Do you ping your citations?

[WineCountryCarpetCleaning]

This question may be taboo, but figured I would throw it out there. Some of these things are notoriously hard to index, does anyone use a pinging service (linklicious etc) to ping their citations?

As of yet I have not, but as I work endless hours creating them and watch them not index I have to ask, should I?

 

[JacobPuhl]

Good question - personally I don't think it's a taboo question. We're a big open family here!

We have pinged citations in the past but it was impossible to see if the ping was having any kind of affect on anything or whether those citations would have been indexed anyway. If they were going to be indexed at some point anyway, then really you are just pinging them to speed up the process. So practically, we didn't find any use for it.

In addition, I view that as a kind of "2007-2009" short term tactic. Nowadays it seems to be mostly a waste of our precious valuable time

In my experience, Google's bot is has gotten increasingly good at crawling deeper directories. If you need to ping the link still for it to get indexed (which it likely won't) then its probably not a link/citation worth having. Also check if the listing is in an iframe or something peculiar like that.

So in short, we don't do any pinging and let everything just get crawled naturally.

Hope that helps!

Jake Puhl

 

[David Deering]

It's hard to say if pinging the links would get the listings indexed any quicker, but it would make an interesting study. But it's important to realize that even if you could get your citations indexed immediately, Google will not factor them into the rankings immediately. They factor citations in bunches every 4-6 weeks, according to many local experts. So unfortunately, even if you could get a citation indexed immediately, you won't see immediate results in rankings.

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

It's hard to say if pinging the links would get the listings indexed any quicker, but it would make an interesting study. But it's important to realize that even if you could get your citations indexed immediately, Google will not factor them into the rankings immediately. They factor citations in bunches every 4-6 weeks, according to many local experts. So unfortunately, even if you could get a citation indexed immediately, you won't see immediate results in rankings.

Yes- exactly! We can find out that the citations have been indexed but it won't necessary "move the needle" very soon and (like David said) takes a while for them to show the benefit. We personally don't "ping" citations at all for this very reason. Unfortunately, it can be a waiting game and patience is a virtue for the Local SEO practitioner.

 

[WineCountryCarpetCleaning]

Appreciate the responses guys. I think you did a fantastic job of summing up the situation. If the citation isn't going to index in 4-6 weeks, it is probably worthless.

That is a useful tidbit about the citations being applied in groups every month of so.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Nah, I would absolutely not bother pinging the citations. For the reasons everyone else has said. I mean, the process takes months anyway...

This is maybe only tangentially related, but you/your clients will have to re-verify with LocalEze every few months. But that doesn't even require a phone call or postcard: it's literally a click. But that's the only step I can think of that you need to take with a listing that's already been built.

 

[WineCountryCarpetCleaning]

Appreciate the tip on localeze, also appreciate all the advice on the indexing problem. I am learning that you really have to shift your mindset and time frame when you deal with local search. It really is a slow and gradual process but once it is done the rankings are so much less volatile.

 

[Phil Rozek]

It really is a slow and gradual process but once it is done the rankings are so much less volatile.

Right on. That's one reason I don't charge clients month after month after month: If the foundation was laid properly, it's not like the house falls down once the builders pack up their tools and head home.