for your clients. Do not pay someone to give you your FREE listing.