Using Local SERP Checker for Local Links and Citations Prospecting

 Posted by  11 Responses »
Nov 082012
 

A couple of weeks ago Sergiu Draganus demoed to me a new tool that his team is building  – Local SERP Checker. What the tool does is basically displaying the first page results for particular keywords, simulating what users in specific cities would see if searching for those keywords. The tool provides both the “raw” list of ranking pages and an organized heat map (I am a fan of those) that shows pages from what domains rank across different locations:

Click to enlarge

The tool has the ability to display both organic and paid Geo-localized results for one or more keywords at a time. This provides the interesting opportunity to research and compare the difference between local intent keywords with and without Geo-modifier in the search query:

Click to enlarge

The tool can be used in a number of different ways for local SEO research purposes:

1. Discovering high ranking domains across different locations, which supplemented with further research of these high ranking domains could point to typical features and best practices that could be used in one’s own local SEO strategy.

2. Discovering local link prospects – indirect competitors, in the same niche but targeting different location could turn into valuable link prospects.

3. Local citations sources – I have previously discussed researching local citation sources and their relevance to a niche/location based on how they rank, and the Local SERP Checker tool can make this work much easier.

4. Competition analysis – as the tool provides the option to perform checks for a big number of keywords at the same time, this could help understand who the major local competitors are.

Some additional features include checking localized SERPs across countries, as well as simulating the localized rankings from the “viewpoint” of a mobile user.

Currently it is impossible to choose which cities one would like to choose to see the localized rankings for (the cities are predefined), but this is a feature that will be added during the next update (within 2 weeks, according to Sergiu). Other features that are on the way include keyword monitoring and alerts, keyword suggestion tool, integration with Google Maps, and advanced local link prospecting analysis reports.

The Local SERP Checker currently has a free version, as well as a number of paid plans.

Overcoming Google Local Listing Mergers with Additional Citations

 Posted by  7 Responses »
Oct 312012
 

Merging of two separate listing and the appearing of duplicate listings are two of the longest term problems with Google’s local listings. They are basically the product of the same problem: the local data threshold. This threshold determines what percentage matching information should be present in order for new incoming data to get merged with data already existing in Google’s business information database. If this threshold is passed the data is merged. If it is not – a new cluster of data (listing) is created.

Here is an example that illustrates this better:

Home remodeling company “Bob the Builder” has a listing on Google+ Local (ex- Google Places). They are located in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. Here is how the information in their listing looks like:

Name: Bob the Builder
Address: 11 Main Street #100, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701
Phone: 909-909-9090
Categories: home remodeling, home renovation, home restoration

Unfortunately, they also use another phone number to do business, and this is the mobile of the owner – Bob Sponge. Therefore, there are a couple of listings across the web that feature this phone number. The first one is on Yellowpages.com and looks like this:

Name: Bob the Builder
Address: 11 Main Street #100, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701
Phone: 909-555-5555
Categories: home remodeler

The second one is on Superpages.com and looks like this:

Name: Bob Sponge at Bob the Builder
Address: 11 Main Street #100, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701
Phone: 909-555-5555
Categories: home renovation and restoration, home remodeling

There are additionally 20 other listings across the web that feature the correct information (the same that is found on Google+ Local).

Here is what Google does:

1. It indexes these pages and finds that they are business listings. As these also feature structured data it is easier for Google to determine what is what (i.e. what is the business name, what is the address, etc).

2. Google collects this data and goes to its business information database and searches for matching information.

3. It doesn’t find exact matching information. But what it does is it makes a second attempt attempt to find partially matching information. What would happen if it didn’t take this additional step? Then practically every business in the world would have at least one duplicate on Google.

4. Google finds out that the match between the Yellowpages listing and the Google listing in terms of NAP (name, address, phone) is 66%. Additionally, it finds out that the categories are almost perfectly matching, so it also considers them a match. So the chances that the information is for the same business are very high, and Google determines that “well, we will simply merge this data with the already existing one.” In such cases, if you go to the listing on MapMaker, you would be able to see the two alternative phone numbers listed there.

5. The case with Superpages is a little more complicated, though. The address matches, and the categories too, but the business name is just a partial match, and the phone number is completely different. And here comes the doubt – should this information be merged, or should a completely new listing be created? And the answer depends on the situation and a few different variables Google takes into account:

A) Which is the website that features this information? Is it reputable? Does it have a history of storing wrong information? Does it have a history of storing fake information? What is its relevancy to the industry the business operates in?

B) How many matching records there are on other websites and which are these websites, i.e. are they part of the network of the primary source website, or are they sourcing information independently?

In this case, the answer to the first question is generally positive in favor of Superpages. It is a reputable site and it has editorial history of featuring generally good business data. So if Google was to take just this into account, then a duplicate listing was most probably going to be created. However, they are smarter than this, so they go on and check if this information shows up anywhere else on the web. In the case in question – it doesn’t. So what Google would most probably do is:

- Either ignore the information altogether, because there is insufficient supporting matching information from other sources,
- Or merge this data with the one in the listing, giving prevalence to the more prominent data, i.e. the data that appears more often across the web.

It would be most probable that the second case would happen if the Yellowpages listing’s data has previously been associated with the Google listing, because then Google would know that phone number 909-555-5555 is an alternative phone number of Bob the Builder, thus the match with the Superpages data would be stronger.

This is a simple example of how Google takes decisions in regards with local business listings data. A more complicated one would include a doctor, or dental practice, where each practitioner has a listing, and the practice itself also has a listing. A lot has been written about this problem in the last months, and here are some general best practices:

- Obvious one – claim each listing and make sure all the information is correct and up-to-date;

- Do not include the practice’s name as part of the practitioners’ business names, i.e. do not do this: “Your Eyes Clinic: Dr. John Nakamura”;

- Try to add different, unique categories for each practitioner and the practice, do not repeat them across more than 1 listing;

- Use specific landing pages for each practitioner and the practice.

Unfortunately, these might very well not be enough and Google might decide to still merge the listings. Why? Because it might not have enough supporting information that each of these is a separate entity, and thus doesn’t “deserve” to be merged with another one. The way to overcome this is obvious – provide enough supporting information to Google (create local citations), a.k.a. prove it that these are separate entities.

Why I actually recommend that you create listings for the practice AND each of the practitioners

If you don’t do it, Google will sooner or later do it for you. And you cannot escape from it, because many of the specialized medical/law business directories allow only for profiles of practitioners to be added. If you do it instead of leaving the job to Google, you would have better control over what is happening and you would be aware of when something is happening. The problem some would see here is that the practitioners’ listings could “cannibalize” the rankings of the practice, because Google might incorrectly associate part (or all) of the citations with the listings of the practitioners. This can easily be overcome if citations are created for each of the practitioners, in addition to creating them for the practice. Here is an example:

If the practice “Your Eyes Clinic” has only one listing on Yelp.com, and it is for the practice itself, the chances that Google would associate this listing (a citation) with a Google listing for some of the practitioners is much higher compared to the case where there are listings for both the practice AND for each practitioner on Yelp.com.

Conclusion

Creating additional local citations helps Google determine if a listing is for a separate entity, the same way it helps Google when you start clearing up duplicate or incorrect listings across the web. Doing it would not only save you from unwanted mergers, but also help in the rankings of each of the entities. After all who wouldn’t like to have the search results for “doctors Chicago” show 3 or 4 listings related to their practice – one for the practice itself (hopefully at the top), and a few others for each of the doctors?

Service Area Shows Up on Google Maps

 Posted by  6 Responses »
Oct 292012
 

Service area has long been one of the features that, for unknown reasons, hasn’t been visible on Google Maps, although it was introduced more than 2 years ago. Today I noticed that it already is visible. Google hasn’t made any official statement for when this happened, but I would bet it was around the time (or together with) the “expanded coverage of buildings footprint” update on Google Maps from a few days ago.

Here is how it looks like:

Note the description of the service area (I surrounded it in a red square in the screenshot) – it hasn’t been displayed publicly since the “Additional Details” section disappeared from the Google Places listings the last year. Here is how a listing with service area set to match the city boundaries looks like:

What the implications on local SEO might be?

It could be expected that Google might start using this information as a ranking factor, but until particular boundaries, i.e. if a business’s service area has an average radius of 10 miles, it could be much more likely that Google should give advantage in the areas which are near the central point of service of the company. If Google wants to be more accurate when using such data, they could use a system similar to the one which Bing is using for its categories – giving the opportunity to the business owner to decide which area they service mostly and which area is nearest to their original “station” of business. This is all to be seen.

How to Remove Duplicate Listings from Different Business Directories

 Posted by  25 Responses »
Oct 092012
 

Duplicate listings can very easily turn into the plague of the online marketing of every local business. They not only often feature old or incorrect and misleading information, but could also potentially “transmit” this information to other sites, thus spreading it throughout the whole ecosystem and ultimately reaching Google’s local data cluster, which could be devastating for business’s local search rankings. Unfortunately, getting rid of such duplicates has proven to be more difficult than any other process related to local listings – adding, claiming, or editing them. Additionally, there is currently no automated service that deals with this problem, so manual clean-up is the only way to go.

Why removing duplicates is so difficult?

There are a few main reasons for this:

1) Making it easy for people and businesses to remove listings from a business directory could very easily backfire and cause the loss of data that has been paid for. Therefore, it is not of the websites’ own interest to offer such a service.

2) Many business directories lack the technology to solve complicated problems with business data and prefer to ignore them rather than invest into trying to fix them (Google itself is an example of a company that has been ignoring the importance and complexity of the problem for way too long).

3) While websites might lack the technology to solve the problem with duplicate listings, they might also lack the human resources to maintain the process via some sort of customer service.

These, together with the fact that many websites are left without (almost) any editorial backing make the process tedious and frustrating. I myself am dealing with it daily and I have a list of good practices for removing duplicate listings on a number of the most important business directories on the web and as I know many others share the same burden I am sharing a few tips here.

Which websites am I covering here and why?

I will definitely not cover the whole list of business directories (note: this article covers predominantly US business directories), but just the ones I consider to be of the highest importance and at the same time have a rather troublesome process of listings removal, plus the ones where I normally find the highest numbers of duplicate listings.

Yelp

The site is notorious for the problems it causes to businesses when they want to remove their listings, usually for the purpose of getting their negative reviews gone, too. In the majority of the cases the answer coming from Yelp is “No”. However, there is a mechanism to get this done in the cases when the listing is a duplicate. You simply have to go to the contact form and choose “Duplicate business listing” from the drop-down menu. After this you’d need to use the search option to locate the two listings – the original one you’d want to keep, and the duplicate one and select them. Normally these get solved within 1-2 weeks.

Citysearch

The site, while hosting one of the largest business databases, has no official system for getting duplicates removed. The fastest way to deal with the problem would be to send them an email at myaccount@citygridmedia.com. Unfortunately, answers are not regular and frequent, so it might take some time and a few attempts to get this done. Another way, which is unofficial and might take you to a sales agent rather than to the desired destination (hopefully a customer service rep or a tech), is to call the company’s phone number 800-611-4827.

Superpages

Similarly to Citysearch, Superpages does not have a system in place to get duplicate listings removed. The best way I’ve found to get this resolved is by calling the customer service phone number: 800-428-8722.

Yahoo! Local

Yahoo’s mechanism is pretty clear when it comes to listing removal (unlike the mechanism for getting a listing verified). You have to go to the Local Listing Removal Request Form, choose “Business Moved” from the drop-down menu, and fill in the form.  Then it usually takes about 2-4 weeks for the listings to be taken down.

MapQuest

The process is again rather simple (once you discover where to start, of course): simply go to the Report an Issue page, tick “Business Listing/Location Issue” and describe the problem in the box at the bottom.

LocalEze

To get a listing “closed” you’d first need to verify your ownership over it. After you are done with that, you’d need to go to the “Manage Listings” dashboard and under “More Actions”, click on “Close Listing”:

Yellowbot

This one is a bit more complicated. You’d need to locate the duplicate listing and click on “Help us make it right” at the bottom of the page (note that you’d first need to register to the website, because you will be practically sending a user edit). On the next page, scroll to the bottom and click on “Submit corrections” and a window will be prompted asking if you are the business owner. Answer with a “No”. At the next page choose “Duplicate” from the drop-down and in “Reason for change” box fill in the URL to the original, correct listing.

MerchantCircle

This is my “favorite” in terms of number of duplicate listings. This is one of the reasons why I was so amazed to see it topping this research by Yext. The mechanism for removing those is, however, relatively easy. You have to go to the Remove a Business Listing, search for the duplicate(s), and after this simply mark them and send them for deletion. All this seems fine, but unfortunately, according to my experience the site is very slow at taking action on these reports and at the same time they are virtually unreachable via phone or email.

HotFrog

The mechanism for removing a listing is very well outlined in the FAQ of the site, so I will just cite it here:

“If you do want to leave though, login and click on ‘My account’ once you’ve logged into the dashboard. From there click on ‘Remove your free profile’ and follow the instructions.”

Therefore, you’d need to first have the listing claimed before being able to delete it.

EZLocal

The site does not have a system in place for removing duplicates, but calling customer service at 877-416-2378 and looking for Denise has proven to be a very nice and easy way to solve one’s problems.

Ones I haven’t Discovered Solution for

Besides these there are a couple of more websites, which often feature incorrect duplicate listings – Citysquares.com and GetFave.com. Unfortunately, my attempts to find a solution to this problem have always failed up to now. It appears that the easiest way to get this issue fixed is by simply editing the duplicate(s), including the correct information in each of them.

Have you had problems with removing a listing from some of these websites, or from other ones? Have you solved them in some more effective ways?

*Note: Our Citation Building Guide features more information, tips, and tactics on how to deal with duplicate listings and data consistency.

Local Citation Sources for Australia, Germany, and New Zealand

 Posted by  14 Responses »
Sep 252012
 

Here comes the time to complete a promise I gave a while ago. In the article “Local Citation Building Study Part 4: Local Business Directories Around the World (Canada and the UK)” from June 19 this year I claimed that I was going to be delivering a two-part piece related to the most important business directories and citation sources in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and New Zealand. The first part covered Canada and the UK, and the time finally came for the second part. Without any further blabbering, here are the top citation sources for Australia, Germany, and New Zealand:

1. Local Citation Sources for Australia

I used a number of great sources for this part of the citation sources study:

The Guide to Australian Citations for Local Search (by David Mihm)

The Definitive List of Local Search Citations – Australia Citation Sites (by Phil Rozek)

Local Google Places Citations – Australian (by Robert Steers)

Citation Sources for Google+ Local in Australia (by Local Lead)

Top 10 Local Citations Every Australian Business Should Have (Lyka Winnett)

And here is the list of the best business directories for Australia:

Yellowpages.com.au – similarly to the case with Canada, Yellowpages is probably the strongest business data player in the market (excluding Google, of course). It provides business information to both Google and Bing.

TrueLocal.com.au – a very close competitor to Yellowpages, it is not only one of the most detailed business directories in Australia, but also provides business data for the Yahoo Local’s equivalent in Australia.

StartLocal.com.au

Yelp.com.au

Hotfrog.com.au

Whitepages.com.au

Aussieweb.com.au

Local.com.au

dLook.com.au

Citysearch.com.au

Manta.com

Superpages.com.au

CityHobo.com

POIDB.com

1Australia.org

Aussielocal.com.au

Fyple.biz

WoMo.com.au

LocalBusinessGuide.com.au

AussieLocal.com.au

RaveAboutIt.com.au

Eatability.com.au

2. Local Citation Sources for Germany

There are very few lists of business directories for Germany, but fortunately all that exist are very robust. These are:

Branchenbuch Liste für den Citation Aufbau (by Another Vision)

Webkatalog-Webverzeichnis-Branchenbuch Liste (by Deutscher Webkatalog)

Branchenbuch – die bekanntesten und größten Branchenbücher (by Deutscher Webkatalog)

Branchenbuch Eintrag (by Eisy)

And here is the list itself:

Gelbeseiten.de – this is the equivalent of Yellowpages.com in Germany. It has arguably the largest business information database in the country as it sources data both from the national telecommunications provider (Deutsche Telekom) and with local and industry-specific websites.

StadtBranchenbuch.com – the site is part of the international network of Opendi, which has yellow pages and white pages sites in 29 countries with data for an overall of 25 million entities.

KennstDuEinen.de – while this is not one of the top 3 largest business directories in Germany, I’d feature it mostly because of the magnificent blog, dedicated to local search, which the site supports.

GoYellow.de

Pointoo.de

Lokale-Telefonbuchwerbung.de

Yellowmap.de

Suchen.de

Yasni.de

Hotfrog.de

Blaue-Branchen.de

Branchenbuch.MeineStadt.de

Klicktel.de – and its partner 11880.com

Cylex.de

Branchenbuchsuche.de

Branchenorte.de

Gelbex.de

Nelso.de

Yellow1.de

Andoo.de

Branchenbuchdeutschland.de

Regioseiten.de

Gelbesbranchebuch.de

Branchen-Domain.de

Unternehmensauskunft.com

Branchenkatalog.de

LokaleAuskunft.de

Branchencenter.de

Telefonbuch.com

3. Local Citation Sources for New Zealand

As you could predict, the list here would not be as long as the previous ones. The information sources are also scarce, and they run out with:

List Of The Best Free New Zealand Business Directories Online (by Sheldon Nesdale)

NZ Online Directories: List Of ALL the Free Online New Zealand Business Directories (by Sheldon Nesdale)

That is why some of the websites mentioned below come from my personal research work and are not based on any third-party source. Here they are:

Finda.co.nz – this is by far the most important business directory in New Zealand. They are an official partner of Google, and similarly to Yellowpages.ca in Canada and Yellowpages.com.au in Australia the remark “Business listings provided by Finda™” shows up under some search results via maps.google.co.nz.

Yellow.co.nz – the second most important site in the country of the Kiwis. It is the Yellowpages.com of New Zealand.

Whitepages.co.nz

HotFrog.co.nz

UBD.co.nz

Zenbu.co.nz

ZipLeaf.co.nz

Gopher.co.nz

2CU.co.nz

Localist.co.nz

NZSBDirectory.co.nz

iLook.co.nz

Bonus: Best Business Directories and Citation Sources in Other Countries

In order to show that I am actually a cool guy (surprising I know), I add lists with the top 5 business directories for Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and South Africa.

1) Local Citation Sources in Ireland:

Yabsta.ie

Yalwa.ie

Fyple.net

Cylex.ie

SaySo.ie

2) Local Citation Sources in Spain:

11870.com

Yelp.es

Salir.com

Metroo.es

Opiname.es

3) Local Citation Sources in the Netherlands:

Opendi.nl

HotFrog.nl

MisterWhat.nl

Yelp.nl

Telefoonboek.nl

4) Local Citation Sources in South Africa:

Yellowpages.co.za

Cylex.co.za

HotFrog.co.za

Brabys.com

SAYellow.co.za

Final Words

As you might have noticed sometimes the top directories in different countries are either the same, or under the same company. The most prominent cases are:

- Manta.com – offers free and paid listings for businesses from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia (I’ve previously praised Manta here). Additionally, they provide detailed business data for practically every country in the world, so it might not be too far until they open their listings program to everyone.

- Brownbook.net – simiarly to Manta, they offer business data for every country in the world, but they also allow all listings to be claimed and edited.

- HotFrog – the network operates in 38 countries, hosting over 69 million business listings (source)

- Opendi – the network operates in 29 countries, and hosts 25 million listings (source)

- Cylex – the company has “over 30 online business directories… reaching out to 5 continents” (source)

- Yelp – one of the most popular business websites in the United States, it has overall 17 international branches, including the recently added Yelp.com.sg

- Yalwa – the company operates websites in 38 countries around the world (source)

It is very possible that at least some of these are available in your country, too (in case it is not covered by some of my articles).

I am always looking for ways to improve these lists, so if you have any ideas I’d be happy to hear them either in the comments section or via email at nyagoslav.zhekov@gmail.com.

*Note: Our Citation Building Guide features more information, tips, and tactics on how to do local citation building.

I Am NOT Part of OptiLocal

 Posted by  No Responses »
Sep 142012
 

I feel I have to dissolve a piece of serious misinformation. I am not part of OptiLocal‘s team anymore. Yes, I helped establish the company and I was part of the managerial team, but I am not anymore (for a few months now). I suppose one of the main reasons for this misunderstanding is the fact that when one searches for [nyagoslav] on Google.com, the first result that shows up is the homepage of OptiLocal.

It is also the second result for the same search on Bing:

I believe this is largely because a lot of comments, which I’ve previously written, contain my name as the anchor text and link to the homepage of OptiLocal. I am unable to update these myself as most blogs do not allow comment editing, but I am willing to provide a juicy link from my site to all blogs that update my comments with the correct link to www.NGSMarketing.com

Additionally, as I’ve never publicly announced my resignation from OptiLocal, it might have left some of my regular followers puzzled. My blog, and all my older articles, are now located at www.NGSMarketing.com/Blog, so if you still find my content useful, you could update your RSS and email subscriptions.

Why Yext Might Not Be the Best Fit for Your Business

 Posted by  20 Responses »
Sep 032012
 

There have been a lot of opinions expressed on the importance of Yext for local SEO (you can read Mike Blumenthal’s and David Mihm’s, for instance). However, I haven’t seen anyone tackling the more fundamental problems behind the platform. I will try to explain some of them in more detail. In this article, I will try to explain them in more details. But first, I should make a clear disclaimer – I do offer manual citation building service, which might be viewed as a “competing” service to the Yext’s core one (although I would argue on this matter, but that’s not the point). Nevertheless, everything I write is from as a neutral point of view as possible.

What does Yext offer?

Yext offers a service called “Power Listings”, which syndicates business information across a network of 40 local search platforms. These platforms include both Internet yellow pages types of sites, such as Yahoo Local, Superpages, Whitepages, Local.com, and social network and review types of sites, such as Yelp, Citysearch, Foursquare, and others. The service includes a neat dashboard, which monitors traffic to each of the listings, as well as reviews on them. However, the biggest advantage of Yext has always been the speed with which the information is being spread and/or rectified across the network.

What are the positives?

As I mentioned above, the speed with which the information is being synced is unique. For most of the sites it goes live practically instantly, and for almost all of the others it gets updated in a few hours. Additionally, the information that could be syndicated includes special offers, photos, and videos, and some of these elements are not available on a number of the local search sites, even for paying customers, i.e. the only way to get them to appear on one’s listing is via Yext. The statistics that the platform provides could also be valuable, especially when considering the service’s value.

What are the negatives?

The positives pretty much end with what I described above. Here is a list of some of the most significant negatives:

1) Service’s updates – Yext’s service is in an ever-going improvement, which by itself is great. New sites are regularly being added to the network. But what happens if you have purchased a package when the network consisted of only 12-13 platforms? As far as I understand, you are going to stay only with these for at least until your one year’s subscription ends. I understand that from Yext’s point of view that makes sense – they don’t have to pay a bulk sum of money to the newly added to the network sites, because of some old customers that would anyway not pay anymore (at least for a year) after their initial payment. However, it totally doesn’t make sense from the point of view of these customers. And if I were them, I was going to be unhappy with the service, too.

2) The network - while Yext’s network includes a number of the most important business directories, it also misses a few important ones. These include Yellowpages, Insiderpages, Kudzu, Manta, to name a few. Furthermore, the network’s size is very small compared to the overall number of local business directories out there. Whitespark‘s Local Citation Finder finds 245 citation sources per keyphrase on average. Of course, some of these are unusable, or not business directories, but even if 50% of them are, this would mean that in any given niche there are at least 100-120 business directories, where a business could get a listing from. Yext’s network covers 40, but this number is rather questionable. A couple of examples: 411.com and Switchboard.com which are advertised as platforms part of the service, actually get data directly from Whitepages and Superpages, respectfully, and there is no way for a business to get a listing on any of them directly. Furthermore, the service won’t work in the cases when one has an enhanced listing for their business on some of the most important websites: Yahoo, Yelp, Superpages, Citysearch, Local.com, Merchantcircle, Ziplocal, Tupalo.

3) NAP consistency – the main advantage of the service is that it rectifies the business information across Yext’s network, thus helping up the local search rankings (I have previously discussed the value of citations for local SEO). I have been “promoting” the Local Search Scorecard, an instant scanning service Yext offers for free, as a useful local SEO tool, too. But if we look deeper, we could see that there are fundamental problems with the Power Listings service and its helpfulness in terms of keeping one’s business NAP consistent. How the service works is:

- It scans all the network’s websites for the specified business information (name, address, phone number).

- It determines the best matching listings (if any) on each website and highlights them.

- It then syncs the data input via the dashboard on all these websites, updating the listings that previously have been determined as best matching, and “filling in” with new listings where it was unable to find matching ones.

The three main problems here – first, it is possible that Yext’s scanning will not find the correct listing (happens often when the same business has two offices in the same city, or when a business has been using the same phone number for more than one of their locations); second, it is possible that Yext’s scanning will not find any listing, although there is one (happens if NAP is very inconsistent); third, it is possible that there are duplicates, and as Yext finds only one listing per website, these won’t be taken care of (happens almost in every single case). What this all means is that the chances for Yext to not clear up your NAP completely, or to actually screw your other location’s NAP, are pretty high. I haven’t made a large scale research on this matter, but according to my observations there are at least a few wrong or correct duplicates for a business in at least 80% of the cases. The sites with most duplicate listings (not just from Yext’s network, but overall) are Merchant Circle, Citysquares, EZLocal, MojoPages, ZipLocal, which are in fact all part of the network. Additionally, at least in one of every 5 or 6 searches via the Local Search Scorecard, Yext finds at least one listing which is either for another business, or for another location of the same business. Last but not least, in almost every search, Yext’s tool doesn’t find at least one listing on one website, where it actually exists.

4) The overall price – the rate is $500 per year. It is advertised as “per month” rate, but it is billed per year. Personally, I believe for what Yext offers the price is rather steep. Here is a sum up of why I think so:

- Yext basically offers a service, which syndicates business data across 40 platforms.

- 3 platforms actually are part of a network of other platforms, and by themselves do not carry almost any value.

- 8 platforms are not compatible with Yext when the business is already advertising on them.

- Yext doesn’t remove duplicates.

- Yext sometimes syndicates data where there is an already existing listing for a business, thus creating a duplicate.

- Yext sometimes updates a wrong listing, thus potentially screwing up the business data for another location.

- Here is one I haven’t mentioned yet: the listings coming from Yext are not owner-verified (in almost all cases), and as the incoming data is standardized, sometimes the listings produced by Yext are not fully completed (here is why it is important for the listings to be as complete as possible).

Conclusion

I do not say Yext is bad. On the contrary, it has many positives, as I pointed out above. It could be very useful and time-saving for businesses with thousands of locations, where manual citations work is simply impossible. It could also be useful for businesses that have higher profit per sale (real estate agencies, insurance agencies, law firms, car dealers) that have opened a new location and want a fast local search boost. However, I don’t think it’s really useful in the cases when:

- You are a small business, with not too high profit per sale, or not too large marketing budget;

- You are a business of any size that has already taken care of their online presence (i.e. your business data is relatively consistent across the board);

- You are a business of any size with significant business data inconsistency problems (very often the case with most of the professional and health related businesses);

- You want a local SEO push, and you are looking for ways to stand above the competition (in these cases, normally the competitor(s) will already have listings on most of the websites included in Yext’s network, so if your only citation building tactic is paying for Power Listings, then this might very well not be the right solution for you).

Time for discussion – have you used Yext? What was your case and has Yext’s service helped?

Update

Howard Lerman, CEO of Yext, contacted me with his POV, and as I always appreciate companies caring about their reputation + sharing as many views as possible, I post his thoughts below:

“I usually enjoy reading your posts and comments as you tend to get the detailed facts actually right.

Unfortunately, your article post Yext today does not meet the Zhekov high standard I have come to expect from you!

Specifically, in your “What are the negatives / 3) NAP Consistency” section, you’ve missed a major, key step in the Yext process. We don’t use the same matches from our scan as the official match to sync with. Rather, upon purchasing our product, we first suggest matches and unless it is an exact match, a business quickly walks through a process for each listing where they have the chance to confirm a match OR re-search on the partners index until they find the listing they’d like to match to. If the listings not there, we add it.

The ability to pick which listing on each site you’d like to sync with Yext is a very powerful feature – no other solution has anything even close to this capability.

I think the entire nature of your article (including the headline) is unfair without this criticism. Your remaining criticisms are that we don’t have enough sites and that we’re too expensive. We’re always adding more sites and stay tuned in that regard. That leaves expense. How much does an average LocalSEO charge per hour? How much junk is there in the market that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars? For a business investing in internet advertising, Yext is very reasonably priced.”

*Note: Our Citation Building Guide features more information, tips, and tactics on how to do local citation building.

Google with the Most Accurate Business Database in the UK

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Aug 282012
 

Last week I read a post on Search Engine Land that was discussing a study by Implied Intelligence. The study was related to business data accuracy, and was comparing a number of the biggest players in the UK market. As I felt the SEL article didn’t offer too much details, and I was very interested to learn more, I contacted Marc Brombert and he was kind enough to provide me with the complete research.

Which Sites Were Researched

The full list of sites that were researched includes: Foursquare, Thomsonlocal, Scoot/TouchLocal, Bing Local, DNB, ThePhoneBook, Yell, Google Maps, Yelp, 118.com, 192.com, HotFrog, Yahoo Local UK, Qype UK. The mentioned sites were chosen based on traffic and general industry prestige (see here for reference). It is also worth mentioning that:

1) These are all different types of websites. For instance, Yelp and Qype are rather review social networks, Foursquare is a check-in social network, Yell, Scoot/TouchLocal and Thomsonlocal are traditional IYPs, Google Maps, Bing Local, Yahoo Local are a kind of mixtures. Thus, it is to be expected that the business data accuracy would vary.

2) Many of these exchange data between each other, or get data from the same source. For instance, My118information.co.uk provides data to 118.com, 192.com, TouchLocal, Yahoo, Bing, and others (according to Sarah Shepherd, Head of Customer Service at the company). LocalDataCompany.com provides data to Google, Yell, Thomsonlocal, Touchlocal, Qype, 192.com, and others (according to their website). At the same time 192.com gets data by 118.com.

Methodology of the Research

Implied Intelligence researched “1,400 hand-checked records from a random UK geography.” The records were all extracted from the websites of the businesses themselves. Because of this most of the records were of small businesses, as only records with one address per homepage were chosen (which means that chains and franchises were largely excluded). The study looks into a few aspects of the data, going beyond simple data accuracy. These include: coverage (how many of the records were present), number of duplicates (determining if a listing is a duplicate of another listing was based on a robust match between the name, address, phone number and URL), accuracy (of the main business data), and richness (presence of additional details).

Findings

As stated in the title, it turns out that Google is the most accurate and detailed source of business data in the UK. However, before looking into the final details, I’d like to discuss the scoring per factor.

Where everyone seemed to fail was at the coverage test. Google was the only one to score over 50% (58.8%), followed by 192.com (49.1%). Both these companies’ databases receive data from a large number of places, and this could explain their advantage. The worst scoring, by a large margin, is Foursquare with just 6.9% of the records being present on their website. The reason is most probably the relative unpopularity of the social network in the UK (85.2% of the British have never used it, and just 3.1% use it frequently). It is interesting, however, that Yelp takes the second spot (in reversed order) with only 24.6% of the businesses researched being present on their website. This performance is significantly worse than the one the site shows in the US market – 63.2%.

The second factor researched was percentage of duplicate listings. “Winner” is ThePhoneBook with 20.8% duplicates, followed by HotFrog with 12.3%. Yahoo, which in the UK gets data from Infoserve, was found to have 0% duplicates, followed by Yelp (1.4%). Google is just third here with 2.5%. These percentages are generally much lower than what I would expect. Based on my previous researches, the duplicate percentage should be on average around the low double-digits.

It gets scary when looking at the data accuracy findings. The worst performing overall is once again ThePhoneBook, featuring a wrong phone number in 27.8% of the cases, and a wrong address in 2.9% of the cases. It is followed by HotFrog (25.9% and 2.5% respectively). The best two are Qype (19.2% and 1.7%) and Bing (20% and 1.6%). It is to be noted that according to the research DNB does not provide any business information, such as address, phone, and additional details, so most of their scores are either N/A or 0.

The survey looks into what percentage of the records have website URL associated with them. Google is the winner with 87.9%, followed by Yell with 79.7%, and Bing with 78.7%. A number of websites do not allow business websites to be added to listings, so their overall score is significantly lowered by this factor. These include: DNB, ThePhoneBook, 118.com, 192.com, and Qype.

The most inaccurate in terms of business website associated with a listing are Yelp (33.6%), Yahoo (33.3%), and Scoot (32.6%). Google is the best performer (from the ones that do allow business websites to be added to listings) with just 15.8% incorrect URLs.

The research also looks into the percentage of records with opening hours, and the percentage of records with additional information (including about-us information (taglines), payment options, free quotes, certifications, and others, but excluding reviews and check-ins). The unchallenged winner in both is Google with 28.3% and 97.9% respectively. There are again quite a number of directories that do not offer any additional information: Foursquare, DNB, ThePhoneBook, 118.com, 192.com, Yahoo.

Based on the factors discussed above (coverage score, duplicate score, phone error score, address error score, URL coverage score, URL accuracy score, hours score, and additional info score), the winner is Google Maps. Second place goes to HotFrog, and third place goes to Bing.

While I appreciate and respect the scoring system Implied Intelligence used, I believe some of the factors are not equal in terms of importance to other factors. These include URL coverage, URL accuracy, and business hours presence. I combined URL coverage, business hours coverage, and additional details presence into one factor, and completely excluded URL accuracy, and here is how the data accuracy rankings turned out:

1. Google Maps (=)

2. Bing Local (+1)

3. Thomsonlocal (+5)

4. Qype (+3)

5/6. HotFrog (-3/-4) and Yell (-1/-2)

7/8. Yelp (-1/-2) and Yahoo Local (+2/+3)

9. Scoot (-4)

10. 118.com (-1)

11. Foursquare (=)

12. 192.com (=)

13. DNB (+1)

14. The PhoneBook (-1)

Below is a graph that shows the difference in overall score when using Implied Intelligence’s scoring system and my scoring system:

 

Takeaways

Undoubtedly, Google is the winner in terms of complete and accurate UK businesses data. It is interesting that Bing, which does not have an automated system for businesses to list themselves or to edit their data (such as Business Portal in the US), performs very well (they do, however, have a request form for adding/updating a listing). From the viewpoint of local SEO, HotFrog and Yell seem to be important citation sources (I have discussed this previously) as they offer a big number of additional business information bits to be added (check here why this is important).

Mobile-Local Advertising Trends for the Restaurant Industry

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Aug 212012
 

Mobile advertising network xAd has released an interesting report on the most recent trends in mobile-local advertising, specifically in the context of the restaurant industry. The reported data is derived from the performance seen on their network, which delivered 3.4 billion locally-targeted ads in the second quarter of 2012.

According to the report, the overall ads click-through rates (CTR) are 8% for search and 0.68% for display, and are significantly higher than these for the restaurant category alone (4.86% and 0.42% accordingly). On the contrary, the restaurant category performs much above average in terms of secondary action rate (SAR). The most common secondary actions in this category are downloading map or looking up directions to the place (63%), and calling the business (17%) which is a very strong signal for purchase intent. This is supported by another recent research by xAd and Telemetrics, which found that 85% of smartphone/tablet users, who conducted research for a restaurant ultimately made a purchase.

xAd provides a break down per restaurant category for the secondary actions data with pizza, sit-down restaurants, coffee, and fast food facilities being at the spotlight. The most popular secondary action for all but coffee is checking map and driving directions with it spiking to as high as 82% in the fast food category. Calls are most common secondary actions with pizza restaurants (19%), because of the delivery service popularity. The picture is entirely different with coffee shops. According to the report, only 30% look up driving directions and map as a secondary action (which is low compared to this metric for the other types of restaurant facilities), and at the same time 27% check reviews, and 38% look for other information, such as working hours.

Another important finding is that mobile search activity related to dining is much higher in the later hours of the day than it is for most of the other local search categories. The peak of this activity is around 8PM, but it stays relatively high until 10-11PM. The report suggests that “these hours are prime territory for mobile-local ads targeted to the late night dinner crowd, club-goers and late night snackers.” Thus, the stress is put on the importance of time of day and user segment ad targeting.

The Two Types of Local Search and How Local SEO Should Reflect Them

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Aug 152012
 

There is a major misconception in the Internet marketing world that local search means “pizza New York” (sorry), when in fact local search might very well mean “pizza”. This is, of course, an over-simplification of the things, but I hope you get the point (check here for a “scientific” explanation). Assuming that each of these is “local search”, is not incorrect, but assuming that only one of them is local search – is. I have previously written about these two types of local search (and other types) in a comment I gave for this year’s Local Search Ranking Factors edition. As my thoughts were buried between an enormous amount of other information, I am copying what I wrote, here:

Local search can very simply be defined as “search with local intent”. However, there are many different types of search with local intent:

- [keyword]-only search with local intent – it relies significantly on Google’s ability to associate particular content with particular location; it also relies on Google’s ability to recognize the local intent of the search, i.e. is this query really “local”; it also relies on Google’s ability to recognize the location to which this search is related (example: “towing” – you’d rarely, if ever, need towing service far away from the physical location you are at).

- [keyword + "local" location] search with local intent – it gives all the information the search engine needs; the search is performed via the physical location it is intended for + the searcher specifically adds the location keyword to the query (example: “car repair NYC” if you are located in the NYC area).

- [keyword + "non-local" location] search with local intent - it gives mixed signals to the search engine; Google can see that the physical location through which the search is performed does not match the location for which the query is intended (example: search for “car rental Las Vegas” if you are going on a holiday to Las Vegas, but you live in NYC).

Google arguably uses different signals to determine the particular intent for each of these types of local search. It would definitely put much more value on the location keyword specified in the [keyword + "non-local" location] type query, than it would put in any of the other types. At the same time it would put much more value in the searcher’s physical location, and the proximity of the potentially relevant results to the searcher’s location, in the [keyword]-only query. Therefore, the ranking factors might vary based on the query type and it is difficult to generalize them.

For the purposes of this article, I will discuss in more detail only the first two types.

As I mentioned in the beginning, Internet marketers put a lot of attention to keywords that include location modifier. If you’d look into the search results for [Seattle personal injury], you’d understand what I mean. But is that really what users are searching for? It usually depends both on the industry and on your business’s location.

How to check what search terms are being used by potential local clients? Use Google Insights.

Google Insights, unlike the AdWords Keyword Tool, can help you drill down to very specific location area. It doesn’t show you the absolute number of searches for particular queries, but it shows you what users in an area are relatively more likely to search for. If you look at the graph below, you will see that [personal injury] is a much more searched for term in the area of Seattle-Tacoma, than the terms [personal injury Seattle] or [Seattle personal injury]:

This is just an example. It is very possible that users in other areas use mostly search terms that do include location marker.

What is the trend? The trend is that more and more people skip specifying location in their queries and rely more on the search engines to “assume” it. Mobile usage has also been increasing steadily, and it is a natural contributor to implicit local search. A recent study by GoLocal proves this. In February, I wrote about its first issue, but it is now more interesting to see the trends they reported in June. According to GoLocal’s data, overall geo-targeted search decreased by 10% in the first quarter of 2012 quarter, and the geo-targeted search on PC decreased by 15% during the same period.

More granular insights from the survey

The top verticals for geo-targeted search on mobile devices (including tablets) were hotels, car dealers, lawyers, restaurants, pest control, bars motels, and others. These are very similar to the top verticals on PC devices with just slight variations in their order. At the same time, from the researched cities, the top ones for geo-targeted searches were Austin (first by a large margin), Las Vegas, Nashville, Tuscon, and others. These are again consistent across devices. Unfortunately, they do not share data on which are the lowest ranking cities and verticals in terms of geo-targeted search relative volumes. However, they did so in the first issue of the survey. According to it, users in Detroit, Los Angeles, Norfolk, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and San Francisco are least likely to specify location in their search queries. Maid, loan, insurance, banks, golf, are some of the categories, which users search for without geo-location specified. It should be mentioned here that the survey considers “geo-specified searches” only these that contain city name in the query, i.e. [dentist 92563] is not regarded as a geo-local query.

Why should you care? As I mentioned above, the factors the search engines use might vary, and the value distribution might also vary, based on the type of local search. A simple example could be given with the search results for two similar intent queries: [restaurants San Francisco] and [restaurants] (with location set to San Francisco). There are a few general major differences in the results: – The Google+ Local results are displayed higher in the non-specified location search results. – Results that have location in their titles are displayed higher in the specified location search results. – Websites of local businesses are more likely to rank higher in the non-specified location search results. – Business directory websites are more likely to rank higher in the specified location search results.

So what should you do? First of all – research. Do not do something based on a template strategy, or because you purchased a “WSO” that says you should. You should build your local SEO strategy based on what your research discovers. Some tips on the two scenarios I am discussing in this article:

Scenario 1: Targeting keywords with location modifier.

- Add location keyword(s) (state, city, ZIP code, neighborhood, etc.) to your landing pages’ title tags at prominent positions an near your main target keywords.

- Add location keyword(s) to your content’s title.

- Add location keyword(s) to your content body.

- Add your physical address, if you are located in the same area you target.

- Link your internal pages with geo-identifiers in the anchor texts and in the anchor text’s title attribute.

- If your REAL business name does not include the city/area, which you are targeting (this is the case most of the times), stress more on your website’s optimization rather than on pure Google+ Local optimization.

- As directory websites rank higher for these searches, it might be a good idea to invest time and money into figuring out how to get more visibility on these websites.

A small note here – sentences such as “We are Chicago plumbers servicing the Chicago plumbing needs of the Chicago residents” do not bring you any positives. Sentences such as “We are the top plumbing contractor in Chicago. We service residential and commercial clients in North West and North Shore Chicagoland” would be much more useful both in term of organic rankings and conversions.

Scenario 2: Targeting keywords without location modifier, but with local intent – the main goal is to make Google aware of what location your website is related to.

- Focus on Google+ Local.

- Add your physical address to each page of your website and mark it up with schema.org.

- Add an embedded interactive map.

- Add directions to your location.

- Add your local telephone number.

- Create About Us and Contact Us pages with location information in them.

- Create a KML file for your business location.

- Mention surrounding areas and local landmarks in your site’s content.

- Use local-specific terms and slang (especially in blog posts) whenever appropriate.

The bottom line is – you do not necessarily need to have the targeted location mentioned everywhere across the site.

In both scenarios, getting links from websites that are specific to the locality, and being mentioned/reviewed across social networks (especially Google+ and Yelp) by people relevant to the location (born or living there), could help significantly.

I believe Google is going towards more “intuitive” search, as their goal has always been to save as much time as possible of their users. Guessing the location their search is intended for is a good step towards better search experience. That is why I’d speculate that in future we would be seeing higher ranking local results that do not include any direct location markers in their “top” attributes (business name, title tag) or even in the page’s content. Having strong online brand will be getting more important than ever in local search.

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