Does position in local directories effect google detecting citations?
-
There are a lot of local directories that i have seen google pull citations from. Quite often i see people putting listings in these directories prefixed by several "A"s, so that they will appear on the first page of the list.
Just how deep does google crawl through the pages of these lists? will google actually crawl through all the pages?
Some of these directories offer paid listings that appear at the top of the directory. We have been considering purchasing some of these paid positions, so that google would be more likely to pickup our citations.
In one case i have noticed a directory: shopincities.com do something that spiked my interest. Basically, if you start clicking through the different pages of a category, the site will block you after 3 or 4 pages in. It serves you an error saying that you are not human. In my mind this is to prevent google from fully crawling their whole list, so that the people who pay for the top positions are picked up, and the people who don't pay, even though their profiles are listed there, never get crawled by google.
So would you pay for position on these directories? here are some examples:
http://www.shopincities.com
http://www.411.ca
http://www.goldbook.com
http://www.n49.ca
http://torontodirect.com
http://www.yellowpages.comOr would you just throw a whole bunch of A's infront of your business name so you appear on the first page of listings?
Or do you belive it doesn't matter how deep you are in the listings, and with enough time google will find it regardless and credit it as a citation?
-
Thx for sharing your perspective. I need to look into this more. We are just launching our new local campaign.
-
Thx for sharing your perspective. I need to look into this more. We are just launching our new local campaign.
-
Will do.
-
Gareth, Let me know if you see the same things we do?
-
That's really interesting to hear that the PA and rankings are pretty much in line (off I go to review my sites...)
There has been a drop off on Google showing citations, but they still seem to be showing images placed on local directories, in some instances taking the same image from a local directory over one added to a places listing in the live places listing.
-
you are correct, i probably asked too many questions in one thread. i think i will open a new question about my last point. about not all citations are equal in value.
-
This was a very informative and interesting post. I guess i will move away from my focus of citations for a while and back to strong backlinks to build up our PA & DA.
Thank you for clarifying the matter for me.
-
Probably been about 6 months now. and yes, they are coming up in googles index. (well some of them, not the one i described above where the site throttles google's indexing process)
-
We do a lot of Local seo, and have found that Google is just not showing the citations this year that they did last. We also have researched enough of the citations to see that they are not showing up as links either. Our thought is Google has stopped indexing many of these pages.
Last year we could count on 8-10 local citations on Places using the normal mix. Since February of this year, only ONE of those directory listings has shown up as a citation or link.
We now use completely different strategies on citations. We work on getting on local blogs, as well as other small business sites in the city. The other clear trend we see, is if you want to have a well ranked site in Places the direct causation (after having a places account of course) is PA of the sites home page. We looked at ten local categories and the rankings on Google (Places and first page). Simple, in the VAST majority of cases the rankings fall right in line with PA ranking.
The days of Local rankings being a significantly different system than organic SEO seem to be gone.
-
Its a valid question, and something I've noticed myself. There's a couple of things I'd suggest considering.
Firstly, how long ago were the listings in the local directories submitted and accepted? If it's been less than a month it may well be that Google hasn't associated the citation/ link yet to your places listing.
Secondly, have you carried out a search in Google to see if they have indeed indexed the page the link is on, or run a
"link: " type search to see if Google acknowledges the link. -
I think you might need the help of a professional SEO company since you have so many specific questions and theories.
Currently, you are cherry picking a few odd examples, when I believe your time could be better spent making sure you have registered at places that are relevant to your business, onsite SEO, offsite, SEO, linkbuilding, content building, following David Mihms guide...while this will take away from your investigation, it will put you a position to improve your SERP.
Dwelling on a competitor can be a huge waste of time and effort since you can only control what you do. I very much doubt the paid positions are helping him at all.
-
Here's another example:
http://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/Storage-Self+Service/Toronto+ON/in this case the people paying for the priority positions on that page are right at the top of the page, rather than buried 5 pages into the results. in fact they are right at the top of each page of the results, so over and over again they are above the free listings.
I have heard that google considers the value of a link based on its position on the page. So wouldn't it be safe to assume that google also considers the value of a citation based on its position on the page?
-
We are already listed in all the powerful free directories, and have been there for over 6 months. the information about our locations is consistent across all of these sites (i have tipple checked it). yet we still do not see very many citations appearing in the "more about this place" section of the places page.
I have noticed that our competitors that are getting citations from the same free directories that we are not getting our citations from. We are listed in these directories under their free section but our competitors are paying for premium positioning in these directories. Which makes me think that google isn't scraping the entire directory, to get all the way down to our name (which starts with an 'S').
take a look at this page:
http://www.shopintoronto.com/Home/Moving---Storage/
we are listed a few pages in. now try clicking the pages: 2, then 3, then 4, then 5... and you'll get this:
"We're sorry but your web browser has been blocked from our site because we have detected the presence of spyware on your computer.
We recommend you install a spyware remover to fix this problem.
Please click on one of the following recommended links to download and install a spyware removing program. "which leads me to believe they throttle to prevent google from fully indexing their site, thus only paying customers get the citation, and free customers don't really get anything, other than their time wasted....I've only noticed this in one place so far, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if other websites are using similar techniques to prevent google-bot from indexing anything more than the first page of each category. -
You've asked quite a few questions in one post, but I will do my best to answer a few.
If you are focusing on local SEO, get into as many local directories as you can, and make sure you Name, Address, and Phone number are IDENTICAL in each directory as it is found in Google Places, Bing Local, and Local Yahoo.
When you are listing in the free directories that Google seems to appreciate, e.g. Yelp, Kudzu, Hotfrog, Merchant Circle the search engines will more than likely find them on their own. However, if you are worried about them being crawled/indexed or not seen in a reasonable time frame you could always post the links to your profile to Twitter or Facebook, or in your blog which will also show up in your RSS feed.
While you shouldn't over do it, this can potentially help the process of being found.
Attempt to get into the powerful free directories before you start spending money on the paid, IMO.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Places best practise
Hi, just wondering what peoples' thoughts are on linking from a Google Places listing; where multiple locations are present (and multiple Places listings), do people generally link back to the home page or to the individual location pages? I would be interested to hear anybody's thoughts. Thank you
Image & Video Optimization | | jasarrow0 -
Google Places - Bulk Upload Solution
Hi we have a client who currently has over 50 stores in the country (Australia). Some of these stores already have a Google Plus Local Pages and manage them individually. Most of them have reviews, and images. The corporate office wants to place all these stores under one bulk account to bring consistency with the brand and it's image. Now this presents a issue. From our research we have 3 options: 1. Un-verify the listings in each of the accounts and once this has been done, claim them individually in the account you want to manage them under. 2. Delete the listings from Maps and then recreate them under the bulk feed in account. This will allow you to manage them with the rest of your listings more efficiently, however if the stores have any reviews these may be lost. 3. Create new listings and leave the other ones and these should get merged, the issue here is the data could be incorrect and it could cause some duplication. Our goal is to transfer the listings to a single bulk account without losing the - reviews, and images.Or avoiding new problems such as duplicate listing or the listing gets somehow deleted for weeks during the process, causing massive frustration with all the stakeholders involved. I think our best bet is (1) to get the stores to individually unverify their account. However this may risk the lost of reviews and images. Plus it will be highly unlikely that the store owners will follow through or like doing this, and would be a painful long communication process which may take 2+ months. Are they any suggestions on how to best approach this situation? Thanks, Matt Carter
Image & Video Optimization | | Mattcarter080 -
Local SEO, hard time ranking a keyword
Hello. Im working with beauty salon client, i do rank them for top services, but there a term that i can't rank for, my page it optimized for this keywords (url,h1,h2) i have this keyword in Google places, as a category, and in description. i have build many citations with this term, BUT still cant rank it. If anyone can help me on that, ill be really appreciated, as i'm still learning this. Thanks You!
Image & Video Optimization | | Davidmez0 -
Google local
If you perform a search in Google maps for our company and you are not signed in, it returns our Google + page, with reviews, photos, directions and about tabs, which is fine but, when you click on any of the photos, there is a window that opens to the right where you can edit the location where the photo has been taken, a comment box, photo details and above all, right at the top, MY NAME! Why my name? This is the business page, I don't want people to see that. The snip is below. Thanks! g3OTPRp
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Google+Local Reviews have gone? Any ideas?
Hi Since Google switched places to Google+ Local lots of the reviews that were on the listing are no longer showing? A customer of mine brought up the point when visiting the store today, when they are logged into Google they can see their review under Your Activity, however when they are logged out the only review is listed under 1 Review from everyone and the review is no longer being shown? Any ideas on what is going on? Also with local search / places optimisation has the best practice guidelines changed now that is transformed into Google+ Local? If so it would be great to share any links on getting the most out of this new + local service
Image & Video Optimization | | ocelot0 -
Multiple Businesses at the Same Address - Avoiding Google Places Trouble
I'm trying to avoid problems with Google Places; this is like "address confusion", but is rather "business confusion". We have a gym at a street address with a suite number, and a number of personal trainers who work out of the gym. Several of them have their own websites and their own Google Places pages. 1 trainer has a Yelp account that lists the gym's street address including the suite number, and a Places page with the gym's street address. 2 trainers have the gym's street address on their personal/individual business websites, 1 with and 1 without the suite number. Is any of this going reduce Google's confidence in the accuracy of which business is really at the street address and suite number? What should we tell/require of our trainers in relation to this, if anything? Is there a chance Google will merge the Places pages? Am I paranoid? (Google Places sometimes does at it wishes, to the dismay of several of my clients.....) I do know that there are often many businesses in a building, each with their own suite numbers, and nothing bad happens. But ours is a case of multiple personal training businesses (including the gym: a small personal training studio) all at the same address And suite number. Thanks for any insight or ideas!
Image & Video Optimization | | TheSEOWiz0 -
Meaning Behind Google Local Search Results Icons?
I can't seem to easily find this answer anywhere (even in the Google Places FAQ page), so thought I'd stop digging around and simply ask it here: What are the meanings behind the icons to the right of the link and to the left of the "place page" link in Google's local search results? I see a checkmark/question mark in a circle, then a bar chart with various levels filled in, then a dollar sign in a circle, then a magnifying glass. 1. What are these telling me, as a searcher? 2. What are they telling the owner of the business? Thank you for your help; I just can't seem to find a reference for this...
Image & Video Optimization | | keethgee0 -
How do I get Google Places to pick up my reviews from other sites?
I have reviews on Yelp, Insiderpages.com, and Citysearch. All of my contact information matches up, but Google does not seem to be finding them and adding them to my Google Places page. Is there anything I need to do to make this happen?
Image & Video Optimization | | vinnyb20000
