Late last week, in a move that was apparently spurred by threats of an FTC investigation, Google removed third-party reviews and listings from their Places pages in the Local/Maps results. This change was intended to help thwart complaints by sources like Yelp, TripAdvisor and Citysearch who claimed that Google unfairly used their content to make the Places pages results useful without compensation or traffic.
Below is a visual of the change via the WSJ:
Impact on Local/Maps/Places SEO
Unfortunately, this move has a strong negative consequence for SEOs, web marketers and local businesses trying to improve their rankings (or earn a listing) in Google Places results. In particular, the popular tactic of researching the citation sources of competitors and fellow business listees in a city/region via their Places pages is now defunct.
Since citations are like links for SEO/rankings in Google Places, this change is going to be tough on many citation researchers and local optimizers.
Other Options for Local Citation Discovery
Thankfully, there are other ways to find the sources Google may be using to resource their Places data.
#1: Identify Aggregators in the Standard Search Results
This is as basic as it sounds. Just perform a query and seek out the aggregators - those that rank in the top few pages of results that list multiple local businesses. Not only is this a useful activity for Places SEO, it can also help drive direct traffic and brand awareness (e.g. Getting a listing on Yelp isn't just good for Google SEO, it's a great idea because lots of people use Yelp to find local businesses).
In the screenshot above, I've pointed to several well-known aggregators that are likely good sources for a listing/citation if a business is targeting Seattle Ice Cream results.
#2: Perform Competitive Research Using Google's Standard Results
You don't need the citations listed in the Places pages to find where a business is earning listings/links/references. You can use good, old, regular Google results:
The screenshot above shows one way to do this - grab a listing from the Local/Places results and use the combination of the business' phone number and name to see where they're mentioned on the web. This also works with any combination of address, business name, cityname, etc. It's likely the most simple and direct way to replace the old competitive citation analysis method.
#3 - Search for Multiple Businesses at Once (Co-Citation)
Another simple option is to query Google for several businesses at once in hopes of finding pages/sites that have listings for several places.
The example in the screenshot above is a very simplistic one - you may want to combine this with phone numbers/addresses to help identify more listing-focused sites.
#4 - The WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder Tool
Darren Shaw's great citation finding tool has long been a staple of Places SEO research, and since it uses a methodology similar to tactic #2 above, it's not affected by Google's change to the Places pages.
Just plug in a search as shown in the image above, and the tool will return a list of potential places to acquire a citation/listing. It takes a while to run (up to 24 hours in my experience), but is remarkably useful.
Undoubtedly, these four aren't the only options for local citation research. If you've got more suggestions/ideas for ways to do this, please leave them in the comments below!
p.s. Many thanks to David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal for their contributions and help in understanding this change and offering alternatives.
Hi Rand,
Thanks for mentioning the Whitespark Local Citation Finder again. I just wanted to add that we've scaled up our capacity and the wait times have been drastically inmproved. Pro users will get their results back in under 2 minutes usually, and free users will usually get results in under 10 or 15 minutes.
I'll be at MozCon on Wednesday. If any fellow mozzers want to talk citations or local SEO, come and say hi!
Darren
Thanks for such an awesome tool, it really helped move local SEO forward and has helped us on several campaigns. Looking forward to seeing you at MozCon!
Looking forward to seeing you at Mozcon.
Indeed, I had the results to my inquiry within a couple of minutes. Thanks for the nice tool, Darren!
I actually like this recent change in Google Places. It makes it harder for bulls**t do-it-yourself marketers to spy on your hard earned citations. I mean the kind of business owners that give their own business obvious rave reviews and stuff.
The tactics you showed can easily replace the citiation listings for serious marketers.
A good list of citations hasn't been found on the places page for over a year. Google stopped showing a complete list of them about the time they changed the maps pages to Places listings. So this update didn't really change the citation scene much as you had to dig to find them with custom search and the local citation finder anyways. The real great thing that happened was when user generated content in the form of my maps and geo tagged pictures were removed earlier this year. That was where people could really see competitive intelligence.
Agreed. But even the short list gave away too much, especially if you're outside the US.
I'm in canada and i have found that even outside the states the list of citations that were on the places pages over the last year were pretty much useless. And what's to stop these "bull shit do it yoruself marketers" form using a tool like whitespark?
If you have truely earned a hard to get citation, it won't be any easier for your competition to earn it! Infact it might be more difficult for them because you are already in there, and the page listing the citation might be aprehensive to list another for fear of the whole page becoming spam!
Yeah, in emerging places markets it definitely wouldnt take much to rank and so the list would give away a lot. But, that same list can be found by doing a custom search as google will order listings by authority. If I were in a places area that was underdeveloped I would focus on news site citations, not easily copied and high authority. The might be unstructured but ususally come in the form of a link + citation.
I agree. And just becasue google is not showing information does not mean that google is not using the information.
I have found a great way to promote your local business and get citations. I call it cross-industry promotion. Let's say you are a restaurant. It's unlikely you can get links, mentions or citations from other restaurants in your area. However, you could do a cross promotion with a hotel for example. You could cross promote through local recreational stores like bike rentals. Basically you promote them on your website if they promote you on theirs. Reciprocal citations you could say. And you could get links directly to your Google Places page, which undoubtedly helps.
Great idea! I owned 3 restaurants (for what reason I still do not know) and actually did get some cross promotion from other non competeing restaurants. I was a breakfast place, so we did cross promotions with Dinner restarants.
Great techniques Dan! I have done it and it works but I remember what happened to the real estate sites who were giving each other "reciprocal citations" in late 2007 so I write blog posts (from each site) for the local business owners. Thanks for sharing!
I think this was in part a good move by Google yet it also was not so good for hard working business owners.
I do not think Google should have used citation data from the start as I have seen huge problems with them for well over the last two years:
The first problem I noticed with citations were that they showed up for the wrong business areas if they had similar names example:
https://jamesnorquay.com/massive-problem-with-google-local-search-places-reviews/
then more recently I noticed even further problems with them showing up for totally different businesses:
https://jamesnorquay.com/more-huge-problems-with-citations-on-google-places/
Sure aggain you have many business owners who had worked very hard to gather citations yet then aggain you have citations that are totally wrong.
Overall I think we will have interesting times ahead in this space, great analysis too Rand.
Another alternative will be to wait for SEOmoz to create a nifty little tool to find citations!
Another source would be the vertical search results, like e.g. images, videos etc. Just put in the keywords and there you will find those aggregators, too.
I totally agree with you there. I also use open site explorer to find more local citations to find the small niche directories.
You can also use Google Alerts to find local citations. Set alerts for your competitors' brand name and phone number or address and get the citations list right in your inbox. I check the alerts once a week. It can also help you in finding linking opportunities.
Great tip i'm on this one! Thanks!
I manually checked the rankings for some of my top location specific keywords and thankfully there was no fluctuation in rankings. I feel that its just the display that has changed and the algorithm is very much the same. Besides as Rand says whitespark serves as a great tool in finding citation sources so i really dont see any reason to panic.
Google for the most part has been hiding MOST citations for many months. She very seldom showed any new ones, so it's been difficult to do citation hunting by looking at the "more about this place" for a very long time.
That's one of the reasons Darren's Whitespark tool is so valuable!
However just because she does not citations them any more does not mean she does not count them. Same with the 3rd party reviews that are no longer showing in the total count.
I posted some of this info at Blumenthal's and my blog and since most people agree with this summary, I wanted to share it here as well.
=============================================================
Good news! From what I can tell so far this update was ONLY a front end cosmetic change NOT a back end change that affects the algo or ranking.
In some quick ranking checks I did Thursday night, it appears the lack of 3rd party reviews showing up in the count and missing citation data "from more about this place" DID NOT affect rankings. Not in the rankings I’ve checked anyway. Regardless of how many 3rd party reviews were removed from the COUNT everyone’s ranking stayed the same.
So I think DemandForce, Yelp, TripAdvisor and other reviews still totally count in the algo as far as rankings go. Google is just not showing them in the main review count in the SERPs or showing them in what used to be the 3rd party reviews section of the Place page.
So from what I’m seeing right now anyway, this update does not devalue 3rd party review sources in terms of how much it helps with the rankings. Other reviews are still counted in the back end!
ALSO the citation section of the Place page is gone now. BUT all citations still count in the ranking, just as they did before. Plus the additional details no longer show on the Place page but Vanessa, the Google Places Community Manager told us a couple days ago the info you add to the more details section still is factored in.
Hope this info is helpful!Linda
Hi Linda! I'm running into you all over the web these days. :) Thanks for your kind words about the Local Citation Finder, and for your great contribution to this post. Very useful information. Also, I love how you refer to Google as "she". Nice.
Hi Gang! Here is another great local citation finder: https://www.mylocalcitationfinder.com/ See you all at MozCon!
Thanks bluetent!
www.mylocalcitationfinder.com checks the citations of the top 10 competitors for a given keyword and only returns the URLs where you (or your client) have not created a citation yet. It also gives a count out of 10 - this shows the number of times the competiton has citations there which helps with understanding importance
You can use a free demo account
u: [email protected]
p: demo
or if you would like your own free account (so that everyone else can not see what you are searching) email me and I will get you that information
Rand & Darren,
Good post & fast tool-adjustments (good job!).
Say, as we all know, citations (like links) weren’t born equal.
When Google used to show which citations they like better, it was easy to feed them with those sources of citations. Now you can't really know which citation is preferred & which are not. Not the above methods of finding citations nor Darren's (magical & holly) tool can really assist.
I think that this issue is more fogy even than links/ backlinks/ etc.. now. I don't have any solution, so don't get me wrong..
Any advices here?
Yam
Hey Yam,
The Local Citation Finder pulls in SEOmoz's Domain Authority metric for every citation source it finds. Just sort your results by the SEOmoz DA column and this should give you a pretty good idea about which sources are more valuable than others.
Darren
Another way would be to perform a custom search function with + and "" on google. They will show the citations in order from their algo. Testing this against the citation finder tool will give you a great idea of the authority of a citation and the landscape. Not as fast as looking at a places page... Bbut IMHO much more valuable as some of the citations listed on the places page seemed of poor value sometimes.
Can you further explain what you mean by ' + and "" '
"business name"+"address"+"phone number"
Exact references with all 3 areas search for. Great custom search tool for citations...and links. ;-)
Awesome, very timely post Rand!
We've definitely been noticing for the past several months that non-directory citation sources have been more powerful- chamber of commerce websites, news articles with NAP in footer, BBB pages, etc. I expect this trend to continue as the maps team has to continue to fight a deluge of mapspam.
Awesome tips. I've been impressed with the WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder, I'm glad the service wasn't affected by the update.
Pretty sure whitespark is just scraping google SERPS for "buisness name" or "phone number" and compiling that information. So i don't see how the update would effect it in the slightest.
One of the quickest ways (that we use) to find more local citation sources is to copy companies who are established. A lot of hotels hire companies to build out citations for them. I suggest copying a hotel like Marriot (I know for a fact that their in-house SEO team is top-notch.) You can also do a search for Pinkberry's NAP.
-Cheers
Can anyone say how using services like UBL and LocalEze factor into this change?
Thanks.
I have never used UBL or LocalEze but anecdotal infomation suggest they do not work too well.
Has anyone here used them successfully?
Great post Rand! Indeed it is a very good tool...Thanks for sharing...
They are still showing citations. When you click the listing it has a section that says "reviews from around the web".
Thanks Rand,
I did not actually know that it was possible to search for Multiple Businesses at Once (Co-Citation).
Thanks to you, now we do!
Not highlighted in this article is the fact that Google is now linking back to the users review of the company. They seem to turn this feature on and off. Glad to see it back on for the time being.
Thanks for this post. We just had a client asking about their number of reviews.
The quality of reviews is just going to decrease as SEO becomes more common. I do believe we have a long way before this happens.
A great write up, this stuff can get crazy with SEO. Probably a good thing for Google to back off the other sites, and let them run their own ecommerce solutions. That way they avoid any FTC issues.
One of my local-oriented websites had a 200%+ increase in new leads from Friday until today! I have more Google user reviews than my competitors--wondering if there is a more widespread correlation here? Is it possible Google user reviews are given more weight at the moment?
Reviews have a marketing value that aids conversion. If you are winning in the number of Google reviews then Google only showing total numbers of reviews found on Google will help your conversion. Sounds like a win for you.
I agree that this is negative for those have have built up these citations and it's even more negative for those who have many positive citations. But, not all are so fortunate to have great reviews, so I think this is great for those who were getting bashed by Google crawling reviews from different websites, such as Yelp, CitySearch, TripAdvisor and Yahoo. It's a much better way for google local business owners to manage the reviews that come through their local page and to reply to each one. Also, Google would crawl reviews and leave them on the place page after the review was deleted on the original website. There are other great ways to gain citations and I'm sure that people will learn what they are if they are serious about getting their business to the top of local search results.
Well, as of yesterday (after the release of the new sitelinks) Yelp might be sure their results for brand names would be buried way below the immediate visibility screen. As far as I notice the maximum of sitelinks for website associated with a Place page are 6 as of current. However, Google seems to be having some really big plans for this branded one-box and it is explanding every week, currently occupying area equal to 5-6 normal organic results.
Looks like the changes are being made as part of the overall google shift from a startup on Places to a more stable longer term model. There is also a software that does the citation finding which went down when google made the update and it was then restored for free local citation finder software https://www.localseoaustralia.com/local-citation-finder-software/
Pro tip - search for the business address or part of the main address and see where it has been listed. I've found some great niche sites that were listing other businesses that I never even knew about and don't rank themselves but clearly effect local rankings
I use White Spark and usually the reports come back within minutes.
Which other local citation tools like WhiteSpark do you find are most effective for citation monitoring?
Google is going to be facing more and more issues like this in the near future. Changes will come quick and we, again will need to be fast to introduce new ways of managing it. Posts like this makes it easier to find new ways to overcome this sort of situations. Thx!
Does anyone know if there is an SEO firm or company out there offering citation clean up? I know what a can of worms bad citations are for local business (probably another blog post somewhere here at SEOmoz). I work for a web company, and this is a service we do not offer. We were asked for a recommendation, but I have yet to find one single place that offers clean up. Everyone will sell you a list, but am looking for a service to take action on resolving them.
Hey Tony_G.
We offer citation clean up, it is a pain in the @$$ and takes time considering the amount of websites that grab their information from other sources, but we track down, change, make phone calls, send emails, and everything else to ensure that our clients have the correct formatted information on the web that does not conflict with itself.
I would need more details.
Cheers.
Hey Tony, I own a small business. We provide HVAC, Air Conditioners and Heating services. I have come across many SEO companies who are into providing google citation services but I found the services by Quality Submissions to be extraordinary. Its worth the price you pay. I'm sure they could help you out with citation clean up. Call them. https://www.qualitysubmissions.com.
Thanks for the great info. That workaround for finding citations works great!
We have seen a huge decrease in the value of the standard citation's in the the local ranking factors of new clients since October 2010. So much so that we stopped using the vast majority of citation sites (And we had over 50 we used before researching the competition). We continue to use those sites where we have seen actually traffic to a cleints site, or that continued to show up after 3 or so months on a new clients citations in places.
Local (at least for us) is now more about the standard SEO of the site, and having the business listed in the usually suspect search directories. If you compare Map listings like you would organic, you are going to find, next to the physical address, it all seems to come down to SEOmoz rankings, both PA and DA... and the bunch, for the most part.
Whitespark is still a very valuable tool! We just view it not as a citation finder, but as a link opportunity finder, in a niche. Local loves niches.
Has SEOmoz considered a Local only type Q.A. or training. In my humble opinion, many of the blogs and articles are way behind on current local trends. But, with that said, as Local is turning more and more into a regular (?) SEO process with a few local tactics, it becomes even more valuable to those of us who work in the substratum of mom and pop and low value (as perceived by many) clients.
Interesting Post!
WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder is a new great tool in my list now so things for that…
I was trying different things and figure out that ‘Search by Image’ can help if you search logo as an image.
Useful to note for international readers that this does already seem to effect non-US Google Local results, too.
i don't think it has been updated completely.
Just searched galway b&b in google.ie & 1st listing is still showing citation from tripadvisor.
Many many thanks for this potential info...another thing local social engagement like,tweets from local accounts,Facebook like's adding the essence on place ranking!
Very interesting and not going to be settled anytime soon. The ICA is a big organization with connections to AT&T; they have enough clout to keep Google honest, we'll see this issue play out probably to an undisclosed settlement of some kind that allows Google to use the reviews.
Maybe this will push the date when Google pulls HCard reviews right off our websites!
Testimonials marked up in the hReview microformat *were* being pulled into Google places already: https://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/05/23/hreview-testimonials-from-smb-sites-starting-to-show-in-places/
Interestingly, they are not anymore though. Looks like this latest update removed all reviews from all sources except Google, including the hReview ones.
That's not to say they won't help your rankings though. Google may not be showing third party reviews in Places, but I'm sure they're still factored into the algorithm.
Thanks Whitespark! I did not catch that blip that Google had in fact started incorporating Hcard reviews. Like the comments from the article suggested it would be hard to determine spam if reviews were pulled from our websites.
Great insight in that even though third party reviews are not in Places physically, they still can have an effect on placement on Places!
Have you given up on embedding HCard reviews on your own websites?
Thank you so much for verifying that Whitespark wasn't affected by this update, I was a little worried...
First of all I can not believe how long it took for me to signup for this website. The articles are terrific, and the answers are helpful. Well while I wait for the Whitespark report to come through I will try and finish this post. It was nice to come across this article because I get asked about how to improve local listing's often. I noticed changes for a client that the local listing reviews were being removed by Google and I was not sure why they were being removed from the listing.
It seems that Google would be being selective by showing the results of another website as a citation. It makes sense that if Google shows a citation for one website such as insiderpages.com then they should do the same for the rest of the review websites. It seems that would be favoritism towards specific companies. By pulling all other reviews other than Google Reviews then it also forces those other companies to find way's to get found, instead of relying on Google to show their link.
This also explains why the number of Google Reviews remains the same. My client gets Google Reviews fairly often and they have asked me why the number is limited. Having a definitive answer is sure a nice relief. I try and provide instructions and locations that all the clients can post a review for our services. I know that reviews help provide better local placement results when people are searching. Along with reviews I also have spent numerous hours building links to each Google Place using different anchor text. It is a great feeling to know that when a client say's that they are showing locally for keywords they had never shown on searches before.
Just tried to register and it seems that Indonesia is not listed there at all :(
You want Indonesia? You got it! I just added support for Indonesia to the Local Citation Finder.
It's untested though, so, hopefully it works for you.
Hi Darren! Rand's tips are quite good and your tool seems pretty usefull, but I can't even open the whitespark.ca website from where I'm right now - Bulgaria (it's near Romania... Eastern Europe).
I can send you my static IP via private message - I want part of the pie too :D
Hey there. We're not specifically blocking any countries or IP addresses. Not sure why you can't access the site.
A Real Time Problem solving!... This is great!! :)
+1 for speedy reply.. I have successfuly registered my site... Well lets test it out now :)
That's interesting. I wonder why Google removed those for Local but still has uses third-parties for Shopping results... will ResellerRatings start complaining too, I wonder?
Cool. I spotted this change just this weekend. You guys are so on the ball!
I'll add my vote for Whitespark - great tool for Local SEOs. The other tactics work great as well though.
I'd also be curious to know how much traffic Yelp, TripAdvisor, Citysearch have lost since the change. Obviously there are still ways to click over but it is not as prominent anymore. I wonder if it's a case of "careful what you wish for" now that Google rolled out the change or if they are content now. Anyone have any links to articles on this angle?
Thanks Rand - great tool!
This change by Google resulted in the loss of reviews showing on Place pages from 'Review Page's I created on several sites. I had marked up the reviews in hReview code. Google had just started to include these reviews as trusted third party reviews. Not the end of the world, but a bit of a disapointment. However, I figured marked up reviews (hReview) on sites would get spammy anyways, so it was just a matter of time before Google reacted.
Great post. #1 should be a strong consideration and a plan of attack for marketers anyway. If someone wants to rank for "blue widgets seattle" and a few of the top results include aggregators, instead of working on just pushing them out of the way, it makes sense to be listed on those - if it's affordable and cost-effective - as it's another way you can be found beyond your website (say if someone trusts the likes of Yelp, Yell.com, etc. and so clicksthrough from Google to those). It can also be another mention, another glimpse of your name/brand, etc. And if it helps your Places SEO then even better!
How do I set up keywords in Google Places Page?
Thanks!
This will definitley make it more challenging for SEOs, but I think it is a much needed change.
The problem is not how to find citations sources, but to find why the competition is ranking above you with listing without reviews, pictures and with poor site. In the last few days I've tried to research the effect of the web citations (google standart results). There is some correlation, but as we all know the indexed sources aren't directly "assigned" to the Google listing - sometimes you have to wait for months to get citation from some directories. I believe the situation hasn't change much - you can have millions of citations in the web index, but very few of them actually affect the Place page. Meanwhile your competitor can have 140 citations but still rank 1st.
p.s.: we need tool like Open Site Explorer for local ];)
Neochrist,
While not nearly as robust as Open Site Explorer or White Spark - www.mylocalcitationfinder.com looks at the competitions citations for a given keyword and returns a count of the top 10 where you (or your client) currently do not have a citation.
Meaning - 8 competitors out of the top 10 have this URL citation but you do not....can help you understand which citations are important to get that ranking.
Might help with the citation process a bit....plus its free....
Michael showed us this tool last week. Great to know where you are in the results...even better to know where you're not!
It's always great to hear other strategies for local SEO... especially ones that won't be affected by a change in Google. I've never used Whitespark before and plan on trying it out.
As usual, very nice timing on this article Rand. You consistently keep on top of the ever changing world of SEO and offer great ideas on adjustments we can make to keep up with the needs of our clients.