How do you go about updating / correcting bad business listings when you cannot contact the website directly?

[ParadigmPCB]

There is a business listing I wish to correct / update on 411dir.biz

There is no way to contact the website online, and in cases like this, I try to do a whois lookup, and reach out via the email / phone number there.

This site seems impossible to connect with, has anybody else come up against situations like this in the past, if so what do you tell your client / what other approaches do people have?

Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Michael!

Very good and creative tips from Moosa and Umar about trying to track this down, so I'll just respond to the part of your question dealing with what to tell clients.

100% consistency may not be a realistic goal for any business, precisely because of a scenario like yours in which old or bad data ends up on a directory you just can get connected up with. In such cases, judging the overall importance of the directory in question becomes key. If the directory is ranking in the top few pages for your client's name, then incorrect NAP there warrants making every possible effort toward resolution. But, if it's an obscure result, make normal efforts and then let it go at that if you can't find any way to correct it. Document your work for clients and pre-set expectations that you are shooting for high consistency, but not perfect consistency. Some of the smartest citation building experts I know have told me that 100% consistency is not only frequently impossible, but not even actually essential.

Hope this helps!

[MoosaHemani]

WHOIS is a good way to find their contact information and if this is not working find them on social media like facebook or twitter as most websites usually respond to that. If this isn’t working, I don’t think you are left with much option and you probably have to give the bad news to your client.

Another thing you can do is to see where they are fetching their data from if they are fetching data from big data aggregators you can fix the information there and it will get update accordingly.

Hope this helps!

[UmarKhan]

Hey Michael,

Usually these kind of sites belong to a network that runs multiple sites.. Whois look up in the best option to track the details but if it's also not workout like your case, I submit another business with all the wrong details, IP address, fake email address and wait for the confirmation email. Once I get that, I contact them from my original address.

The other option that I lookout is to search on social media, though the chances are less to find the real pages or accounts but you can contact the people who shared something about them in past. For this site, I searched on Twitter.

If nothing works out, then you can clearly tell your client about the efforts you did. In most of the cases, they appreciate your efforts and you can move on.

Hope this helps!

Umar