Moz Local 2016 - Darren Shaw - Citation Investigation!

Data Aggregator
Study
@DarrenShaw_

@DarrenShaw_ +DarrenShaw
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/26/infographic-citations-time-to-live/
CitationsTime to Live – Created by Mike
Blumenthal and David Mihm in 2012

I wanted to find out
what actually happens
when you submit a new
business to the primary
data aggregators

How long does it take
for citations to appear
across their distribution
networks?

How many citations
show up compared to
their reported
distribution network?

How long does it take for
Google to automatically
create a listing for the
business?

Can a business rank
in local search simply
by getting listed in the
data aggregators?

Can a business get any
search traffic or actual
customer calls simply by
getting listed in the data
aggregators?

I set out to test distribution through these
providers

I created 7 new businesses

Addresses were selected from a business area in Fresno,
CA, to keep them all within a similar centroid.

Local phone numbers were created through Call
Rail

I even registered domains and created websites

We submitted the businesses on October 5th
Infogroup Localeze Acxiom Factual
Moz Local Yext Whitespark

ForWhitespark submissions, Nyagoslav manually created
listings on ourTop 50 list
http://www.whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country

And then I set up
tracking for
everything I could
think of
@DarrenShaw_

Daily citation monitoring in the Local Citation Finder

Daily rank tracking in Whitespark’s Local RankTracker

Call tracking and recording in Call Rail

WebsiteTraffic in Google Analytics

Additional website data in Google Search Console

It has been just over 4
months since
submitting.
Here’s what happened
@DarrenShaw_

Citation Growth
Infogroup

Rankings
Infogroup

Call Tracking
Infogroup

Analytics - Referrals
Infogroup
(the other referrals are all spam)

Analytics –Traffic from Google
Infogroup

Google Search Console
Infogroup

Summary
Infogroup
Total Indexed Citations 10
Bing Local Avg Rank 40.1
Google Organic Avg Rank 50.8
Customer Calls 3
Google Traffic 24
Search Console Clicks 1
Search Console Impressions 192
Search Console Avg Position 58.5
Search Console Linking Domains 4

Citation Growth
Localeze

Summary
Localeze
Bing Local Avg Rank 0
Google Organic Avg Rank 52
Customer Calls 0
Google Traffic 13
Search Console Avg Position 0

Citation Growth
Acxiom
usplaces.com

Summary
Acxiom
Customer Calls 0
Google Traffic 5

Summary
Factual
Customer Calls 0
Google Traffic 0

Factual needs third party verification
Factual

These Factual listings are all live
Factual
Yext Moz Local Whitespark

Citation GrowthMoz
Local

SummaryMoz
Local
Customer Calls 1
Google Traffic 2

Citation GrowthYext

Citation GrowthYext
20 of theYext
citations are part
of a network of
newspaper sites.

With newspaper sites removedYext

Citation GrowthYext
SinceYext has direct API access to its
network, we’d expect to find more
than 24 citations indexed.

Checking for indexedYext citationsYext

IndexedYext citationsYext

Indexed Not Indexed Apps/Nav
Allonesearch
AmericanTowns.Com
Bing
ChamberofCommerce.Com
Citysquares
Credibility Review
Cylex
Dexknows
Ezlocal
Getfave
Golocal 24/7
Ibegin
Local Pages
Local.com
Mapquest
N49
Opendi
Show Me Local
Superpages
Topix
Tupalo
Uscity.Net
VoteforThebest
Whitepages
Yahoo!
Yalwa
Yasabe
Yellow Pages Goes Green
Yellowise
YellowpageCity.Com
Yelp
YP
2Findlocal
411.Com
8Coupons
Ablocal
Bizwiki
Brownbook.Net
Citysearch
Credibility.Com
Elocal
Facebook
Factual
Foursquare
Iglobal
Insider Pages
Local Database
Local Stack
Merchant Circle
My Local Services
Pointcom
Switchboard
The Internet Chamber Of Commerce
Whereto
Yellowmoxie
Airyell
Apple
Citymaps
Copilot
Navmii
Soleo
Telenav
Tomtom
White & Yellow Pages

Customer Calls 2
Google Traffic 24
SummaryYext

Customer Calls 2
Google Traffic 24
SummaryYext
Total citations
before I did the
more thorough
indexation check.

(manual citation building)

Citation GrowthWhitespar
k

Newspaper sites removedWhitespar
k

SummaryWhitespar
k
Customer Calls 2
Google Traffic 27

Combined Data
Overview
@DarrenShaw_

Total Indexed Citations
Bing Local Avg Rank
Google Organic Avg Rank
Customer Calls
Google Traffic
Search Console Clicks
Search Console Impressions
Search Console Avg Position
Search Console Linking Domains
10
40.1
50.8
3
24
1
192
58.5
4
4
0
52
0
13
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
5
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
13
0
0
1
2
0
44
50.3
4
24
33.0
45.5
2
24
0
208
69.2
14
49
33.0
49.7
2
27
2
207
67.9
12
Infogroup Localeze Acxiom Factual Moz Local Yext Whitespark

Observations
And
Insights
@DarrenShaw_

Localeze, Acxiom, and
Factual take longer
than 4 months to
distribute.

Citations alone won’t
have much of an
impact on rankings.
No surprise.

Rankings mostly
appeared within the
first 6 weeks, then
tapered off.

Building citations manually
is more effective and half
the cost of the 1st year of
Yext.

Total Indexed Citations
Bing Local Avg Rank
Google Organic Avg Rank
Customer Calls
Google Traffic
Search Console Clicks
Search Console Impressions
Search Console Avg Position
Search Console Linking Domains
Cost
Yext Whitespark
24
33.0
45.5
2
24
0
208
69.2
14
$499
49
33.0
49.7
2
27
2
207
67.9
12
$250
Recurring every year One time

This only applies to building citations for
a brand new business.This study didn’t
look at citation audit and cleanup.

No Google listings have
appeared for any of the
businesses in the study.

Yellowpages.com is one of
the first citations to appear in
the LCF and one of the first
URLs to appear in Search
Console.

It will be interesting to see how this
continues to develop, especially with the
data aggregators. Stay tuned…

Huge thank you
to:Nyagoslav Zhekov
Mike Blumenthal
Andrew Shotland

So what’s my
recommendation
for a *new*
business?

Use Moz Local to get
coverage on the data
aggregators.

Manually build
citations, or use a
manual service, for
the remaining top 50
sites.

Build additional citations
on prominent industry
specific and city specific
citation sites.

Best Citations
By
Category and City
Update for 2016
@DarrenShaw_

Research completed with David Mihm in 2012
https://moz.com/learn/local/citations-by-category

If a site ranks well in Google for many
different search terms in a specific
industry, it must be relevant and
authoritative for those terms.

Search for local terms, and count
the occurrences of business listing
sites in the organic results.
Research
Methodology

Seattle Met
Opencare
Yelp

For each category, we
search multiple terms.

accountants
accounting
accounting services
tax preparation
tax return preparation
accounting firms
accounting companies
Example:
Accountants

We run these queries in hundreds of
cities, and combine all results to find
the most frequently occurring sites
in the organic results.

Improvements
for 2016

Including more countries
- USA
- Canada
- UK
- Australia

Excluding brands and
other sites you can’t
really get listed on

Giving you more data
2012: top 10 sites
2016: top 20 sites

You can get all the data here:
bit.ly/best-citations

Multi-location brands
that are killing it in their
industry

Plumbing:
Accounting:
Assisted Living:
Auto Repair:
Car Rental:
Carpet Cleaning:
Dentistry:
Flowers:
Rotorooter
Liberty tax
Brookdale
Firestone Auto Care
Enterprise
Stanley Steemer
Aspen Dental
Troys Florist
These would make good competitive analysis case studies

x
Sites that are LESS
prominent now than
they were in 2012

Number of times these sites appeared in
the Best 10 Citations by Category in the U.S.

Sites that are MORE
prominent now than
they were in 2012

Up and coming citation
sites that you should
probably get listed on

bit.ly/1mInSY7
bit.ly/1QmLgC0
bit.ly/1Q2bxK7
bit.ly/1VokayR

Moz Local 2016 - Darren Shaw - Citation Investigation!

Moz Local 2016 - Darren Shaw - Citation Investigation!

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