How to Transfer Your Website From Yellow Pages

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Let’s face it, changing providers isn’t always easy to do even when the company you’re transferring to and from are both helpful and friendly; that’s the whole reason we have a SiteMigrator service to do it for you. That change can be made much harder when the company you want to leave keeps trying to stop you, and there’s no worse offender for this we’ve seen than YellowPages.

Time needed: 7 days.

When it comes right down to it, the steps you need to follow are the same as any transfer from any website provider. They’re just made more difficult.

  1. Regain control of your domain

    One of the trickiest steps is convincing Yellow Pages to give you back your domain. Sadly they control everything until you do this.

  2. New web hosting: a place for your website / email to live

    You’ll next need to select where to put your site (and optionally email accounts).

  3. New website, or transfer website HTML

    If YP even gives you a copy of your website HTML (sometimes they don’t), you can copy that to your new hosting, but you’ll have to know how to edit HTML to make changes. It’s best to build anew with WordPress!

  4. Transfer your domain registration

    While you could leave your domain registered with eNom, most find it simpler to keep all website related services in one spot.

This is a typical lay of the land for a transfer from Yellow Pages… let’s explore in more detail:

Domain Registration – who’s in control of your domain?

If you’ve checked your domain registration since moving to Yellow Pages, you might have noticed your email has changed to multimedia@yp.ca. That, unfortunately, puts them in control of your domain. Even worse, they’re not going to change it for you. They’ll give you a dozen excuses for why, but I’ve seen more people who can’t get their contact information changed / transfer authorization (EPP) code than people who can. 

The first step is to regain control of your domain. Of course, you should try to do this via Yellow Pages first. Call them and ask them to change the Registrant and Admin emails to your email address. If When they say no, don’t panic! We’ve gone through this before, and this is what we’ve needed to do:

  • Make sure your information on the domain matches your own.
    • Even if the email doesn’t, make sure that your name and address / phone are correct. Ideally they all match, but you can settle for name and one other corroborating piece.
    • If they don’t match, talk to Yellow Pages to get that updated. Since this doesn’t relinquish control, they likely would do this for you.
  • Take a picture of the front and the back of your driver’s license.
  • If this is a business domain, scan / take pictures of your Articles of Incorporation or other business registration documents as applicable.
  • Call Enom at (425) 274-4500. Explain to them that you’re a customer of their reseller, Yellow Pages, and that YP has refused to change your email address on file or provide an EPP (transfer) code.

Enom will generally ask for the documents I’ve referenced to validate that you are in fact the owner of the domain. This has typically taken 1-4 days for them to do; remember that the steps they’re taking to do this are for your protection as a domain owner (it is frustrating, I know, but bear with them!).

Web Hosting – Your site needs a new home

Whether you managed to talk Yellow Pages into giving you a copy of your website or you’re going to be starting out from scratch, you’re going to need a new home on the web. Of course, I would recommend our own Canadian web hosting platform, but whatever you choose you’ll want to have it set up and ready.

A new website for a new host?

Ask YellowPages to provide you with the content that makes up your website. They may actually give you a zip file with all the HTML files.

Please Note: if you do get the HTML files from YellowPages to transfer, the only way to make changes to the website will be to know how to edit raw HTML. If you don’t know how to edit raw HTML, then you should follow the steps linked below to create a new WordPress site instead, where you’ll be able to create and edit the site visually.

Once you have your new hosting ready to go (previous step), you can either upload the site HTML files, or create a new WordPress site. Even a placeholder with your contact information would be a good way to start!

If you’re looking for a fresh start, or even just a revamp of your existing site, and you don’t wish to create it yourself, we offer a range of web design services to meet every budget.

Make sure your email is set up

Does Yellow Pages provide your email service? Well, unfortunately, it’s connected to your domain registration. The moment you move your domain, your email *will* go down. So, how do we fix this?

Step 1: Create email accounts on your new hosting account

Step 2: Set your new email accounts up on your devices (phone / computer)

Step 3: Migrate over your existing email (see the Email section here)

Transfer your domain

Now that we’ve got everything set up, hopefully Enom has gotten back to you. Your email address should now be updated for the domain, and they will have hopefully provided you your EPP / Transfer authorization code.

Step 1: Change Name Servers. Your new web host should have provided name servers for your hosting account. Either call eNom again using the telephone number above and ask if they can change the name servers for you, or login to the eNom panel and change them yourself.

Step 2: Initiate Registrar Transfer. If you don’t wish to use eNom as your registrar, once the name servers are updated (or if eNom won’t do it), begin the transfer to the company you want to register the domain through. Here’s how to transfer a domain to Websavers.

Step 3: Confirm Transfer. Confirm the domain transfer. You should receive an email at the address you gave Enom for the domain. This email will ask you to confirm that you’d like to transfer it. You often have to click a link or the transfer will fail. Keep an eye out for that email!

Step 4: Wait For Completion. Sit back and wait; it can take anywhere from an hour to six days for the transfer to complete. Don’t worry, you’ll get an email when it’s done.

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Allen Pooley

Allen is a self professed geek and technology lover. He's always playing with one of his various websites, and loves helping customers with theirs. He can often be found with a coffee (light roast, please) in his hand and a smile on his face... or trapped under a pile of yarn.
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If this article helped you, our web services surely will as well! We might just be the perfect fit for you.

12 Comments

  1. Michael on October 17, 2023 at 6:04 pm

    what if you owe past due money to yellow pages?
    what chance do you have of getting transfer ?

    • Jordan Schelew on December 6, 2023 at 6:32 pm

      That’s a good question. In theory they shouldn’t be able to use that to hold you there, but knowing these types of businesses they sure might try! I’m afraid only Yellow Pages can directly answer that one though 🙁

      If your domain is a .ca and you can live without the website itself, then you might try doing an end-run around them and see if you can get CIRA to move the domain to your own account at another registrar

    • Allen Pooley on December 6, 2023 at 6:42 pm

      Hey Michael;

      I’ve heard accounts of people who have reached out to eNom customer support – they’re who Yellow Pages resells through – and let them know that Yellow Pages is holding the domain and refuse to release it to them. Enom overruled Yellow Pages and released it to them. More here: https://help.enom.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000465212-Unresponsive-reseller-process

  2. Yellow Pages Pakistan on January 8, 2020 at 9:10 am

    Thanks for the article, Is this apply to all of the yellow pages site or specific?

    • Jordan Schelew on January 8, 2020 at 1:05 pm

      Hey there, good point! This has only been tested with YellowPages.ca, here in Canada, though the process should be similar regardless of locale.

  3. Yanly Stanly on January 7, 2019 at 2:50 pm

    having same issue right now but i think we might be too late on getting our page rank and google traffic back. as yellowpages has our site listed as a 404 page now. ive been on hold for 2 hours with yellowpages they are an extremely bad company. ive ben hostage with them for 4 years and finally cancelled. i just want my domain name back.

    • Jordan Schelew on January 10, 2019 at 1:23 pm

      Hey Yanly,

      That’ll depend on how long it’s been a 404 — sometimes you can still regain rankings if it’s only been a short time. If it’s been multiple months of that, then I’m afraid you’re probably right.

      If there’s anything we can do to help, just let us know! We can always get you set up on a different domain then if you do manage to recover the original from YP, it can be aliased to the new one.

  4. Carloa A. on May 21, 2018 at 5:38 am

    Glad I saw this. I have a feeling I will be going through this very soon with an SEO client we just signed up.

  5. Emily on May 15, 2018 at 6:55 pm

    Just curious, how many times have you needed to deal with YP in this type of situation on behalf of your clients? Do they always not co-operate?

    • Allen Pooley on May 16, 2018 at 10:25 am

      Hi Emily,

      There’s been about a half-dozen in the last few years. For every one who we do intervene for, there’s a handful more who have reached out to us and just not gone through with the process of actually leaving YP.

      I can think of two clients who managed to leave YP on good terms. One of them was even given their HTML website to take with them.

  6. Trevor on January 22, 2018 at 2:53 pm

    Thanks for this step by step breakdown Allen, I am working to navigate a site away from YP with minimal disruption to page rank, email etc. I am in Canada but believe the process is the same with a few different players. In the meantime do you see it as possible to set up a subdomain where we can post our own content that will build authority in advance of transferring?

    • Allen Pooley on January 22, 2018 at 3:02 pm

      Hey Trevor,

      We’re in Canada, too! I could see that being an option, but honestly I would think that your time would be better spent building out the new site, preparing all the 301 redirects you’ll need for when you do get the domain, and preparing a pile of fresh content to drip-feed onto the site starting the moment it’s successfully moved over.

      Considering that you’re likely only looking at a few weeks, you can probably do a lot more in preparation than you could do in building authority prior to getting the new site online.

      I’m curious, was YP willing to set up a subdomain for you? In the situations I’ve encountered, that would have been miles ahead of what they were doing for us!

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