I have read a lot of the responses here. While some of it I agree with, I think we are overlooking some very basic ideas about search engines and what they do, how they work and how we get credit for backlinks that push up the domain authority of our websites.
So lets start at the beginning. It is a 'given in the SEO industry' that google citations (listings on multiple business listing sites) is important and that by signing up for YEXT we are attempting to solve a two-fold problem:
- We are synchronizing the NAP issue read more here ( name address phone number) for the purpose of resolving NAP consistency.
- we are having our sites listed on Showmelocal, Manta, Foursquare, Yelp etc in a synchronized format with a clickable link to our URL. ( domain of our business)
The second one, we immediately assume that by signing up for YEXT we will have our business domain listed there and google will give us credit for this backlink - WELL THIS WILL ONLY HAPPEN IF THAT PAGE THAT YOU ARE ON IS INDEXED BY GOOGLE. I.E. YOUR LISTING ON FOURSQUARE OR SHOWMELOCAL GETS INDEXED BY GOOGLE. AND THEN YOUR BUSINESS WEBSITE GETS INDEXED BY GOOGLE A FEW DAYS LATER -AND THEN GOOGLE GIVES YOUR CREDIT BECAUSE YOU HAVE A HIGH RANKING DOMAIN AUTHORITY DOFOLLOW BACKLINK POINTING TOWARDS YOUR BUSINESS URL.
This is not the case. Some people have mentioned on here that google sees these links. Google WILL NOT unless they get indexed. I agree with Chris Ashton that google does not see these links until a long time later - this is due to the amount of time it takes to index these sites and all these pages. Only when those pages with your business URL are indexed and your business site is indexed will you get credit.
If you find this explanation to be inaccurate then test it. You have to be testing it with a domain that you have signed up for YEXT and you cannot find its citation listings with its backlink when you perform an MOZ backlink search. Look at a business that is signed up for YEXT and not showing google citations when you use MOZ or other software. Perform a search in the same format as it is displayed on foursquare without the https: ....eg. enter the domainname.com just on its own into the google search bar....look through the pages ....if you cannot find it then the foursquare page is not indexed. Or search the name of the business with "foursquare" along side it in the google search bar....
eg: Bergman dentistry Queens foursquare ( a fictitious practice)
**if you dont see it in the SERPS pages -and it listed on foursquare- then its not indexed - **
hence you have confirmation.
** try with other citations sites... **
My solution - take the link to the profile page on foursquare or any other site - paste it multiple times into indexkings.com or pingfarm.com ( many advise against this but how else do you index someone else's site that you have no control over and you cannot login into search console) - also copy those multiple links and paste them into about 5-10 youtube video comment sections ( preferably your own) - when you tube indexes it it will crawl those links. then create a separate page on you site title links. paste the 100 or so google citation profile pages in here, now index the page manually using search console....when google crawls that page it will index those links.....
Failing this try to manually login into the profile pages - make some changes and update them - then do the method above.
comments are welcome, but the above has worked for me...
PH
PS - i made a correction as a I had previously mentioned YELP instead of YEXT. my mistake.
