SynUp - Seeking An Updated Assessment

[Equilibrium]

I read through some of the old threads on SynUp and want to get some updated opinions of the tool today. I am interested in NAP syndication and possibly citation management. I am cost sensitive. I am not inclined to Yext at any price given the suggestion that they remove listings upon termination of a license. I am also reading that, upon termination, MOZ Local clears listings. What is an appropriate fee per company with SynUp as it appears the market price is quite variable?

 

[BipperMedia]

Hi - and great question about Synup, and I just wanted to share my thoughts quickly.

In general, I group Synup, Yext, and Moz Local all in the same category --- API driven citation distribution and listing management.

As such, I do not recommend them for a couple of reasons:

1 - API distribution means that content is being automatically published... and as I'm sure you know, Google does not favor content that's auto-generated and auto-published.

Let me explain quickly what I mean by / how API's are auto publishing content.

The API is the platform's connection to the partner sites. For example, Yext has a network of partners that they distribute your business info to... like Baidu Maps, 8coupons, ABLocal, etc... the API connection to these partner sites is how the Yext platform auto-publishes your business info on these partner network sites.

The content that's being auto-generation / auto-published is your citation or business information.

Again, Google does not look favorably on any platform that auto generates / auto publishes content.

2 - The indexation rate is extremely low, which means only small percentage of your citations ever get crawled and indexed by Google.

We recently did a study on the indexation rate for one of our client's that was using Yext.

According to our research, less than 20% of the total published citations from the Yext network were actually indexed in Google.

To put it simply, if Google doesn't crawl and index your citation / profile on a partner site, then it's as if that citation doesn't exist.

Google has to crawl and index the citation in order for that citation to deliver any location authority back to your business listing.

3 - As you mentioned in your question... these API platforms are notorious for deleting your listing if / when you cancel.

To be fair, these API platforms aren't actually deleting your listing -- they are just cutting off their API connection which means you are no longer being fed to the network partner site (but we can just call it being deleted for simplicity sake).

I hope this reply is helpful -- let me know if you have any questions on any of the above.

Thank you again

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Hi - and great question about Synup, and I just wanted to share my thoughts quickly.

In general, I group Synup, Yext, and Moz Local all in the same category --- API driven citation distribution and listing management.

As such, I do not recommend them for a couple of reasons:

1 - API distribution means that content is being automatically published... and as I'm sure you know, Google does not favor content that's auto-generated and auto-published.

Let me explain quickly what I mean by / how API's are auto publishing content.

The API is the platform's connection to the partner sites. For example, Yext has a network of partners that they distribute your business info to... like Baidu Maps, 8coupons, ABLocal, etc... the API connection to these partner sites is how the Yext platform auto-publishes your business info on these partner network sites.

The content that's being auto-generation / auto-published is your citation or business information.

Again, Google does not look favorably on any platform that auto generates / auto publishes content.

2 - The indexation rate is extremely low, which means only small percentage of your citations ever get crawled and indexed by Google.

We recently did a study on the indexation rate for one of our client's that was using Yext.

According to our research, less than 20% of the total published citations from the Yext network were actually indexed in Google.

To put it simply, if Google doesn't crawl and index your citation / profile on a partner site, then it's as if that citation doesn't exist.

Google has to crawl and index the citation in order for that citation to deliver any location authority back to your business listing.

3 - As you mentioned in your question... these API platforms are notorious for deleting your listing if / when you cancel.

To be fair, these API platforms aren't actually deleting your listing -- they are just cutting off their API connection which means you are no longer being fed to the network partner site (but we can just call it being deleted for simplicity sake).

I hope this reply is helpful -- let me know if you have any questions on any of the above.

Thank you again

I agree with you that Yext and others that charge a substantial annual fee is not the way to go.

Keep in mind though that it's hard for Google to tell if a business listing is a part of the Yext network or not natively in their algorithm. Sure, they could code for it, but I doubt they do that. The only indicators would be duplicate content but that's true for any citation service. They use the same description, etc.

Indexation rate is low for all services. Google doesn't like copied content, which citations usually are copied content. Also, almost all business listing sites are low quality sites. Which means Google isn't going to index content there anyway typically, which includes your listing. We used to submit listings for indexation but even when they got indexed, they could fall out, because of the low quality. Indexation is a citation service-wide issue. We used to believe in submitting your listings to be indexed but we're currently in the process of seeing if this is actually hurting more than helping. Forcing Google to crawl listings back to back of the same company could possibly look fishy and look like you're gaming the system. They did take down the GSC "submit URL" tool after all because of this type of thing. Then there's also the fact that Google can crawl a listing, follow links, but still not index the listing itself. So just because the listing is not indexed doesn't mean it's not working. But does having your listings stick in the index lean to a certain amount of quality and raise the value of the listing? Who knows. There's a ton to consider here. But indexation issues are a citation service-wide issue for sure. Not just an API citation service issue.

Definitely agree on your 3rd point. That's the killer. Well said.

After all that, for the original question, I have no experience with Synup unfortunately haha. We run in the same circles sometimes since we have a business listing service as well but can't say I've used them. I'd also be interested to know someone who is using them and how it's going.

 

[Equilibrium]

Thanks for your replies and thoughtful responses. So it would seem that my SynUp license should be non-renewed and going forward all citations manually maintained. Is there anything that I might do to increase the odds that Google indexes them?

 

[BipperMedia]

Hi @JoshuaMackens -- all fair points indeed.

The biggest goal I was trying to achieve is to draw the distinction between an API platform (Yext, Synup, etc...) and doing everything by hand (manual).

I do agree, if you have... say... over 1,500 locations or so - you obviously need to leverage technology to help you with your listing management workflow and API platforms are a great solution for that.

But even in that situation, I still would not sync my GMB to their platform because then you run a HUGE risk (actually, more than likely would happen) of your GMB's primary category getting overwritten by something else... i.e. your primary category would be changed since you've synced your GMB to their platform.

Even if you are #1 in the map pack, when the GMB sync changes your primary category, you can expect to drop no less than 10 - 20 positions in Google Maps... in essence, you will go from #1 to nowhere to be found (speaking from experience with Yext).

So even in large scale location management, I would still do what I had to do to ensure a certain level of human QC interaction (quality control) in the overall workflow.... again, one slight change in the primary category can have devastating implications.

And regardless of whether you are using Synup or Yext, you are still limited to their partner network sites.

I don't know what the counts are currently, but let's just say Yext has 70 partner sites and Synup has 60 partner sites. Heck, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they have 100 partner sites.

Now that we are citation distribution manually, we can achieve 2X the number of authoritative sites in just our first round of distribution.

This isn't even counting the volume of citations that are coming for niche business categories and niche metro area citations.

I don't know - I don't want to completely / 100% come against the API solutions... however, the more we see the results with a hybrid approach (manual + platforms), the less relevant -- and in fact the more dangerous -- these API platforms are becoming (again, I'm speaking from my perspective and experience).

Thank you again for the dialogue!

And I love this forum... because it's a rare occasion indeed that I can have these level of dialogue with this type of work! So thank you for that!.

Bobby

 

[BipperMedia]

Thanks for your replies and thoughtful responses. So it would seem that my SynUp license should be non-renewed and going forward all citations manually maintained. Is there anything that I might do to increase the odds that Google indexes them?

Yes, create a sitemap on your client's website, then apply what I refer to as an 80/20 rule.

So take your entire list of citations / profiles, paste the entire list in ahrefs, download the results as a csv, then sort the list form highest to lower DR.... then, take the top 20% and add those to your sitemap page on your client's site.... then submit that URL via GSC.

The reason we do this is because we try to avoid a huge influx of outbound links that are suddenly coming from our client's website. So just starting with the top 20% keeps the volume low, but it's also accounting for the 80th percentile of location authority potential from your entire list.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Hi @JoshuaMackens -- all fair points indeed.

The biggest goal I was trying to achieve is to draw the distinction between an API platform (Yext, Synup, etc...) and doing everything by hand (manual).

I do agree, if you have... say... over 1,500 locations or so - you obviously need to leverage technology to help you with your listing management workflow and API platforms are a great solution for that.

But even in that situation, I still would not sync my GMB to their platform because then you run a HUGE risk (actually, more than likely would happen) of your GMB's primary category getting overwritten by something else... i.e. your primary category would be changed since you've synced your GMB to their platform.

Even if you are #1 in the map pack, when the GMB sync changes your primary category, you can expect to drop no less than 10 - 20 positions in Google Maps... in essence, you will go from #1 to nowhere to be found (speaking from experience with Yext).

So even in large scale location management, I would still do what I had to do to ensure a certain level of human QC interaction (quality control) in the overall workflow.... again, one slight change in the primary category can have devastating implications.

And regardless of whether you are using Synup or Yext, you are still limited to their partner network sites.

I don't know what the counts are currently, but let's just say Yext has 70 partner sites and Synup has 60 partner sites. Heck, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they have 100 partner sites.

Now that we are citation distribution manually, we can achieve 2X the number of authoritative sites in just our first round of distribution.

This isn't even counting the volume of citations that are coming for niche business categories and niche metro area citations.

I don't know - I don't want to completely / 100% come against the API solutions... however, the more we see the results with a hybrid approach (manual + platforms), the less relevant -- and in fact the more dangerous -- these API platforms are becoming (again, I'm speaking from my perspective and experience).

Thank you again for the dialogue!

And I love this forum... because it's a rare occasion indeed that I can have these level of dialogue with this type of work! So thank you for that!.

Bobby

Completely agree.

The only time I recommend SAAS business listing services is if you're scaling way beyond what a manual approach can handle.