Local.Com’s “Fine Print” Gotcha

Local.com’s Local Connect program offers the ability to inject local search, and new content, into your website.  Through the flyer that they passed out at a local conference, and their website, they promote this as a free service.

Misleading Local.com Claim

Local Connect

Funny thing is, according to their sales staff it isn’t free at all, at least not for everyone.  “Qualified local media companies benefit from no set-up fees and no monthly fees”.  So you have to be qualified.  Not hard, you think?  Think again.  Here are the qualifications:

  • Google PageRank of 5 or above
  • Local site
  • Alexa ranking within top 400 sites

How many local sites are there, with a Google Pagerank of 5 or above and an Alexa ranking in the top 400 ?  My guess … maybe 40 ? Not to mention the inherent inaccuracies with Google PageRank and Alexa ratings (let’s just say that they provide a rough guidelines, but they certainly shouldn’t be used a “gospel”)

If you don’t qualify, it is around $250 a month to host their service, for which they’ll pay you $8 CPM.  Your $250 monthly fee  is applied against the $8 CPM earnings.   This is far from “Zero Cost – Don’t Pay Us, We’ll Pay You” .