Best Service for Phone Number Change?

[consultant]

I've only had to deal with setting up new citations on all the directories for new businesses with 2-6 locations. Haven't had to do it in about 3 years. These businesses are smart knowing changing your phone number is a BIG NO NO. Well one of them finally is in a situation where they accidentally lost their number during a change of ownership and had to establish a new one for their main location.

In the past I found submitting directly to Google My Business, Yelp, and Bing directly combined with submitting to 3 or 4 Aggregator Databases using Brightlocal to be the most cost effective as opposed to paying the much higher fees to places like Yext and Whitespark. I don't need to view and manage reviews and all the other bells and whistles.

Is Brightlocal still the most efficient/convenient service that is the most cost effective option for submitting phone number changes to Axciom, Infogroup, Factual and Neustar? Currently how long are the updates typically taking?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@consultant, I'd suggest hand-to-hand for those sites. Mainly because the list of aggregators is shorter than it used to be:

Acxiom: closed a few years ago
Factual: such a limited network of partners that there's no way its data is useful to Google anymore
LocalEze: has flip-flopped for years on what you can and cannot do for free.
InfoGroup: same deal as always

Basically, I suggest squaring away your InfoGroup listing manually, and seeing if you can update LocalEze manually and for free (and skipping it if you can't), and leaving it at that. You'll save a few bucks and won't get carried away by a process that doesn't make much of a difference.

 

[keyserholiday]

There is no guarantee that any service can successfully update an outdated phone number. I have seen several cases where Google has refused to update a phone number even with updated citations. If you have access to the GPB, then update it in the dashboard. If you don't, you will to gain access to it. Google support will be able to assist you with updating the number, but only if it is claimed.

 

[consultant]

Google was easily updated through the GMB interface as is Bing and Yelp. Seems like my most efficient use of time is to see if I can use Brightlocal to update Infogroup or update them directly and in the mean time submit correction suggestions for Yahoo and then possibly YP/YB/SuperPages. I know there's some indirect SEO value in having citations in the top 50 or so and all being consistent, but the relative value is questionable. Seems like you take care of 80-90% of the potential business lead sources (and SEO value), in my gut, by taking care of Google, Bing, Yelp and Yahoo. Generally speaking. There may be other industry specific ones. Does Yahoo even maintain its own DB or is it impossible to get it changed without changing the aggregator it relies on?

 

[Tony Wang]

Yahoo stopped being relevant years ago, lol. You have to go through Yext, but it's not worth the time or money. I've found Whitespark to be a little more effective in updating data. They have a similar service as Brightlocal to hit the aggregators. It costs a bit more, but they also try to update a few other important directories as part of that package, so worth trying, IMO.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

If you don't already know everywhere the old phone number is listed, you'll have to start with an audit.

We like to combine Bright Local, Whitespark, plus some manual digging to make a very comprehensive audit.

From there, we contact each and every individual site in rounds.... If no update can be made, we request pulling the listing.

It's a time consuming task and usually takes anywhere from 3 weeks to a month but it's something we have been doing for agencies for a few years now.