A local moving company was paying for Yelp ads, but the leads never reached GoHighLevel, so no one could reply fast or track what the ads cost. We onboard the Yelp business under our agency key so every lead becomes a GoHighLevel contact, answered by an AI agent that books on the calendar.
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A local moving company was paying for Yelp ads but never seeing the leads, here is how the connection works and why it requires an agency key.
Watch it on its own page, with the transcript.
A local moving company was new to advertising on Yelp. In their words, "For my industry, Yelp is extremely popular," and the team wanted a real share of that demand. They had already installed the Yelp Leads app inside their GoHighLevel account and expected requests to show up as contacts. Nothing arrived.
Their requirement was plain: "We need all our new leads in GHL context right after connecting." They also wanted visibility into the money, saying "We need to track each of everything," which meant total spend, cost per lead and cost per view. On top of that, their response time on Yelp was a long way from Yelp's best tier, which sits under ten minutes.
The sync failed for a structural reason, not a settings mistake. Yelp does not hand out lead API access to an individual advertiser's account. It issues access through an agency key, so a GoHighLevel sub-account connected directly to the business has nothing to pull from. Installing the app from the marketplace was never going to be enough.
That one fact creates a chain of other constraints:
A moving crew is also out on jobs most of the day. Nobody is sitting at a desk watching a Yelp inbox.
The build has three parts: the connection, the reply layer, and the ad management around it.
The Yelp business is onboarded under our agency account. As a Yelp Advertising partner, we can request the lead API access that a direct advertiser cannot get. Existing campaigns are paused, then recreated under the agency. Once the link is live, each Yelp lead creates or updates a GoHighLevel contact with the full message history attached. Conversations gets a Yelp channel, so replies go out through Yelp from the same inbox the team already uses for text and email. The wiring is the same pattern as our Yelp to GoHighLevel integration package.
A workflow triggers on every new Yelp lead. There are two ways to run it, and the business picks the one that suits them:
A GoHighLevel calendar has to exist for booking to work, so that is set up first. The AI stops the moment a team member replies manually, so it never talks over a person who has taken the conversation. Because Yelp tracks how quickly and how well a business replies, a reply inside a minute feeds the same response metrics Yelp uses to rate advertisers.
The ads themselves are handled as part of our Yelp advertising service. That covers boosted and blocked keywords, profile and portfolio photos, Yelp Connect posts once or twice a week, promotions, and a monthly competitive review with a senior Yelp account manager. Budget tiers are set using competitor spend data for the service area. Below a certain spend level Yelp charges extra for some upgrades, so we recommend a tier above that line instead of the lowest we can technically run. We take one moving company per service region, so the business is not competing with another client of ours.
The business cannot edit the budget, but keeps dashboard access to spend, cost per lead and cost per view, which answers the tracking requirement directly.
Moving is a high-intent, quote-driven service. The person messaging on Yelp is usually comparing a few companies at once, which makes the first reply the main lever the business controls. A crew on the road cannot hold that lever, but a workflow can. The same logic is behind our Speed to Lead Sprint, and you can test the idea on your own numbers with the Yelp lead simulator.
Putting Yelp into GoHighLevel instead of leaving it in Yelp's own inbox also means every lead has a contact record, a history and a source. Spend can then be compared against booked estimates in one place. We have run the same Yelp setup for a roofing contractor, and the mechanics carry over to any trade where leads arrive as messages and quote requests. For more on how we set up moving businesses generally, see our moving company page.
The next phase adds a pipeline that moves each job from new lead to estimate booked, estimate done and move scheduled, plus reminders that cut down missed estimate visits, as in our Reminder and No-Show Rescue work. After a completed move, a review request can go out automatically and feed the company's Yelp and Google profiles. If you run a service business on Yelp and your leads are not reaching GoHighLevel, book a 30-minute call and we will map your setup.
Yaakov (Koby) Oranski, Founder and CEO of Yotomations
Certified GoHighLevel Admin and Partner. Koby designs CRM migrations, two-way integrations, billing systems and AI agents for service businesses, and writes from the engagements described on this site.
Yelp only gives lead API access through an agency key. A direct connection from your own account has nothing to pull from, which is why the app installs but no leads sync. Onboarding your Yelp business under our agency solves it.
They must be stopped before onboarding and then reactivated under the agency account. Yelp then bills the agency through centralized billing, and we pass the ad budget through with a verification charge and a management fee.
Yes. You cannot change the Yelp budget directly, but you keep dashboard access to spend, cost per lead and cost per view.
No. The AI agent stops as soon as a team member replies manually. It also only books into the GoHighLevel calendar, so a calendar needs to be set up first.
No. Yelp filtering is limited and category-based, so lead type cannot be guaranteed, and we do not promise a specific lead volume.
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Book a 30-minute call. We will tell you what we would do first and what it would cost.
No pitch deck. We look at your current setup and tell you what we would do and what it would cost.Need more than GoHighLevel? Yotomations, our parent company, also builds AI agents, custom software and websites.
