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Much of the content that gets written about #citations has a US focus and some of the best companies that deal with citations are based either there or in Canada (except for our own BrightLocal of course!). Wanted to post how I see things currently here in the UK and see if anyone from across the pond recognises any similarities.
Structured citations have always been important for local search. If you also add in Google My Business and reviews then that's over a third of the main ranking factors sorted, according to the annual Moz list. Over the past 15-18 months I've noticed more companies offering local listings management or local directory submission services. It's great that local search is becoming more publicised but I think that some of the entries into the market may end up doing more harm than good.
Yext has been around for a while, as has UBL. Even Moz has now entered the local listings market. Here in the UK we've got larger traditional directories who are also hopping in. There's ThomsonLocal (Get Me Everywhere), Scoot (SubmitTrakz) and Infoserve, who have been providing data for Yahoo, CityVisitor and others for a while now. No doubt there are others too.
Services vary to a point, with the Scoot product claiming to cover over 550 directories! With Get Me Everywhere, for example, a business can pay ?80 per month and get listed with "in excess of 200 parners". I looked into it a little more and no, they don't check for #duplicates or any older listings that may exists. They just create fresh listings. Then if you decide to stop paying they'll delete the main listing.
So for any business that doesn't know any better and, let's be honest, some agencies who offer local without properly understanding it, they're paying a smidge under ?500 a year to have duplicate listings created right across the web.
So a couple of questions:
Am thinking of using some of this in a blog post I'm working on so would really value any input from the members here.
Structured citations have always been important for local search. If you also add in Google My Business and reviews then that's over a third of the main ranking factors sorted, according to the annual Moz list. Over the past 15-18 months I've noticed more companies offering local listings management or local directory submission services. It's great that local search is becoming more publicised but I think that some of the entries into the market may end up doing more harm than good.
Yext has been around for a while, as has UBL. Even Moz has now entered the local listings market. Here in the UK we've got larger traditional directories who are also hopping in. There's ThomsonLocal (Get Me Everywhere), Scoot (SubmitTrakz) and Infoserve, who have been providing data for Yahoo, CityVisitor and others for a while now. No doubt there are others too.
Services vary to a point, with the Scoot product claiming to cover over 550 directories! With Get Me Everywhere, for example, a business can pay ?80 per month and get listed with "in excess of 200 parners". I looked into it a little more and no, they don't check for #duplicates or any older listings that may exists. They just create fresh listings. Then if you decide to stop paying they'll delete the main listing.
So for any business that doesn't know any better and, let's be honest, some agencies who offer local without properly understanding it, they're paying a smidge under ?500 a year to have duplicate listings created right across the web.
So a couple of questions:
- Just how bad are duplicate citations?
- Is the only way to clean up citations manually?
Am thinking of using some of this in a blog post I'm working on so would really value any input from the members here.
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