ExpressUpdate Claim System Half Broken

[JoshuaMackens]

Just a heads up, it looks like ExpressUpdate's claim system is halfway broken.

If your listing is already on there, you should be able to phone verify and it be just fine.

However, if you're adding a new listing it doesn't look like it's working. You add the listing and create an account. Once you do that, you phone verify. But when you phone verify, the phone verification screen just goes right back to the initial verification screen, essentially asking you to phone verify again. I did it 2-3 times and it never took me to my listing like it use to. If you look in your dashboard, the listing isn't there either.

Not really sure what to make of it but if you've been trying to do this lately and have been banging your head against the wall, don't worry. It's not just you.

But it may be just me haha. Has anyone else had this problem lately?

 

[James Watt]

I always just use Moz Local to set up a client on the big 4, stuff like this makes me happy with that choice, haha. Good luck getting it squared up Josh! Unfortunately getting citations set up easily on the important sites is the exception, rather than the rule... almost every single one can be a little bit of a pain (or at least quirky) definitely a 'do your best and take careful notes with dates' affair.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I always just use Moz Local to set up a client on the big 4, stuff like this makes me happy with that choice, haha. Good luck getting it squared up Josh! Unfortunately getting citations set up easily on the important sites is the exception, rather than the rule... almost every single one can be a little bit of a pain (or at least quirky) definitely a 'do your best and take careful notes with dates' affair.

Hey James, I use Moz Local as well for clients but I would encourage anyone who is not doing so already to check the individual ExpressUpdate listings themselves for three reasons:

1) Moz Local sometimes does not update these listings like you think they do. About 6 months ago I went through checking a client's individual listings and the ExpressUpdate listing had not been updated like it should have been. I can't remember if it just hadn't had the description, hours, etc. updated or if the information was completely wrong. I just remember thinking, "Well, I better start double checking these."

2) Moz Local also doesn't do that great with ExpressUpdate duplicates. It's worth it to check your old phone numbers and old business names as well as current phone numbers and business names to make sure there isn't a lot of incorrect info floating out there. Moz Local has gotten better at duplicates but they're not perfect and when it comes to ExpressUpdate, that seems to be especially true. If it were one of the other "big 4" I wouldn't care as much but ExpressUpdate info gets pushed out everywhere, especially to big directories that you can't directly submit to anymore like Citysearch and Yahoo. Because of this it's doubly important to be aware of this.

3) Unless something has changed in the past few months, Moz does not claim the ExpressUpdate listings for you. It's always good to lock down your listings ownership-wise for security purposes.

 

[James Watt]

Good reminder about the duplicates and potential long waits for data getting picked up. I might have been lucky with my clients (since I've gotten into the habit of keeping a closer on things at least) but I'm sure one of these days I'll have a moment like you did. And yeah, moz doesn't claim anything, so it's true that if you'd like a login and password to anything, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way. Good stuff, thanks for sharing!

 

[dudley]

James / Joshua,


I’m the GM for Moz Local, and I figured I’d help out if I can. First, thanks for sharing the level of detail on what works and doesn’t work with respect to Moz Local and Localeze.


I wanted to quickly recap what I heard as the issues:
1. Listings submitted to Infogroup are sometimes partially updated. For example, NAP might be updated but not hours, for example.
2. Duplicate discovery is incomplete.
3. Duplicate closure can take some time.


Let me know if that is not an accurate summary.


In general, we’re continually working to addressing distribution issues and our ability to deal with duplicates. In the past 6 months, we’ve made many important improvements on all fronts. In particular, Infogroup is very responsive to these issues. If you have examples, please feel free to reach out and we’ll investigate with them.


On #1: It could be that we somehow submit information in such a way that Infogroup did not accept it — that’s rare but a possibility. Infogroup also manually verify some updates so it’s possible that it failed a verification because the human didn’t find it on the listing’s website. In any event, these types of failures are interesting to us and we’d like to investigate with Infogroup why that happens.


On #2. We discover duplicates by looking at variations of name, phone, and zip. However, we also provide our customers the ability to provide “aliases” to give us hints about other name, phone and zip combinations to use to uncover additional duplicates. If we can’t auto find it, at the very least we can help close them once we’ve been given a hint.


I hope that helps. Feel free to reach out.


Thanks,
Dudley

 

[Vijay Marathe]

Yes, i too faced the same problem that Joshua encountered while adding a new listing.

Moreover, when i try to edit a freshly verified listing, the changes made do not seem to stick after i hit save - of course i take care to activate the green 'Confirm' button below each field.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Yes, i too faced the same problem that Joshua encountered while adding a new listing.

Moreover, when i try to edit a freshly verified listing, the changes made do not seem to stick after i hit save - of course i take care to activate the green 'Confirm' button below each field.

Hey Vijay, this just started happening to us this week. Interesting development.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

James / Joshua,


I?m the GM for Moz Local, and I figured I?d help out if I can. First, thanks for sharing the level of detail on what works and doesn?t work with respect to Moz Local and Localeze.


I wanted to quickly recap what I heard as the issues:
1. Listings submitted to Infogroup are sometimes partially updated. For example, NAP might be updated but not hours, for example.
2. Duplicate discovery is incomplete.
3. Duplicate closure can take some time.


Let me know if that is not an accurate summary.


In general, we?re continually working to addressing distribution issues and our ability to deal with duplicates. In the past 6 months, we?ve made many important improvements on all fronts. In particular, Infogroup is very responsive to these issues. If you have examples, please feel free to reach out and we?ll investigate with them.


On #1: It could be that we somehow submit information in such a way that Infogroup did not accept it ? that?s rare but a possibility. Infogroup also manually verify some updates so it?s possible that it failed a verification because the human didn?t find it on the listing?s website. In any event, these types of failures are interesting to us and we?d like to investigate with Infogroup why that happens.


On #2. We discover duplicates by looking at variations of name, phone, and zip. However, we also provide our customers the ability to provide ?aliases? to give us hints about other name, phone and zip combinations to use to uncover additional duplicates. If we can?t auto find it, at the very least we can help close them once we?ve been given a hint.


I hope that helps. Feel free to reach out.


Thanks,
Dudley

Hey Dudley,

All of my information I mentioned about Moz Local is about 6 months old. You may have already taken care of the issues I faced! Sorry, I know that's not much help.

 

[James Watt]

Thanks Dudley! I did a quick audit of the clients I've got on moz local after Justin's comments, and they all looked good on express update as far as I saw, though none of them had past duplicate issues. Never hurts to double check, but moz seems to be working good for that side of things for me so far at least.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Hey Dudley,

I went and looked at a client of mine in Moz Local just to check out ExpressUpdate.

The description and other rich information doesn't look like it passed through to ExpressUpdate. This would be 1 advantage to claiming ExpressUpdate separately.

Also, there is a URL parameter on the business website pushed to ExpressUpdate from Moz Local. I'm told it's there for tracking purposes but I would rather not have that attached to the website. Even though it is supposed to be (and I am sure it is) harmless, there are a million things that can go wrong with rankings. When it comes to troubleshooting, I'm a minimalist and like to tick off as many boxes as possible. Having a URL parameter pushed out from Moz Local to ExpressUpdate (and possible the other 3 data aggregators) who pushed out to hundreds of aggregators creates one more troubleshooting box I would like to avoid. This would be another reason for me to claim ExpressUpdate separately.

 

[AT Marketing]

Just a heads up, it looks like ExpressUpdate's claim system is halfway broken.

If your listing is already on there, you should be able to phone verify and it be just fine.

However, if you're adding a new listing it doesn't look like it's working. You add the listing and create an account. Once you do that, you phone verify. But when you phone verify, the phone verification screen just goes right back to the initial verification screen, essentially asking you to phone verify again. I did it 2-3 times and it never took me to my listing like it use to. If you look in your dashboard, the listing isn't there either.

Not really sure what to make of it but if you've been trying to do this lately and have been banging your head against the wall, don't worry. It's not just you.

But it may be just me haha. Has anyone else had this problem lately?

I had the same problem and thought it was just me and decided to call Express Update for help. After speaking with a lady that kept telling me everything was fine all I had to do is wait 2 weeks, then come back and do a search in the system by telephone number to see it the listing was there and claim it if it was.

2 weeks later, no listing and the phone verification is still not working.

Called in again and this time I was a little more persistent and went into every detail of the process. This time they realized they had an issue and said they would report it. That was all most a month ago.

Called in again and they manually enter the information and the listing went live.

They did say a several others have mentioned the issue.

 

[HoosierBuff]

Also, there is a URL parameter on the business website pushed to ExpressUpdate from Moz Local. I'm told it's there for tracking purposes but I would rather not have that attached to the website.

ohhhhhhhhhhhh! So that's what those parameters showing up all over the place are.

Hey Dudley, they are cool and all, but, can you please remove them? I'd rather not risk it, or explain to the customer what that is.

 

[joedillon68]

I've had issues with InfoExpress as well.

Mine have been:
1. Not "accepting" my updates even though I made them thru the InfoExpress interface
2. have listings mysteriously change - that is previous updates which appeared in the past are no longer appearing.
3. Phone verification not working.

The only way I've been able to get help is by e-mailing ContentFeedback@infogroup.com. yes, it does take a few weeks to see results but calling in has never done me any good. I guess they don't feel like entering a ticket when you call but when you e-mail the system automatically tracks it and they have to respond!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

It also looks like the website is down as of today.

I couldn't access it on the desktop, laptop, or tablet but was able to access it by phone. Very interesting.

 

[AT Marketing]

Must be up now, I was able to login.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Must just be me then. I get a blank page.

 

[dking007]

Any news from anyone on expressupdate not working for claiming a new listing?

I have seen this issue 3 months ago and still hope for a resolution, this really sucks, how can a million or billion $ company take 3 plus months to fix something so that they can sell your data later to a bazillion marketers anyway

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Any news from anyone on expressupdate not working for claiming a new listing?

I have seen this issue 3 months ago and still hope for a resolution, this really sucks, how can a million or billion $ company take 3 plus months to fix something so that they can sell your data later to a bazillion marketers anyway

I doubt it's working.

ExpressUpdate is baffling. They seem to want good data (personally calling and verifying data accuracy for example) but then they don't fix the claim system for 3 months.

Who knows with them.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

ohhhhhhhhhhhh! So that's what those parameters showing up all over the place are.

Hey Dudley, they are cool and all, but, can you please remove them? I'd rather not risk it, or explain to the customer what that is.

Tracking parameters on URLs really won't hurt you. Moz local might need those parameters to accurately report clicks, so I doubt they'll be OK removing one-off (but it never hurts to ask). I think the only way tracking parameters on a URL will hurt you is if you have specific rule-based analytics reporting internally. The only case I've had that issue is in my current position at DSG, our analytics team reported misappropriated traffic because a rule wasn't in place to catch the parameters. It didn't affect search engine traffic or ranking, just how the traffic was reported internally.

As long as you can accurately explain what the parameters are, and what the purpose is, I don't see how those could be an issue.

 

[dking007]

I doubt it's working.

ExpressUpdate is baffling. They seem to want good data (personally calling and verifying data accuracy for example) but then they don't fix the claim system for 3 months.

Who knows with them.

I have a feeling that we are in a loop with verification because we are using the same ip to claim many listings. I wonder if this is happening to other people claiming a listing on a "clean" ip and for the 1st time.

What I am saying is that maybe the system is not broken but blocking us, what do you think?

I have run many tests and cannot figure out what is tripping up my submission, Is it the ip?
Is it my voip phone line?
Is it the company name (not registered by the state)?
Is it the email used when registering?
Is it the address of the business (private house)?

Anyway, just my two cents on a topic that is driving me nuts in the last 3-4 months