Factors affecting google places citation indexing
-
I'm sure we have all been there; filling out yellowbook/yahoo/citysearch/merchant circle citations flawlessly, only to wait months and months for google to decide if they're worth 'attaching' to your places listing.
I still believe that the number one factor for getting them to stick is consistensy of information, however my question is what factors affect the speed of 'stickiness'.
I've implemented google alerts and rss feed/link pinging services to get citations from hotfrog and BOTW indexed almost the same day, however after examing the google places listing, I'm not showing them as listed as citations; which leads me to my next point; that google places could possibly have their own 'indexing rules and speed?'
I've heard several suggestions on how to accelerate indexing, and quite a few of them included building backlinks TO these citations to improve pagerank. Do mozzers have any 'foolproof' ways of getting these citations to 'stick' to google places listings within days, or weeks, instead of months?
-
I think he meant to say QDF. Quality Deserves Freshness.
See: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-query-deserves-freshness
-
What is the DQF algorithm?
-
Thank you, i found this quite helpful.
-
I have experience the same as Darren. In my frustration I did a yahoo placement page for $10 a month, with excellent local search results. Well worth the money. Doing a free bing one now.
-
We have been watching this for a while. In our research we have tried linking to the citation sites, and have had little success. There is no doubt that the principles of places ranking are related to, but not the same as normal organic.
Reviews are very helpful, and next to the normal important areas (profile completeness, address and others) I would put reviews as top priority. Not only on Places, but Yahoo, Insider pages, city search, yelp, Angies, and even customer lobby. I am sure there are more. Recently Places started displaying reviews from the Places accounts owners web site. Seems if you use reviews or testimonial in the URL they may pick that up. This may be an attempt on Google's part, to slow down the number of duplicate reviews. (Those with ears , let them hear). <- not sure what I mean, but I have only had one cup of coffee so far.
Look at the simple fact, that you will rarely find a places account on the 2nd or 3rd page of results that have a significant amount of reviews.
We have stopped using the "usually suspects" for citations, as in the last 5 months they seem to have little value. What we do see working is citations on other "local" sites. Not directories, but related local sites. Much harder work, but Google likes it when we work hard for a citation or link... right?
PS- We are not all that large in SEO, just do local clients , so our research is very limited.
-
It would seem to follow logic that Google would count and attach citations from authoritative, trusted sources. It might help to build links to your citations, if that makes sense.
-
Hi Ilya,
It's a common misconception that the only citations that "count" (or stick) are the ones that Google lists on the Place Page. All the local SEOs I know, myself included, consider the citation listing in the Places page to be about as useless as Google's lame link: command. Google doesn't show you all the citations for your business. Doesn't have anything to do with them getting indexed or not.
Search for your business phone number plus the name of the directory in Google. If you see results, your citation is indexed, and you can move on to the rest of your citation building list.
-
Saibose
The authority sites are fairly established in most areas. They're the citygrid sites like merchant circle, citysearch, etc, also yelp, hotfrog, botw. Then there's the secondary yellow pages like superpages.com, yellowbook, angieslist, brownbook.
The question I'm asking is how to get those sources to STICK once you know what they are.
-
sadly, the Google places listing is one place where the DQF algorithm doesnt work. The things that are mainly considered 9when the user is logged in or personalized search is on is: Proximity of listing to the user or the user's query. No of reviews that are attached to the places listing. The amount of detail you have filled. The number of reliable sources where you have reviews for your entity. Now, the "authority" sources are a big question mark and differs based on the nature of listing you have.
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
-
Backlink and Citations: "Google my business" title name too long!?
Here is my situation.
Link Building | | H.M.N.
I am currently doing backlinks and citations for one of our clients. The title name of the client on "Google my Business" is 75 characters. However, for most citation or back link websites, the limit for the title is 50 characters. Here are my questions: How important is it to have the exact same title in citations and backlinks? If it is, is the only solution to change the name on google to have only 50 characters? Thanks in advance for your help!0 -
How to get 'Links to you site' via the google search console API?
hey! Any idea how I can download backlinks via the sear console API? This page from Google has a few commands but not the back links one - https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/webmasters/v3/ Has anyone collected backlinks data in the past? Apprrciate your help! Thanks Arjun
Link Building | | BaselineTry0 -
How do i replace bad hits on Google?
When people search for our brand name on Google, the 4th and 5th hits are threads from open forum. The discussions can hurt our image very much and we have to do something to replace it. I need some tips for how i can replace the community and push it down the list.
Link Building | | DialectAB0 -
01 November 2013 - A possible Google's update??
Hello Guys! On 01 November 2013, one of our website's traffic has been dropped by more than 70%. We had added plenty of domains to the disavow tool, I am just wondering if its a Google's update or the disavow tool has destroyed the site? Any ideas? 9p3sN3p.jpg
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Google Disavow Tool: which kind of links do harm and which do not harm my site?
Recently a guy asked at GoogleWebmasterHelp: Should I be worried if a couple of sites that I don't want to be associated with are linking to me? In this case there have been 2 porn sites linking to his site... that clear.
Link Building | | inlinear
But my question is if for example sites like e.g. : http://www.linguee.de Linguee is one of the best dictionary sites where you can search for phrases and receive common translation examples which are very helpful. Liguee set some links to my site because they take texts usually from multilingual sites to gather examples.
A dictionary site does not have nothing to do with my business but also I don't consider that this might my harm my site? What do you think?0 -
Need to know best practices of Google Local Optimization 2013
I want to know best practices of Google Local Optimization 2013and need sources. Thanks
Link Building | | GM0070 -
How is it possible that Interflora can bounce back from a Google penalty so quickly - is that normal?
As far as I understand it Interflora was removed from Google organic search results on February 20th. I guess no one knows for sure why they were delisted other than Google but I have heard theories such as giving flower bribes to bloggers in return for links 🙂 How sweet - and placing paid follow links inside advertorials within local newspaper sites. Whatever the reason for their de listing it seemed Google must have wanted to send out a strong message since even a branded search wasn't ranking. Fast forward 13 days to today and I now see Interflora ranking not only for their brand but also for flower delivery London etc etc... How is it possible that they managed to get back in the SERPs so quickly? Is it normal to get a penalty and be back up and running at position 1 in less than 2 weeks? Is that normal for a penalty? I was under the impression that being caught gaming Google to the extent where they delisted you was something far more serious and had much longer term repercussions?
Link Building | | Clicksjim0 -
Help me understand the gap between DMOZ and the Google Directory?
I have seen other sites showing up in OSE with backlinks from both DMOZ and Google Directory. We are in DMOZ, and our backling is showing for that in OSE, but i don't understand how to get added to the Google directory? When i go to the appropriate category, and click "submit link" it just takes me back to DMOZ! Is there something i'm doing wrong here? This is the page we are on in DMOZ And this is the page i believe we should be on in the google directory As a side note, i would love to hear your opinions if this really even matters? does google really use it's own directory as part of its search algorithm?
Link Building | | adriandg0