Unable to Claim or Update iBegin Listings (Unless Using Yext)?

[Travis Van Slooten]

I've always included a listing on iBegin as a citation source for my clients. I went there today to claim/edit an existing listing and the page to submit a business or claim one is broken.

I noticed on the bottom of the listing that it's powered by Yext. Does that mean unless you're using Yext you can't do anything about iBegin listings?

iBegin doesn't even have a support line to send them a request to edit an existing listing. It seems like it's a dead directory now (outside of Yext powering it).

Travis

 

[James Watt]

Good to know. I wouldn't worry about it though, volume of citations is less important now than consistency from what I've seen, and I think we're going to be seeing a faster and faster turn around time on Google's assessment of directory value as time goes on. I feel like the goal is to hit the top 30~50 you can get at given the client's industry/city, call it good and move on to more important things. I think Brightlocal can still update that directory though if I'm remembering right? Though maybe they just haven't removed the option yet, if ibegin recently went dark.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

I agree 100% but let me ask you this...it seems the "most important directories" evolves over time. What are the top 25 directories these days?

Travis

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Travis,

Long time no chat!

Whitespark has some up-to-date lists to use as a guide:

https://whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country/

https://whitespark.ca/best-citations-by-category/us/

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Wow... Whitespark really overhauled that page. Clearly I haven't visited it in a while

The design is fantastic

 

[JoshuaMackens]

The idea that citation volume isn't important anymore seems to be a prevailing theme lately. I'm not sure where it came from and how much of it is based on actual fact vs anecdotal evidence. I'm starting to think it's anecdotal in nature vs fact since I haven't seen any studies, which is dangerous to lean on especially in an industry that is so fraught with unknown variables as SEO is.

I absolutely agree with quality over quantity but the problem is that statement is framed the wrong way, making quality and quantity mutually exclusive. In citations, luckily you can have both.

iBegin is a pretty strong directory from a DA perspective (59) so it's a good one to have.

I just spoke with Kristina, our Local Listing Ninja Product Manager, and she said that iBegin has been giving her trouble since last week. She emailed into their support and we'll see if we hear back from them.

It looks like right now it's either a phone claiming system issue or it's a website issue communicating with the phone claiming system.

Hopefully they fix it soon.

 

[James Watt]

Hey Josh,

Here's the study that got me thinking in terms of quality and consistency, but not necessarily quantity. I know you've seen this study, so take it more as a reminder that it addressed citation volume as one of the ranking factors investigated.

Local doesn't have a lot of proper data driven research being published at the moment, aside from a few studies a year there's nothing with high enough volume and rigorous enough analysis to make proper conclusions from, so I tend to take the few I see as gospel. At the end of the day though, we all have to make our own conclusions based on what we see.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

In the study it doesn't have "Total Number of Citations" as a variable.

Maybe they did include it and I just missed it? I guess it could be one of these:

• Total Verified Citations
• Avg Citation Rating
• Total Mentions

But I think those are referencing other things.

Thoughts?

 

[James Watt]

I was under the impression that 'total mentions' was the number you're looking for, though I don't know exactly what number that is or where Dan got it from. His conclusions are pretty clear in the article with regards to citations, for whatever that's worth to you.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

How was "total mentions" calculated? Is total mentions equal to total structured citations or unstructured citations, or both? All three ways present their own set of issues.

Yeah, I did read his assessment but it's anecdotal in and of itself without the data of course. In fact, when I first read it I was wondering how he was drawing that conclusion as I didn't see a place for "total citation volume". And again, how that's calculated is important.

Also, I think that while Dan may have been doing the study for marketing purposes somewhat, I imagine he was more interested in its internal implications for his business. I wouldn't be surprised (or offended) if he didn't care to explain all of it or any of it

No matter what, I'm grateful to him for doing the study. It has tons of great stuff in there. If you're reading this, thanks Dan!

 

[James Watt]

Originally, my background was in programming and physics simulation. I never went too far on the road, but I definitely spent a lot of time poring through white papers during my undergrad work. Whitepapers can superficially look dry and overly academic, but there's a reason they exhaustively list methodologies and controls, not just results. Ultimately, if you can't replicate someone else's experiment entirely from their explanation of it, then it's an incomplete description. I'm grateful for Dan's study and what he shared, but it's certainly not presented as thoroughly as it would need to be to be published academically. You're right though, I'm sure his goal was to build some research to guide his own business processes with, and to put together an incredible link bait piece. It worked, even with how it was presented, it's by far the best piece of research I've seen anyone publicly talk about in this field, I know it got a ton of attention.

Anyway, if you want the specific answers to your questions, I suppose you'll need to reach out to him directly. I'm definitely not going to shoot you down for thinking critically about industry best practices.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Originally, my background was in programming and physics simulation. I never went too far on the road, but I definitely spent a lot of time poring through white papers during my undergrad work. Whitepapers can superficially look dry and overly academic, but there's a reason they exhaustively list methodologies and controls, not just results. Ultimately, if you can't replicate someone else's experiment entirely from their explanation of it, then it's an incomplete description. I'm grateful for Dan's study and what he shared, but it's certainly not presented as thoroughly as it would need to be to be published academically. You're right though, I'm sure his goal was to build some research to guide his own business processes with, and to put together an incredible link bait piece. It worked, even with how it was presented, it's by far the best piece of research I've seen anyone publicly talk about in this field, I know it got a ton of attention.

Anyway, if you want the specific answers to your questions, I suppose you'll need to reach out to him directly. I'm definitely not going to shoot you down for thinking critically about industry best practices.

Totally agree. Definitely thankful as well.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Thanks for confirming! If you get any updates on this issue and remember this thread, please post an update. Otherwise, I'll put iBegin aside for now and circle back to it later. Hopefully by then it will be squared away.

Travis

I just spoke with Kristina, our Local Listing Ninja Product Manager, and she said that iBegin has been giving her trouble since last week. She emailed into their support and we'll see if we hear back from them.

It looks like right now it's either a phone claiming system issue or it's a website issue communicating with the phone claiming system.

Hopefully they fix it soon.

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

Thanks Colan!

Travis

Hi Travis,

Long time no chat!

Whitespark has some up-to-date lists to use as a guide:

https://whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country/

https://whitespark.ca/best-citations-by-category/us/

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Still down :/ nothing back from support yet.