Limit on number of citations added?

[travelincat]

Not sure if this was posted somewhere else, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how many citation sites could be requested at one time?

We don't want to make it seem as if we are trying to game the system by adding dozens of possible citation listings at once.

 

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Travelin Cat,

I highly recommend Mike Blumenthal's article on this topic, published just a couple of months back:

Can a Citation Campaign Cause a Drop in Google Local Rankings? | Understanding Google Places & Local Search

I think you'll find very good information if you read through that.

 

[David Deering]

Most Local SEO experts believe that the rate of creating citations does not really matter to Google. It takes time for the listing to go live, then for Google to "notice" it, then for them to factor it into the rankings. And Google merges the citation data in chunks every 6-10 weeks. So at least for now, the rate of creating citations does not really matter.

 

[travelincat]

Thank you both for your excellent responses. I can now understand better how to move forward with our client.
marc

 

[Phil Rozek]

Great question, travelincat. What Miriam and David said is spot-on.

I've never seen Google even appear to whack anyone for building too many citations too quickly. The big limiting factor, in my experience, is getting the citations to stick.

Especially if you?ve got a new business, not all of the sites you submit to will actually publish your listing, because you may not be listed on the ?trusted? sites ? ExpressUpdateUSA, LocalEze, YP, Yelp, CitySearch, and SuperPages in particular.

So inevitably you?ll need to loop back and see which listings stuck and resubmit to the ones that didn?t. The downside of doing too many citations at once is your batting average simply won?t be as good as it might be if you nailed down the BIG sites first (see above), waited a month or two (maybe doing some citation-building in the meantime, but not a ton), and then plugged away at those dozens of other citations to your heart?s content.

 

[David Deering]

That's interesting, Phil, but I guess it does make a lot of sense. So Phil and Linda and to anyone else who might know, would it help any to build a link or two to the actual listing? Does that affect whether or not it sticks or benefit it in any other way?