Do the aggregators even work anymore?

[brettmandoes]

Hey everyone, I have a client using reputation.com for their listing service and I have to say, I'm completely underwhelmed by the performance. It doesn't look like listings are being distributed widely or evenly, there's inconsistent and incorrect data everywhere, and I can't find any evidence that they're actually distributing the data. Case in point, if I google the address for one of the client locations, almost the entire first page of Google returns results for a cheerleading team. On another, Google doesn't seem to know if it's my client's storefront or if it's a computer parts store. For yet another location, they return a bunch of listings for a firm that specializes in nuclear engineering.

It's bonkers how bad it is. I believe reputation.com is using Infogroup/Data Axle and my understanding was that they were supposedly the best option among the aggregators. But if this is what we get in 2021 then I have serious reservations about the aggregators actually functioning as a legitimate service at this point. Neustar I haven't tested recently. Foursquare is all that's left beyond those two and they don't even advertise themselves as a listing management provider on their site. Everything I've seen and heard about them is they aren't distributing.

All this leads me to question the validity of the aggregators. Are they actually doing the work, or just taking our money and saying they're doing it? Are they distributing to nonsense sites that don't matter? And what is reputation.com's listing network? Does anyone know? And lastly, is there anyone who still stands by the aggregators as their main source of listings management and what experience have you had recently with them?

 

[ColinTSmith]

Hi Brett. I usually don't respond to these posts but let's chat. Seems like we (Neustar) can help.


Note: Don't post email addresses or phone numbers in public forums. It just invites spam. Use private conversations to exchange such information please. ! djbaxter

 

[Adam Kaufman]

I think that aggregators have little to no value. Excluding 4SQ. Also offering no value are Yext, Synup, and the countless companies that update your business on the top 50ish 100% irrelevant sites/directories. Please, someone, tell me how Hotfrog, EZlocal, MerchantCircle, etc. have any value whatsoever. Please don't say NAP accuracy or citations.

Don't even get me started on the proliferation of companies offering Voice Search Optimization. I hope this starts an open, honest conversation about our industry.

 

[Adam Dorfman]

Hi Brett,

I'm a Product Director at Reputation and would love to chat more with you about what you are seeing. Could you please email me at adorfman <at> reputation.com so we can set up time to talk?

Best,
Adam

 

[chadkimball]

@Adam Kaufman speaks truth.
@Adam Dorfman and @ColinTSmith can you reply with some actual info for the rest of us?

 

[Adam Kaufman]

Adam speaks truth.
@Adam Dorfman and @ColinTSmith can you reply with some actual info for the rest of us?

Which Adam?

 

[chadkimball]

Which Adam?

ha! you! edited my post to clarify

 

[Eoghan_Aircam]

Priority value we see in aggregators is doubling up feeds into the major players. E.G. Manage Bing/Apple/Google direct and because they can autonomously change listing info based off other sources, the chances of that happening decline when they see consistency across all it's feeds (primary, aggregator, website crawler, other high authority sites).

Investing in aggregators is an optimization play to help you compete on all fronts vs. competition who are most likely also syndicating but to reliably beat the competition you will need to focus on exceeding in other rank factor areas (review management, site structure, GMB health/completion scores would be 3 that come to mind).

I agree with you that long tail listing management is not worth 50-100 sites in 2021 but all depends on the price you're being asked for. Yext for years has commanded premium pricing for their bloated network which gave Uberall and others an opening to come in and beat it by significant %s. It's the exact same functionality on those long tail sites so price shop it around and base most of your decision on who you think will get the most out of the channels that matter. If it's a couple $ per location for the whole long tail network or aggregator syndication, the ROI is there. If it's higher, you're being sold a bloated price.

Re: Foursquare,

Foursquare recently switched to be solely a syndication play. When you pay a vendor to manage Foursquare, you're actually managing your data in Foursquare's database that they license to Uber, Twitter, Airbnb, Snapchat and several others. If your data isn't in their database, very high chance you'll be more inaccurate on those platforms. What Foursquare did stop doing is letting non-superusers update listings on Foursquare.com directly. An odd move but a non-impacting one as Foursquare.com gets very little traffic these days and doesn't rank as high as other local sites on SERPs.