Hi Michelleh,
You will find differing opinions on this. Most of the Local SEOs I know use Localeze over UBL these days. I have seen doubts expressed regarding the current value of UBL. I have not used Yext, personally, but recommend you read Mike Blumenthal's recent review of their product:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/01/yext-local-seo/

I'll quote from Mike's post here:

"Pluses:

-From a management and process point of view for the local SEO the service makes sense. Its fast and efficient and provides some tracking. What would take 6 or 7 hours is done in 15 minutes. If outsourced it would cost in the range of a $100 but the quality and consistency would not be as good.

-It seems to generate between 5 and 6 additional citations that Google thinks are important. Why that should be the case with listings that have already been claimed is not clear.

-The service allows for specials to be easily created and disseminated quickly and things like hours to be changed in a timely fashion.

-There is some reporting and there is decent multilevel management so an SEO can allow clients to access their own reports.

-If a business were to move or change phone numbers it provides a very efficient way of grappling with that issue.

-Whether you use the service or not, Yext’s Local Search Scorecard is a great way to assess NAP consistency across a wide range of sites.

Negatives:

-The reporting is lame. Although in conversations with Yext’s Howard Lerman, they will be adding additional features and color. One of particular interest will be review tracking.

-The cost in and off itself is expensive and it is an annual recurring cost. There is a small reseller discount that starts at only 5% and with enough volume goes up.

• Web traffic from these sites is small compared to Google and even comparing to Bing or Yahoo. But that isn’t Yext’s issue."

I think the main concern with Yext's product is its cost. If you can afford it, it might be a good choice, but as I've said, most of the Local SEOs I know appear to continue to favor Localeze.

And, there is the alternative, as pointed out well by ITRogers, of doing this manually and making your own spreadsheet to keep track of your work. I don't consider this inferior to any product being offered because you have total control over exactly what you are doing. In many cases, manual submission might be the best choice, and if you do it yourself, it is certainly the most affordable!

And one of the chief difficulties between the local business crowd and Google arises, I believe, from Google's founding mindset of secretiveness. While understandably essential to protecting their mystery algo, it's quite another matter to publish such critical data about real local businesses while keep one hand behind one's back. I don't believe I've ever had a local business owner tell me, "I love Google." They know Google is important, but they don't love them.

I find that Google's review policies are sort of normal, in that they are similar to the policies of others, but Yelp's are sometimes off in a corner by themselves. For example, here's a line from Yelp's TOS:

Violate our Content Guidelines, for example, by writing a fake or defamatory review, trading reviews with other businesses, or compensating someone or being compensated to write or remove a review;

(emphasis mine)

So, Yelp would explicitly frown on the hypothetical strategy Leo has put forward, whereas, Google is less clear on this. Interesting stuff.

Hey Egol,

If for Google, yes. For others (read Yelp) this is a weird no-no. Nice to see you here today!

Hi Leo,

I second Alan's very well-stated concerns on this. Google has this habit of letting things get by them for months or even years, but it's my opinion that they are quick to spot odd looking activity when they actually take the time to look. I believe what you are considering could look odd.

It's perfectly fine for a business owner to use his Places account to leave reviews of businesses with which he has enjoyed transactions, but I, personally, would steer clear of making some sort of organized, reciprocal effort out of this. In Google's dream world (and Yelp's, etc.) reviews are a spontaneous and voluntary action on the part of the customer. They are not the outcome of an organized deal. That being said, I do understand how critical reviews have become, including their number and quality, to the visible reputation and bottom line of so many businesses and it's truly tempting to team up with other business owners who are grappling with this powerful and still-relatively-new monster to give business a boost in a tough economy. In the long run, though, I think the worry probably wouldn't be worth the potential benefits. At least, it wouldn't for me.

Thanks for asking such a good question.

Haha - I didn't notice that, actually. Here are a couple more links, too, David, that might be good to look at:

http://searchengineland.com/mediative-eye-tracking-google-maps-study-100783

http://results.mediative.ca/Mediative_White-Paper-Google-Places-on-the-iPhone.html

So glad the first one was helpful.

Hi David,

While I don't have explicit CTR data to share with you, I do believe you will like this eyetracking article:

http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/eye-tracking-experiment-google_7109

In one of the screenshots, you can see the greater heat in the local area of the page, vs. the upper organic results.

Does this help with your query?

Hello Taso,

While there isn't really anything you can 'do' to get Google to pick up notes on third party reviews, you mention Yelp in your question and that is a special case. Google stopped showing notation of Yelp reviews in mid-2010, so if this is the source of your 3rd party reviews, you will not see them show up in G. Places. Here is a good article from Lisa Barone at that time:

http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/08/yelp-reviews-out-of-google-places.html

So, you will need to be sure you're getting reviews in sources Google does use. Look at your competitors' websites for a quick picture of what those include. It can take Google some time to pick up new reviews, so be prepared for that, but do go ahead and start planning to acquire them.

And, definitely, work on getting Google-based reviews. Those are very important since Google stopped displaying 3rd party reviews from any source but their own. Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi Jbstr13,

Oh, boy, I haven't seen one of these come up in awhile, but they do happen. Ryan has linked to the right starting point for you. Be advised - these things can really take some time to change. I'm actually dealing with a similar, though not identical, issue myself with a client. The roads were significantly changed in his part of Virginia 5+ years ago and the maps reflect the old roads...plus, the client is pinned in the wrong locale. For the sake of interest, here's my recent blog post on this in case you'd care to read it:

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1228

Also, Mike Blumenthal did a good series of posts back in 2010 about the 'lost' town of Rogers, MN that you might find interesting:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2010/03/17/google-maps-what-happens-when-you-loose-a-town/

Start at the link Ryan placed here and good luck!

Miriam

Hi Bob,

I'm getting a 'server not found' page when I tried to access your demo site. I guess I don't know what theme you're using, but I would imagine you can create whatever kind of pages or  you'd need to. If you're using something like the All-in-One SEO-Pack and permalinks, you could even make the 2 city landing pages as blog posts and just link to them from the main menu. But, I don't know what challenges you are facing with your theme, obviously.

Hope you can figure it out. I know it's sometimes tough when clients are on a tight budget. You've just got to let them know what you can do for their investment. The nice thing about websites is that they can always grow as budget becomes available. Good luck!

Hi Bob,

Thanks for answering my question. Given what you've described, I don't see the necessity for the complexity of subdomains, though others might see this differently. What I see is this:

• She has one business. This logically equals one website.

• She can create a city landing page for each of her offices on the site (mytoothdoctor.com/torrance and mytoothdoctor.com/wilmington). Yes, you can link to these from the homepage as well as from the main menu. Be sure that these pages are not simply duplicates of one another with the city name changed. They need to be unique, helpful pages of copy for the user, as well as being locally optimized.

• She can optimize her contact page, footer and other areas of the site for both of her offices...it's not like you're dealing with 20 locations here. Only two of them.

• She can offer a Spanish language version of the site as well. No problemo so long as you follow best practices on this.

• She can claim a unique Google Place page for each location, plus other local business directory listings because of the distinct location data.

In your shoes, I would be looking for the easiest-to-manage plan for this client, and unless I'm really missing something, I don't see a need for subdomains in this scenario, and certainly not for multiple websites. Build a single, powerhouse site for the client and both you and she will find it easy to manage for the long haul.

Hope my suggestions help! Miriam

Hi Bob,

I want to be sure I understand this correctly. When you say the dentist bought a second practice, are you saying that she now has 2 physical offices with unique local are code phone numbers and street addresses, though they share the same business name? Is that right?

If they are in 2 distinct locations with unique phone/addresses, then it is up to the client whether she wants to be running 2 different businesses, or simply be a multi-location business.

If she wants that practices branded differently, then, yes, I would vote for 2 websites, with the proviso that nothing is duplicated from one site to the other. All content must be unique for each site if she really wants to be running 2 distinct practices.

If she wants to have a single practice with different branches, I vote for building one well-optimized website and utilizing Local SEO best practices to ensure that her geo information is being correctly featured for the two locations. Again, landing pages for the two offices will need to feature unique copy (hire a copywriter who knows Local) and the footer, contact page and other elements need to be appropriately optimized in accord with best local practices. Lots and lots of businesses have more than one location, so this would just be a typical Local SEO project. Get the dentist to consult with a Local SEO if this isn't your area so that the new design has the right stuff baked into it from step one.

Regarding duplicate content on multilingual site, this is not a major concern. I recommend reading this earlier Q&A thread on this topic:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/site-with-multiple-languages

Hope this helps!

Miriam