ChamberofCommerce.com?

[Mike Pedersen]

Is it worth $179 a year?

 

[djbaxter]

That's only half a question.

Is it worth $179 a year to whom? And to be used for what purpose?

 

[Mike Pedersen]

For a local business as a citation (link)?

That's only half a question.

Is it worth $179 a year to whom? And to be used for what purpose?

 

[djbaxter]

Oh. It might be. I'll defer to the local experts on an answer though.

Thanks for the clarification.


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[sarkarn]

Mike,

They have a free listing option. I wouldn't pay $179 for an upgrade.

Best
Niladri

 

[Dustybones]

I'm with sarkarn on that one. Can you share the benefits you get for 179.00?

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Always had a hard time finding the free option on chamberofcommerce.com.

Can anybody give a walkthrough?

 

[Phil Rozek]

I've never noticed any benefit in being listed on that site. But joining one of your local Chambers of Commerce is an easy way to get a nice link, among other benefits.

 

[CodyBaird]

I agree with Phil. Local Chamber is better. Some local chambers will only have citation value others offer links but they seem to be a little more rare. Annual membership costs for chamber are common.

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[Scott Barnett]

Hi,

Last time I used them they did have a free option, but now I'm not finding it. This is interesting - I'm going to dig in and I'll let you know what we find.

I do believe CoC grabs listings from one of the "big 4" - if I recall, Localeze. I could be wrong there, but if it's the case, they'll ultimately (within 60 days) get your listings if you put them in the top level directory.

I really don't like it when directories auto-direct people straight to their paid offering.

Regards,
Scott

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Very curious.

I went to add a company I just started working with (zero citations, etc.) and they are on chamberofcommerce.com. This business just started up not that long ago.

However, my companies that are seasoned, 3 years+ are no where to be found. All of them are on Moz Local so I'm not sure CoC takes data aggregation.

I would love some more insight from someone on this.

---------- Post Merged at 07:47 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:41 AM ----------

Just received this reply:

Dear Joshua,

Unfortunately, we no longer allow free listings. As of January 1, 2014, we have moved over to a membership model much like other online business directories, local state and national Chambers of Commerce as well as other business membership organizations that are dependent on their dues or advertising to fund support for the membership benefits programs.

 

[Scott Barnett]

There's definitely more to the story than this. I registered a business and they wanted the $179 so I stopped. I came back a little later, and now they have "found" my business that 30 minutes earlier wasn't in their DB.

However, bottom line is that there is very little citation benefit to their site. And I can't imagine what benefit a "local" business gets from joining a "national" chamber organization.

We are certainly biased here, but there is a growing trend to Citation sites not allowing free listings. Yes it costs money and time to sort through all the requests, but NOBODY is authoritative enough to request that kind of money to a business. It's simply throwing money out the door if you're an SMB. I still say stick to the big 4 (Infogroup, Localeze, Acxiom, Factual) and whatever vertical/local sites are relevant to your business personally. Everything else is a waste of time/money.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

There's really 2 points to this:

1) A local search directory that charges you to be listed isn't going to be authoritative. They have closed their doors to free listings which means they only have a select list of companies. The user isn't going to find this list helpful. The user wants an unbiased list. This is obviously very biased.

2) Logically, why would Google put any value on a directory that is underwhelmingly authoritative? Less data, less value. They show a very small portion of local business information and therefore incur less trust.

For SEO nor ROI does a paid directory make sense in most situations.

 

[Scott Barnett]

Amen Joshua.

We're spending a little more time on their site just to be sure. They really don't seem to be doing much to promote a real directory, at least at first glance.

 

[Scott Barnett]

Josh,

One more thing - have you seen this video - https://www.chamberofcommerce.com/videos/top5reasonstojoinchamber. A couple of points:

(1) I honestly didn't hear a single thing that was worth spending money on. Let me know if you agree.

(2) At the very end, he does say that you can get your $179 refunded in the first 30 days and still remain on their site. So, that's a (backhanded) way to get listed for free. I still say it's not worth it.

Scott

 

[Austin Lund]

I just check chamberofcommerce.com to edit existing listings and remove duplicates by sending a request through https://www.chamberofcommerce.com/request-contact. But if a client is not listed on that site, I don't bother to add a new listing.

I completely agree with everyone, that getting listed on a local chamber of commerce has much better benefits for local SEO and for ROI. Here is a good link for finding local chambers of commerce - https://www.uschamber.com/chamber/directory. Or this one works too - https://www.chamberofcommerce.com/chambers.

 

[Dustybones]

So, emailed them to see where they get their data from and the said the following:

"We receive our information from several third party sources, but chamberofcommerce.com uses Acxiom as our primary data source."

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Josh,

One more thing - have you seen this video - https://www.chamberofcommerce.com/videos/top5reasonstojoinchamber. A couple of points:

(1) I honestly didn't hear a single thing that was worth spending money on. Let me know if you agree.

(2) At the very end, he does say that you can get your $179 refunded in the first 30 days and still remain on their site. So, that's a (backhanded) way to get listed for free. I still say it's not worth it.

Scott

I didn't watch the whole video but if they give you 30 days for a refund, seems like you could do it just to see if they can do what they say they can do. I highly doubt it because they need traffic and I don't see them ranking on Google. So, where is the traffic coming from?

But, again, if it's a no risk trial, no reason not to do it as long as you have time to keep track of it and cancel at the appropriate time And sure, if you stay on there permanently after that, sounds good to me.

So, emailed them to see where they get their data from and the said the following:

"We receive our information from several third party sources, but chamberofcommerce.com uses Acxiom as our primary data source."

Nice Dusty. I'm curious though, I've had a lot of businesses on Moz Local for awhile now but none of them show up on COC. The majority of these businesses have been on Moz Local enough to catch a data refresh on COC (1 year plus). And COC isn't the only website like this. There are quite a few websites out there that claim to use expressupdate, axciom, or localeze and don't have my clients' data. So, either Moz Local isn't feeding data correctly, the data aggregators aren't getting the data out, or these local search directories don't refresh as much as they say. I better the latter.

It would be an interesting article to see how much each local data aggregator costs. Do they allow you to purchase one off? Do they make you commit to so many refreshes of data a year? Based on the price, how viable is it for a small local search directory to continue to refresh? Is it realistic to expect them to do so? How often do these smaller local search directories actually refresh their data (do a few interviews)?

That's a rocking post right there. Somebody get on that!

Also, when are we going to rise up and start our own local search directory? Between all the knowledge here, there's no reason not to! Local SEO serfs unite!

 

[Scott Barnett]

Josh,

Great questions. Here's my (unproven) thoughts:

(1) Anybody can say they are getting data from Infogroup, Acxiom, etc - but as you suggest, the real question is are they getting updated data as well? What we are finding is several citation sources had purchased a list at some point in the past, but then cancel the subscription. So their data is only as good as the last update they got. I'm not claiming CoC is doing this, but I will certainly confirm that we have made updates via MozLocal (and other sites) that do not show up on CoC.

(2) I doubt you'll get info on cost from the aggregators. A few of them wanted us to sign NDA's before they'd even talk about cost for this very reason. I few did not, which was a huge plus in our book.

(3) As to your last comment, I will refrain from a sales pitch, but that is exactly what we're doing at Bizyhood. Happy to tell you more about what (and how/why) we're doing it. There is a lot of dirty data out there, I can tell you that!! We would *love* the assistance of this community to make this effort rock solid.

Regards,
Scott

 

[Dustybones]

Joshua, have you been able to trace back an original source for the new company you have with zero citations? You said COC picked it up, correct?