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
-
Best way to manage multiple Google My Business accounts as a marketing agency?
As marketing agency we have for each client a Google My Business account. This means that we have more than 100 Google My Business accounts. We know that GA has a limit of 100 analytics accounts (free version), but is there a limit in Google My Business too? For now, we have created multiple accounts that own different Google My Business accounts of our clients. Can I just change all the different e-mail accounts of our marketing agency and change it to one? So we can manage all the Google My Business accounts of our clients in one e-mail account?
Image & Video Optimization | | conversal0 -
Carousel bumped us out of our local ranking
Nearly every post I've seen on Carousel states that "the rankings basically stay the same" but that hasn't been the case for one of my hospitality sites. The site went from being in the top 3 of local listings but when Carousel hit the site got bumped. We have high quality images, reviews, citations...we even added some newer, better photos but aside from that I'm a bit stumped as to what steps to take next. Anyone else get bumped by Carousel or have thoughts on any other factors which I might be missing out on?
Image & Video Optimization | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
Google Places categories
I work with a Local SEO company for troubleshooting our Google Places and optimization. They suggested that in order for us to rank for the keywords we provided them with they need to change the categories. Now, those categories do not exist in Google Places and I read on Seomoz and Google help forum that we should choose from the ones in the list provided by Google. I also know that Categories should not contain location-based information. Should I let them do that?
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Multiple Google Places Accounts - Same Physical Location
Hi there, One of my clients is a local law firm. I have created, populated and verified a Places page for them, but now I have discovered that they had previously created one for each of their attorneys at that location. According to Google's quality guidelines, this is totally fine. However, I am wondering if I should try to verify each of these accounts within Places to enhance their listing coverage? One thing I've already tried is modifying some of the listing details via Map Maker, but it would be nice to just make edits en masse, I think. Any suggestions?
Image & Video Optimization | | G2W0 -
Google Places Hide Address
I've read about the changes in requirements for Google Places - and hidden the address for my relevant local clients. Is there any step I can take to speed up the edit being recognised and displayed in SERPs. In addition, I would like to know, will the address also disappear from the actual Google Places page as well?
Image & Video Optimization | | catherine-2793880 -
Google Places - second listing, same name
We will open a new office at a new location and I would like to add it to our Google places. How do I do this? Per Google guidelines: "Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts." - Website & Phone: Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location_._ Do I have to another contact page on my website for that location too? I will end up having to business listing with the same name but different locations. I want people to know that we have 2 separate offices because they serve different clients. I want to show up in Google places for the second location as well. Any thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Local SEO: What is the largest Google Places bulk upload you have ever done?
Hi All, One of my clients recently requested my team at our agency to do a bulk up load of business locations. We did the bulk upload and it came to around 652 or so locations in the form. I have done some serious bulk uploads in the past around 500 locations but never this high. My question is to SEO moz what is the largest bulk upload or single upload you have done on Google Places?
Image & Video Optimization | | JamesNorquay0 -
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