Yell Business Listing: Free UK Listing vs Paid Yell Ads

A Yell business listing is a free profile on Yell.com that holds your business name, address and telephone number, available to UK businesses in any region except the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, according to Yell’s own help center. Our take: add or claim the free listing yourself and make the name, address and phone match your website exactly. Treat everything Yell sells after that (Amplify, Accelerate, local search packages) as advertising to price against alternatives, not as the thing that makes you listed, and read the contract term before you sign anything. This guide covers the free route, verification, what Yell sells on top as its own pages state it, how to edit and remove, and then a short section each on Thomson Local, 192.com and FreeIndex.

How we researched this

Everything about Yell below comes from Yell’s own pages, read in November 2026: its help center, its business site and its advertising terms. Yell.com itself refused our research tools (HTTP 403), so we could not click through the live listing form; we rely on the help articles that describe it, and we mark where they are silent. Thomson Local’s own pages and 192.com’s help page returned HTTP 403 to our fetch tools on the final re-check, so for those two we rely on excerpts of the pages shown in search results, say so in their sections, and print no Thomson Local price.

Yell free listing vs paid Yell ads

	Free Business Profile	Paid Yell solutions
Cost	Free	Monthly fees; see the figures below
What it is	An unpaid single line entry: business name, address, telephone number (and website URL in the definition)	Amplify, Accelerate and other advertising and marketing packages
Reviews	Includes the Yell Reviews platform at no charge	Reviews management is listed among the extras on Yell’s business site
Commitment	No minimum term in the clauses we read	12-month initial period for paid Solutions, per the terms
Can Yell end it?	Yes, per the terms, at any time	Contractual

On Yell’s business site, at the time of writing (November 2026), Amplify was shown “From £299 per month”, Accelerate “From £699 per month”, and a “stand out in local search” package “From £300 per month”. The same page’s FAQ says solutions start from £249 a month, so the page disagrees with itself; the quote you are given in writing is the only number to trust. Yell also lists optional extras such as managed SEO and social, websites, paid ads and reviews management.

Yell’s advertising terms add the commitment detail. They describe paid Solutions (Activate, Amplify, Accelerate) with a 12-month Initial Period followed by a monthly rolling term, and say that ending the Initial Period early means paying 80% of the outstanding charges. A request to remove a paid advert from Yell.com still leaves the charges for the term owing. None of that applies to the free profile: the clauses we read set no minimum term for it.

How to add or claim a free Yell listing

Yell’s help center describes one starting point for both cases: Yell’s free business listing form, where you search your company name and postcode.

1. Search first. Enter your company name and postcode on the free listing form (yell.com/free-listing, the link behind “Get your free profile” on Yell’s business site). A listing for your business may already exist.
2. If it matches, claim it. Yell says the form matches you to the existing page; you create an account and can then update your details. Yell’s support pages also describe claiming from the Yell for Business app.
3. If it does not appear, add it. Yell’s app setup article has you select “Business not listed”, pick your address from the suggestions or enter it manually, complete your business and contact details, type to find a suitable business classification, confirm how long you have traded and your legal status, accept the terms, and select “Claim this listing”.
4. Choose a real category. The article says you search for a classification by typing; it does not list them, so pick the closest match to your primary service.
5. Prefer a phone call? Yell’s business site gives 0800 777 445 for the free profile.

Yell’s free listing page for business owners says the profile lets you add testimonials and photos of your work, and that Yell shares your details across Apple, Amazon Alexa and Microsoft, though it cannot guarantee appearance on all of them.

Verification. None of the Yell pages we read describes how ownership is confirmed (code, call, email or document), and one article about setting up a new listing mixes the “new listing” and “claim” steps. We therefore cannot give you a fixed recipe. Use a business email address and phone line you control, expect that a confirmation step is possible, and keep the details truthful: Yell’s terms let it remove or suspend an advert that is not a genuine trading address or that includes inaccurate business and contact particulars.

Edit your Yell listing

Per Yell’s help article for business owners, log in to your Yell Business Account, select the “Manage your profile page” button, choose “Select this listing” beside the right listing, and the “Edit my business” tool opens. In the app, the equivalent is “Manage profile”. Once claimed, you can update the content, photos and contact information on your profile page.

Two practical notes. If you manage several locations, Yell prompts you to pick the listing to edit, so check the postcode before saving. And after any change, re-search the listing as a visitor to confirm the public page shows what you typed.

How to remove a Yell listing or cancel Yell advertising

These are two different jobs with different routes, taken from Yell’s help center and terms.

Goal	What Yell’s pages say
Remove a free listing only	Use the message form on Yell’s contact page. The advertising terms say you may request removal of your Free Business Profile at any time by giving 14 days’ notice.
End paid advertising	Call Customer Care on 0800 555 444 (Monday to Thursday 9am to 5pm, Friday 9am to 4:30pm) and explain why you want to leave.
Early exit from a paid Solution	The terms describe an 80% charge on the outstanding balance of an Initial Period.
Yell ending your free listing	The terms say Yell may terminate a Free Business Profile at any time, and also describe 14 days’ written notice, so the two clauses do not fully agree.

Removing your Yell listing does not remove you from other directories that hold your details. Our guide to finding and fixing duplicate listings covers the chase.

Yell reviews

The free listing includes the Yell Reviews platform. Yell’s help center says businesses cannot remove reviews themselves: you can report one that breaches the Reviews Policy for Yell’s team to assess, but a review is not removed simply because you disagree with the rating. Yell’s help center also says businesses can invite customers to review them by SMS or email. In its Reviews guide, a business can report a review through the “Report Review” link beside it, reports do not guarantee removal, and the only other option it describes is suppressing the reviews facility, which hides all reviews, good and bad.

Does a Yell listing help local SEO?

We found no independent source that publishes Yell as a confirmed Google ranking factor, so the answer is hedged. Yell is in our UK catalog and labelled free, which is the right way to treat it: a UK citation that records your name, address and phone consistently, not a lever. The sites that earn their keep are the ones where your details match everywhere, so run the free NAP checker after you finish. For a ranked UK list by country and industry, see our United Kingdom citation sites page, the local citation finder and, for trades, the tradespersons list.

Thomson Local

Thomson Local’s own pages refused our research tools (HTTP 403) when we checked in November 2026, so we cannot quote them directly. Search-result excerpts of its home page say “Claim your free business advertising on thomsonlocal to display your business phone number to customers searching in your area. Upgrade to an Enhanced Listing to unlock more.” Excerpts of its free-listing confirmation page say business listings have a greater chance of appearing above free listings, and describe the free offer as a three-month time-limited listing. We could not open any of these to confirm the wording or read a price, so treat each point as unconfirmed and read the live form before you agree to anything. In our catalog Thomson Local is labelled freemium with a domain rating of 72 (a third-party backlink metric). For background, news reports from 2013 say the company went into administration and its assets were bought by Corporate Media Partners. Verdict: claim the free listing if the form opens for you, expect an upsell, and ignore paid tiers unless you want in-directory placement.

192.com

192.com’s help page refused our fetch tool (HTTP 403), but a search excerpt of it says the business directory holds 2.3 million company listings supplied by data providers (it names them), that 192.com does not edit those records itself, and that to update one you contact the provider directly, with changes arriving in the next monthly update. The same excerpt says 192.com has partnered with Central Index to manage user-generated business listings; we could not open that partnership page, so we cannot describe an add form. In our catalog 192.com is labelled freemium and inactive. Verdict: do not spend time hunting for a form; check that your record is correct and, if it is not, ask the data provider named on the business page to fix it.

FreeIndex

FreeIndex’s home page names FreeIndex Ltd (company number 05716323), says it is UK based and owned and lists a Bristol base. Its advertise page says to click “Register Now” to list for free. The free profile can showcase products and services, media, opening hours, payment options and attached files, and members can respond to customer leads at no cost with no success fees. Its Premium page shows “£9.95 a month, or £99.50 a year” at the time of writing (November 2026), with more keyword tags (3 versus 8, as the comparison table reads), more lead responses per day (1 on Standard versus 5 on Premium), a 20-mile extended radius and no ads on your profile page. It says you can cancel at any time and Premium stays active to the end of the period you have paid for, but there is a no-refund policy and cancelling an annual plan after payment carries a £5 administration fee. Its support center lists articles for changing a business name or address, and says the team aims to answer tickets within 24 hours during the week; the page shows no removal steps, so raise a ticket for that. In our catalog FreeIndex is free with a domain rating of 65. Verdict: yes, ten minutes, and skip Premium until the free profile has produced a lead.

A short UK checklist

• Search before you add, using the company name and postcode.
• Use the exact name, address and phone from your website and Google Business Profile.
• Add the free Yell listing, then FreeIndex, then Thomson Local if its form opens.
• Never agree to paid advertising on a first call: ask for the term, the notice period and the early-exit charge in writing.
• Save every profile URL and re-check in a week. Our free business listing sites roundup and Checkatrade guide cover more UK and trade options.