Whether you manage a single local listing or hundreds, the consistency of your NAP data across the web can either help grow your business, or serve as a barrier to customer discovery. Find out right now if there are any accuracy issues with your NAP.
With answers for business owners, SEOs dabbling in local search, and those at enterprise-level searching for a broad solution, Moz Local's George Freitag stars in this week's Whiteboard Friday covering all the boons and secrets of listing accuracy (give him a warm welcome, folks!).
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Video Transcription
Hi. My name is George Freitag with Moz Local, and today I wanted to talk about listing accuracy. The reason why I wanted to talk about it was because it's one of those topics that is brought up a lot in local search. If you work in local search directly or if you work with an agency or an SEO on local search, it's one of those things that you've probably heard a lot about, you understand it's something you have to do, you understand that it's very important because it is, but you might not understand exactly what it means, why it's important, how come you have to do it, or why it takes as much time as it does. So today, I wanted to spend the time to go over why listing accuracy is important, how it works and how you can do that.
So why aren't you? How come your clients, your competitors are on this search result, but you aren't? It has to do with trust.
A story about trust
So to demonstrate why trust is so important, I want to go over a quick story about me when I was looking for a bank a few years ago. I don't go to the bank that often. So when it came time, I got out my phone, punched out Google Maps, and then proceeded to walk for the next seven blocks with my face buried in my phone, checking my Twitter and email and whatever. When the little lady inside told me I'd arrived, I looked up and saw that the place was closed. Not even just closed for the day. It was closed altogether.
So that is Google's greatest fear, because if there's one reason why you, me, anyone will stop using Google is if that happens over and over again. If I repeatedly get sent to businesses that don't exist, if I try to call them and the call information is incorrect, then I'm going to stop using Google, and so Google takes that very seriously.
In fact, Google is putting itself even more on the line with additional business information. If you've done a local search lately, and I assume that you have if you've watched this video, you'll see that in this Knowledge Graph they're giving you all sorts of information. They're telling you whether or not the store is open. They're linking you to reviews. They are just giving a ton of information in their local search results. And if they're not confident on all the information they have, then they're not going to show it, because if they repeatedly show that a place is closed when it's not, then you're going to stop using Google. So Google takes trust very seriously.
Listing accuracy
So how does Google determine trust? That is where listing accuracy comes into play. Listing accuracy is Google's method for determining whether or not it can trust a local business search result.
So to show how that works, let's go over here and say this is your business and let's say that you've already set up your Google My Business page. You've already set up your name, address, phone, your NAP. If you haven't done anything along those lines, there's plenty of information on our website and on other places online about how to do that.
But let's say that you've already set up your Google My Business. It's absolutely perfect with your business name, all your hours, all the images are filled out, and it's still not showing up here. Well, one of the reasons may be because of this concept of listing accuracy.
So here's your listing, but what you might not know of or you might be kind of aware of are these other slight variations that exist elsewhere online, and these might just exist somewhere. So let's say you've got one variation where the address is slightly different, like it's a suite number that you don't want to have, but sometimes it mentions a suite number. Maybe it's an old phone number or an old cell phone number that somehow got indexed or an old tracking number. Maybe it's just some general bad information, just about specifically where you are or a website that's slightly different.
Then over here, you've got another variation. Maybe this is a different business name. Maybe this is a business that was in your location before you moved in. So these places just sort of exist out there on the web somewhere, and they might even be in a place that you don't even know about. They might be on an obscure website that you don't ever see, and you're not really that worried about because it's something that you know isn't really being seen by your customers.
So why should you worry about it? Why should you care about a website that's got bad information, that's on a source that you're never going to go to, you know your customers are never going to go to and probably isn't driving that much traffic your website instead? Well, it has to do with this concept of listing accuracy, because, again, this is how Google is measuring how much it can trust your information.
The local ecosystem
So over here we've got what we call the local ecosystem. You might've seen our graphic on our website, which sort of explains what the different data sources are. I just want to demonstrate how it works.
So for your listing, Google can get its information from a bunch of different places. One of them, of course, is you. So this is you providing your information directly to Google My Business. This can also be the "Report a problem" in Google Maps or Google Mapmaker.
But in addition to that, it's got all these other places that Google knows it can get business information from, and some of these places provide information directly to Google through feeds and some of them Google just knows about because it can crawl them (because basically it can just crawl anything on the web). These are places like:
- Phone directories
- Phone books
- Business directories for specific businesses like OpenTable or Healthgrades
- Review sites like Citysearch, Insider Pages
- News sites
- A restaurant review about your business
- Government websites
Each time one of these places mentions your business information, it increases the confidence that Google has in the information that you provided. So this place and this place both mention you; that works to increase the confidence that Google has in the business information that you provided, making it more likely for it to show your business in its search results. So the more times it mentions you, the greater confidence it has in your information.
But if you have these other variations sort of floating around out there, then all of a sudden Google's got some conflicting sources about your business information. So let's say that all these places are mentioning you the way that you want to be mentioned, but these places are giving slight variations. So all of a sudden Google's getting two different addresses, and so it's becoming a little bit less confident in the information that you've provided. Maybe now this place is giving a completely different phone number. So now it doesn't really want to show you because it doesn't want to have that call button on your search result.
Each time it mentions one of these, it decreases the amount of confidence, and you also lose the opportunity to build confidence in your website. In fact, if there's enough sources out here saying one thing that are contradictory to what you're saying in your own Google My Business page, these places can actually override what you're providing and Google will deem them more trustworthy than the information that you're directly providing to them. So if all these places are saying that you're open 'til six and you're telling Google you're open 'til eight, all of a sudden Google is telling everyone that you're closed when you're not, which can be absolutely detrimental to your business.
So how do you fix this and what you do about it? Well, it should be pretty clear from this graph. You want to find all these instances of Google locating business information that is not consistent with you and making it consistent. You're going to go out and find the source that's pointing at one of these variations, fix it so it's pointing at your own place. Then all of a sudden, instead of taking away from the confidence and trust Google has in your listing, it's building towards it.
Finding NAP variations
The way that you find this variation, it can just be through doing some pretty straightforward Google search. So let's go down here to some examples. You're going to use a quoted search to look for different types of information.
If you already know about some bad information out there, you already know that there's like an old business name that you used to go under or a variation of your address, you can just do a quoted search for that information directly, find all the sources that bring up that bad information, go to the website, fix it, and then move on. All along you're building the trust that Google has in your business listing.
For those places that you're not yet sure about, like I said, there might be some directories that you don't even know about or there might be some variations of your business information that you might not be aware of, so you can't search for it directly, the best way to do that is to search for your phone number in different formats.
Darren Shaw of Whitespark did a great Whiteboard Friday just a few weeks ago about exactly this, about how to find all of your NAP variations in Google. I recommend reading it if you want to follow through with this.
There are also some tools you can use. Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide has a Chrome plug-in, called Local Citation Finder*, that will just open up a whole bunch of different variations of your business information in different Chrome tabs and can really, really help with that.
*Editor's note: The tool mentioned here is actually called the NAP Hunter Chrome Extension, but Whitespark's Local Citation Finder tool is another fantastic resource to keep in your local SEO toolkit. ;-)
Enterprise-level solutions for cleaning up NAP consistency
So this might work if you've got one, a couple dozen, or maybe a hundred or so businesses. You can probably do this by hand and find all these places yourself. But if you have a ton of businesses — a few hundred or even a few thousand businesses — then this is not that scalable all of a sudden, and then it's time to move to one of these solutions where you're working with some of the primary data sources.
So these are the sources that provide the information to all of these places. The big ones are Localeze, Neustar, Infogroup, Acxiom, and Factual. We're getting into the paid options right now. But basically, some of these places have been around for decades. They're the ones who provided the phone books with their information. You might have gone to Yelp and tried to sign up and saw that you're already on there and wondered why. This is why. They're getting their information from these places, and they push out all the information to these other places.
So if you go to one or more of these, either directly or through a service like Moz Local or Yext, you can correct your information on one of these platforms. It'll push it out to every place on its network. That will correct the information here and, again, which in turn will make its way over to building Google's confidence in your Google My Business, which will increase the likelihood of it putting your business in its search results.
If one of these places finds an inaccurate listing, it will correct it. So let's say that this phone book is in Infogroup's network and it encounters the inaccurate data, it will hit it, fix it, and then all of a sudden instead of hurting you, this is again building confidence in your Google My Business listing.
Another benefit of working with these places is that they'll get you into places that you probably weren't even aware of. So, in addition to fixing points of bad data, it's also creating new points of accurate data that didn't even exist in the first place, which again build the confidence in your business listing and then increase the likelihood to show up in those local search results.
The last step for this is related to maintenance. This is not a one-time thing. Over time this information can be corrupted because these places not only get their information from a primary data provider, but they also get their information from each other. In some cases, a primary data source might be crawling these sites, that it indirectly provides information to, and so if you ever played a game of a telephone, you kind of know how this will end up. So you do need to go back and revisit these exercises from time to time, looking for business inaccuracies through Google manually or keeping up a relationship with one of these top-level data providers.
So in summary, what you want to do is start here, make sure you...
- Have got your Google My Business listing set up,
- Find all the variations and inaccuracies in your data,
- Fix them, and
- Work with a primary data provider to push out the correct information.
And then all of these places will build up the confidence that you're already providing Google in your Google My Business listing, making it more and more likely for Google to show you in its search results.
Thanks for watching. If you want to keep up with the latest in local search news, you can follow us on our brand-new social accounts @MozLocal both on Twitter and Facebook. Once again, my name is George Freitag with Moz Local and thanks for watching.
Congratulations on your first WB Friday George!!! Wonderful job!
One thing I'd add here is that businesses will want to remember to do those manual searches for privately-curated blog and news site articles that may mention them, particularly if they've re-branded or moved, as the big aggregators won't update those types of content. Manual is the only way with that.
So fun to watch this :)
Well done, George! That was really clear and well-explained. You could see that you were a little nervous (who wouldn't be?!) but I'm sure that you did the king of SEO (Rand Fishkin) proud.
Heck yeah. George rocked it! Thanks for taking some of the WB Friday burden off me, and thanks for giving me my own Burger Bistro, too :-)
BTW - I share George's story about the closed bank all the time. It's way, WAY worse in Europe, in my experience, where the hours that Google gives are rarely observed (to be fair, Germany is pretty good, while Italy and Spain seem not to match the hours Google shows at all).
Thanks, Rand, most of us in Germany contribute in-depth, if we contribute information ;-) . But some providers don't localize their forms and data formats well enough to enable a good matching for some data.
Even worse: Bing just since a couple of months (I tried it in the last days and was surprised) dispatches a qualified e-mail confirmation after having changed an entry on Bing maps.
Hi George,
First, I'm so proud of you! It's so great to see you on Whiteboard Friday! Second, what advice do you have for a business who practiced in the United States for 10 years, then moved to Canada and opened a business there? Since Canada has different options regarding directories vs. the US, how can this best be cleaned up?
Hey Shaylee and thanks!
For Canada, the concept remains the same but, like you said, the actual directories are different. You can view our local ecosystem for Canada and get an idea of where the primary providers are and you can also go over the Whitespark where they have an amazing list of the top citation providers by vertical and work your way down that list.
See you soon!
@Shaylee,
First of all you have to submit the new maps in Google Canda and Bing Canada. Then there are the all canadian versions of the local citation websites such as; Yelp canada, Yellow pages Canada, hotfrog canada and lots more you can submit your business there and you must close your business in your Google Places and Google + Pages in USA as now the business has moved to Canada. There are niche-specific directories you can find as well. Like, Doctors directory in Canada, Handy man directory Canada, HVAC directory Canada and So on.
Great WBF and contribution to the Moz community. I think that you really did a great job breaking down the importance of consistency in local listings, and too many times I have seen it where a customer either claims the business under a slight variation of the NAP and you end up thinking there is not a claimed listing due to that small factor creating duplicates. You also touched a good point if you do not claim the listing your business information may be populated from another source causing inaccuracy.
Great Job on this again.
Thanks Tim, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Hi George
Having our local SEO business today is practically mandatory, especially if we are a company that sells or provides services to the public. But if you can not configure it properly become a double-edged sword, since besides our positions on Google, our brand image also deteriorates
Hi George,
First of all you have a very inspiring surname (at least for those who speak a little German).
Great WF, thank you!
I love the idea of keeping all local information accurate and tidy across the web, but it is a difficult one to sell because it takes a lot of time to implement, and its value is difficult to demonstrate.
Do you know of any studies that show the difference in performance (in local search) between listings with errors and without?
When you say Google takes trust very seriously, does this mean Google might take the accuracy of your data across the web as a ranking factor?
I suppose it is an interesting research idea, but accuracy might be a difficult variable to isolate.
Thanks again!
Hi Peru,
Local SEO Guide actually just put together a great study around impact of various local ranking factors. Their study supports what our own Local Ranking Factors survey suggests, which is a certain level of citation accuracy is almost always present when a business ranks in the local pack. How much of an impact it has is debatable, but everything seems to suggest that they are basically a prerequisite for being considered in local pack results. And it makes sense. Because, again, that remains the best way for Google to make sure that your business actually exists, which is the most important thing it cares about when showing a business in the local pack.
Exactly, and the segmentation is the key, it´s better be listed when 10 people searchs for your business in your city, than listed for all world with 100 searchs, the 10 local is almost a potencial client.
Totally agree!! I'd rather have 5 sure clients than 50 people just checking my business.
This is even more important for NEW websites, it´s easer to get first position for a long sentence than for a generic term, this long sentence can incluide de city or the distrit with less competition buy with more accuaracy.
For your next WBF, I would love to see more on dealing with very messy situations. (Businesses that have long histories with many NAP changes and there is so much trust in the old/wrong/bad information that it is very difficult to change it and it keeps popping back up.) Thanks!
Great suggestion! I'll keep that in mind for next time. Thanks for watching.
Thanks George Freitag for this one! I have a small confusion about the last part where you mentioned pushing out the correct information. Suppose I put up my business (under a different name of course) in a place where X did business for a long period, say a decade. And considering X is listed in Google with his business name and has been listed in the local ecosystem under his name, don't I need access to his profiles in these directories as well as in Google My Business page to fix the issue? What do I do in that case? Does Moz Local change the incorrect information without access to the previous owner's profiles in these directories? And if it doesn't, can you kindly tell me how it's done? Forgive me if I am being silly.
Hi Maryam,
Moz Local (as well as the other location data management platforms) doesn't edit the information in Google My Business; it supplements it. So, first, you want to optimize your business listing and NAP there. Then you would use Moz Local to push out supplemental business information to support it.
If another business formerly occupied your location, then you'll need to have that closed. You can do that by contacting Google directly, using Google Mapmaker, reporting a problem in Google Maps, or (best of all) do all 3. The second step would be to either look for NAP mentions of the old business and fix them, or you can use Moz Local's duplicate checker to look for mentions of the old business on major data sources and close them via that dashboard.
Let me know if this helps and thanks for watching!
Way to be, George! :-) Great WBF.
Hey George,
Thanks for sharing these local SEO knowledge and tips. I have a scenario question regarding local SEO. I would very appreciate if you could spend a few minutes answering it. :)
If a very famous restaurant just moved to a new location, they've updated the NAP on Google My Business and other directories. However, they were also mentioned in other media (news, blogs...etc) that they have no control over and these articles have their outdated NAP. In this scenario, should the restaurant tried to contact with these websites to update its information to prevent the inconsistency of citations? If they can't get in touch with the site owners of these websites for some reasons, is there any thing can be done to prevent Google seeing this as an inconsistency and decrease the trust?
Thank you! This is an awesome whiteboard Friday!
I would spend the most time focusing on the main data sources and directories and keeping the information updated there. If you use Moz Local, you can actually use our duplicate checker to monitor for instances of your old address information popping up in the major data sources.
For the unstructured citations, like in reviews, I would spend less time on these unless you know they're being seen. Look at referral traffic and use that to prioritize which websites you want to reach out to manually to ask them to update your contact information.
Hope that helps!
Very good article. Here you subscribed share all ideas, but also add to look for maps or other search engines. In my case I became the head of a business that was run by my father and was previously located in another area of the city. I started to change our current NAP and locate all directories and places cubbyhole. Two months later, I realized that everything was corrected, except BING MAP where there was duplication of data.
Well done article. Love the statement " Listing accuracy is Google's method for determining whether or not it can trust a local business search result."
Thank you for watching. Glad you found it useful!
Hi. Thanks for this post. We work in local markets and this information is very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching, Juan. Hope it helps your work!
This was great George! Definitely worth sharing with clients that are still fuzzy on the concept of Local Search.
One questions: Did you list the primary data sources in order of importance?
thanks MISEO.
They aren't listed in order of importance. I wouldn't say any of the aggregators are more important than another, they just hit different networks.
Thanks again I'm glad you found it useful!
Very interesting tips George. I definitely agree with the all the points you mentioned in the post about the importance of listings and I think local listings are very effective for local businesses if done right.
Thanks for the post!!
It is very important to know the current accuracy performance with these methods , ie , with awareness among the results must be obtained as a list of SOPs used at that time you are needed.
Hi George!!
Congratulations for the post. We have much clearer why we should employ accuracy listing
Hi George–Thanks for the great video!
Great WBF George. thanks. How long do you think it takes from 'NAP cleanup' to increased visibility in local/map results?
Hi Blaine,
There's not really a cut and dry answer since ranking takes time and different data sources update their databases at different intervals. Typically (like you would with any SEO strategy) I would wait 3-6 months before making any big decisions about your current strategy.
I like local SEO articles, I think it's something to bear in mind, in fact Google is putting a lot of interest in the opinions of people about local businesses
Good Day George,
Yes I have also seen many local listings on Google, where most businesses have multiple listings, either by different name and telephone number. Sometimes it also happens that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) in your given listing is totally different from the location listed in your website. This create much confusion to the visitors whether which one is correct and which one is wrong. There are numerous tools which offer your all kinds of local listings, local directories and local citations, Such as whitespark.ca and brightlocal.com, yext.com and off-course Moz Local as well.
There are sometimes multiple listings in the same city as well like there is one of my client REIS PROPERTY. It has multiple locations of their offices in different states in USA. So, it is really difficult to manage these kinds of listings by same name. But your listing should be complete, accurate, uptodate and clear. In this way, the visitor can easily reach you and increase your sale through this great medium.
Good topic!!
That's great advice, Aamir! The NAP is super important in local and begin consistent with your website is an important part of that. Thanks for sharing your advice with everyone!
Question for all the local SEO gurus out there... I have a client and we've been using Moz Local, but he wants to expand and bring in another service to compliment what moz offers. I've looked into Yext, but it's out of the client budget and from the online reviews he's seen, he's not a huge fan. I looked into the Yext Alternative Local Listing Ninja, but they do not offer their services to attorneys practicing in Family Law. Any suggestions on other services to try out?
this is a good post. Keep sharing such innovative and amazing posts.I could learn from this one and found useful.
Hi George,
That was quite a good post for local companies like mine! Some clients I used to work with didn't care about this stuff and I was always trying to convince them to do this cause it's essential if you want to be found. Google cares so much about it!
I'm happy you enjoyed it! I really hope it helps get your clients to understand the importance of local! Thanks for watching.
Well i submitted my listing to the google which is not indexed yet.
Lead Retrieval App
Goggole wont index everything :)
I have same experiece for more than a year of long awaiting.