Wow - Darren Shaw's Citation presentation from Moz

[HoosierBuff]

Check this out (Joy tweeted this yesterday)

Moz Local 2016 - Darren Shaw - Citation Investigation!

A very interesting study that puts some metrics around the various publishing options, moz local, yext, whitespark, axciom, infogroup etc. . .

I think this was really great work, and entirely fascinating.

I was kind of blown away by how the manual listings (whitespark) got indexed at a much higher rate than anything else. Really surprising to see.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Re: Wow - Darren Shaw's presentation from Moz

Thanks so much for sharing HoosierBuff!

I saw the mention and was trying to get time to head over to read it.
But coming from Darren, you know it has to be great!

 

[JoyHawkins]

Re: Wow - Darren Shaw's presentation from Moz

Yeah this presentation was fantastic! I wish I was there to hear it in person. I love how they compared manual citation building to Yext & Moz. Looks like no matter what service you use, manual building would always be a good option. It'd be interesting to hear Yext's thoughts on why so many of their listings don't get indexed.

 

[fabaziou]

Re: Wow - Darren Shaw's presentation from Moz

A great presentation indeed!
I look forward to seeing updated results as Darren continues to track indexation.
Is it still worth investing in aggregator submissions if you are manually building citations or subscribing to Moz Local or Yext? Hopefully we'll get closer to answer by the end of this test.

 

[James Watt]

Wow, that was a killer post. Second that that would have been great to hear in person. I love seeing data backed stuff like this, definitely makes me feel a little more confident with the choices I make for clients.

 

[dlredd]

Re: Wow - Darren Shaw's presentation from Moz

A great presentation indeed!
I look forward to seeing updated results as Darren continues to track indexation.
Is it still worth investing in aggregator submissions if you are manually building citations or subscribing to Moz Local or Yext? Hopefully we'll get closer to answer by the end of this test.

I've wondered about the aggregators as well. It looked like if you want exposure on the aggregators it works to use mozlocal, then do the rest manually.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Re: Wow - Darren Shaw's presentation from Moz

I can confirm it was an excellent presentation to see in-person - classic Darren Dynamite.

He plans to keep monitoring those "businesses," and to do follow-up research. Definitely let Darren know if you have any thoughts on what might be interesting further research.

 

[Laustin1878]

Re: Wow - Darren Shaw's presentation from Moz

Will there be an audio version of the presentation released or does that defeat the purpose?

 

[Tim Colling]

That's a great question, Lloyd. I was wondering the same thing. The slides are great but I'd speculate that Darren threw in a bunch of other commentary during his talk that would be very valuable.

 

[whitespark]

Aw, thanks everyone! Glad you found the presentation useful and interesting. Just a few responses to some of the comments and questions here:

1) I think that the low number of indexed Yext citations reflects the poor quality of a large percentage of sites in their network. These sites have low authority, so Google doesn't crawl them very deeply. Citations never get found, and as such, don't offer much benefit to your local search efforts.

2) Great to meet you, Florent! If you're doing Moz Local, there is no need to do the data aggregators individually. I do think you still want to supplement with manual submissions as well, if possible. I realize that it's not always possible when you're dealing with thousands of locations, but it may be worth manually working on specific locations that you want to give a boost to.

3) Moz will make the videos available for purchase.

Any other questions, just post them here and I'll answer!

 

[Tim Colling]

...If you're doing Moz Local, there is no need to do the data aggregators individually. I do think you still want to supplement with manual submissions as well, if possible...

So, here's a follow up question:

I really hate having to work with citations that require that the client be prepared to take a verification call at the location's phone number. If we use Moz Local for a location, does that remove most of the need for such confirmation calls?

 

[whitespark]

Great question, Tim. Yes, if you use moz local, you can get around the need to phone verify the listings. You're bypassing the phone verification process because Moz is a trusted data provider. There are other benefits too. Here's the list of them:
1) No need to phone verify
2) Enhanced listing with additional information
3) The listing goes into "managed" status, which essentially "locks" it from being updated by another data source. You don't get this protection with a basic listing.