Localeze Enhanced Listing?

[Chris Ratchford]

I have a client who has a mess of citations. Wrong addresses, old associates, and staff members associated w/ listings.

We're going to claim their listing w/ Acxiom's Business Listing Manager and Infogroup but would like to know more about Localeze's Enhanced Listing service.

It's $297/yr.

 

[Chris Alphen]

Hi Chris
I'd like to learn more about all 3 of these as well.

Just to let you know; I had conversations with Localeze and actually went through the process and became an authorized channel partner. This was about 6 months ago. It looks like they have since merged or consolidated with Neustar.

I never actually used the paid model but I was able to negotiate a much better fee. If i were you I would contact them and try to get authorized at a much, much lower fee per listing than the $297.

 

[Chris Ratchford]

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Chris,

I've used the Localeze Enhanced service before. If you are considering it for the sole purpose of helping clean up listings I wouldn't bother.

We have done quite a lot of testing and we have concluded that doing an enhanced listing won't clean up data issues on the directories that it feeds to. Especially if it has to do with duplicates.

It does have it's benefits though.

Here's a PDF I found that shows the speed of data updates at major local search engines:

http://getlisted.org/resources/listing_time_to_live.pdf

 

[Chris Ratchford]

Thanks Colan,

That timeline is such a great tool. I've had to show that to a few clients whose expectations needed to be reeled in when it comes to cleaning up bad listings.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

You would have seen that at Local University NYC, right?

I believe we were sitting at the same table.

 

[Chris Ratchford]

Yep- that was me.

I can't recall where I saw that. I guess that's where I did.

Correct me if I'm wrong- but Localeze doen't offer a basic package anymore? Right?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Last I checked they do.

However, the e-mail that the account is created with has to match the business e-mail of the listing that's claimed in the account. Plus it has to be phone verified. Last I checked, anyway.

So this would be another benefit of having a paid account. You can claim and enhance until the sum comes up without having to do any phone verification.

 

[cptravers]

Feeding into all these databases on a premium manner is the right answer for sure - it gets you trusted source status, but you should also look at having owner verified listings (claiming) on all the key sites as well such as Google+Local, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp etc to lock out errors that creep in. This can be a lot of work, scheduling with the clients - at UBL.org we are getting an increasing interest in the package we offer that goes to all the main databases and uses a team to coordinate the verification for all the main sites (for under 150 bucks total, fyi).

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Chris, welcome and Happy Holidays!

Thanks for weighing in!

It may be a little quiet here around the Holidays, but after 1st of year when it picks up again, please feel free to post an overview of all the UBL services in the Tools section of the forum. Screen shots, links, whatever you need to post, in order to share anything members here need to know about your service offerings would be great!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Chris,

If you didn't know, you can do up to 3 FREE ACXIOM listings in an account before you have to start paying.

 

[MichaelJ]

Don't know if it's still available after merger, but Localeze used to offer the enhanced package for $100 ea - if you commit to 15 listings per year

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Don't know if it's still available after merger, but Localeze used to offer the enhanced package for $100 ea - if you commit to 15 listings per year

I believe it's still 15 listings but it's not per year. You pay $1,500 up front and get 15 listings at $100 a piece. Then, you start to get them at $50 per listing.

It's worth it. We're currently about to go into that agreement but are trying to offset the cost. Chris, if you want to pay less than the $297, get in contact with me and we can probably figure something out.

joshua.mackens AT tutelarymarketing DOT com

 

[JoyHawkins]

We got a deal cheaper than that by purchasing 100 listings. I still wouldn't recommend it. I honestly saw zero benefit from it and like Colan mentioned, we tracked it really well. The fee also re-occurs annually which I find really annoying.

I'm all for paying for services that actually do something

 

[pwhite078]

This is some great information! I'm hoping that someone might be able to help me understand a few things ...

It's my understanding that out of UBL, Localeze, Infogroup, and Axciom, only UBL claims the listings for you and provides you with login credentials. And ... Localeze, Infogroup, and Axciom only take the listing information you provide and send it to different channels, however, you would still need to manually claim the listing on each site (Yelp, YP.com, Local.com, etc.). From what I've read, it seems like the benefit of submitting to Localeze, Infogroup, and Axciom is a "trust factor" that these sites have with these three data providers, which could in turn give you a little boost in local serps.

Is the above accurate?

Also, I've read that these data providers send out listing information to miscellaneous channels such as mobile apps and in-car navigation systems. If someone was to only manually claim listings and by-pass Localeze, Infogroup, and Axciom, how likely is it for that business to still be found in these miscellaneous channels?

I've read a ton of material and even spoken to many of these companies, however, I'm still having a hard time understanding any additional value of these data providers (outside of the ability to update multiple listings from a control panel and/or having enhanced listings). Has anyone found it more beneficial to just claim and maintain their listings manually without the help of these tools? And ... When looking to build a solid foundation for local seo, how crucial is it to use Localeze, Infogroup, and Axciom?

I would really love to hear what you've discovered in your travels and thank you for your responses.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

If you want to get found on apps and nav systems and things like that it sounds like you want to do paid search advertising. Google Adwords puts ads on apps and other things like that depending on what kinds of display campaigns you set up. I'll agree with Joy and say there is minimal benefit from using these services. You'd get better leads to paid search advertising than to pay these directory sites. Citations play a part in a good local ranking, but it definitely seems like onsite/organic factors are pushing the needle more.

You definitely need to put money towards an something that will be more beneficial in helping both the client's website and their local ranking. These services are by no means a silver bullet for local, even though they sometimes promote themselves as such.

 

[pwhite078]

Thanks for the reply. I probably should have clarified more when I said "apps and in-car navigation systems". I'm really referring to map apps (such as the Places app for Android), and others found in 3rd party car GPS devices as well as in-dashboard vehicle navigation systems.

My understanding is that some of these data aggregators actually provide listing information to these systems so that people "on the go" can find a business, whether it be a restaurant, massage therapist, etc.

I'm looking at this from a bit of a different standpoint than on-page seo, paid advertising, lead generation, etc. since my only task is to understand the best way to get listed in these different places and then create/claim the listings.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

The benefits of the 3 major data aggregators are tough to measure. I believe they are beneficial as they push out data to a lot of search directories that I'm not going to bother taking the time to go submit my information to. My NAP is still on those directories with minimal effort from me (paying and filling out one listing). I still use them and until I hear from a pro with a good base of evidence, I will probably continue to use them.

As far as navigation devices, I imagine (I do not by any stretch of the imagination know this for sure) that they are integral to getting on those devices. I think that those companies pay for their data to populate their software. Like I said, I could be completely wrong but Localeze themselves claim this on their website last time I checked.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, it's just what I do.

 

[grantbrott]

Joshua is right in what he said about the navigation sites. We just signed up with Localeze and they mentioned just what he said that many of the sites they feed are paying them for the information Localeze has so they can populate their listings with pre-existing data. I do not remember the actual names but they mentioned a few mobile sites they fed that only they feed information to at this time.

 

[pwhite078]

Thank you to everyone for your insightful replies. Does anyone have experience working with the Localeze channel partner program? I've had a bit of a frustrating time just trying to contact and obtain information about this program from Localeze.

I'd definitely love to hear from Joy or Joshua (or anyone else) to learn more about your experience with it.

Thank you!