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Google Places Citations

by Xebekn
7 replies
After having a Google Places listing for 3 months, one particular business I am associated with only has two citations: Details provided by business owner and angieslist. They have signed up on many local business directories including yahoo, bing, citysearch, etc and still no citations from those websites. For a 3 month time period is this below average, average or above?

Also, does anyone have any tips to getting cited faster besides uniformity in content?
#citations #google #places
  • Profile picture of the author jsherloc
    IMO, Google Places is only showing certain citation resources for the most part WITHIN their platform. So, you know the citation have been created at all of these other places, but they just aren't showing up WITHIN Places?

    About a year ago I was noticing all sorts of stuff showing up for citations for many companies on top of the regular citation resources (blog posts, article directory resource boxes, web 2.0s, etc), now this type of stuff doesn't seem to appear as regularly in my experiences. I think Google is just giving you a glimpse of a companies' citation resources at any given time as the months progress. IMO I think they put some heavier "filters" on what they specifically show us now. IMO and experiences, they are for sure still being "counted" though!

    I'm still finding all kinds of great citation resources, but it seems you've really gotta increase the "sample size" of Places in order to discover a lot of the nuggets, whereas before i could just look in any major town/industry and find literally thousands of potential citation resources being pulled right into the Places platform....

    Aside from uniformity, I would definitely build some backlinks to those citation resources! Use your desired anchor text aka your keywords when linking to these authority pages. Get some reviews on a few of the "biggies" that include your desired KWs if at all possible and then ping the actual listing URLs too.

    i really wouldn't worry on when Google will "pull" those resources....it might be tomorrow...it might be never lol. Not what you wanted to hear I know, but I hope it helps!

    also, you can put your citations in the additional info of the actual Places listing...so you link out to them from within Places. to me, that is about the most "local relevance" you can give Google Places. this should help google pull SOME of them faster for you IMO, but no guarantees. it is a crazy Google Places world out there.

    - Jim
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    • Profile picture of the author Xebekn
      Thanks for the reply Jim, it was very helpful. I have a few questions if you don't mind.

      Originally Posted by jsherloc View Post

      Aside from uniformity, I would definitely build some backlinks to those citation resources! Use your desired anchor text aka your keywords when linking to these authority pages. Get some reviews on a few of the "biggies" that include your desired KWs if at all possible and then ping the actual listing URLs too.
      Are you suggesting linking to various citations from GP or from some other sites? Could you give me an example?


      Originally Posted by jsherloc View Post

      also, you can put your citations in the additional info of the actual Places listing...so you link out to them from within Places. to me, that is about the most "local relevance" you can give Google Places. this should help google pull SOME of them faster for you IMO, but no guarantees. it is a crazy Google Places world out there.
      So, you're saying to direct link to my other citation resources (yahoo, bing etc) in "Additional Info" on GP? Will GP not consider this stuffing?

      Thanks again!
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  • Profile picture of the author Bennette
    Originally Posted by Xebekn View Post

    After having a Google Places listing for 3 months, one particular business I am associated with only has two citations: Details provided by business owner and angieslist. They have signed up on many local business directories including yahoo, bing, citysearch, etc and still no citations from those websites. For a 3 month time period is this below average, average or above?

    Also, does anyone have any tips to getting cited faster besides uniformity in content?
    Did you check their listing? I had a client that said they did it but when I checked it wasn't completed correctly. Also do they have reviews?
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  • Profile picture of the author Bon508
    To add to what Bennette said, is it possible that the information isn't entered EXACTLY the same way in each listing? For example, if part of the address entered is "Random Road" on Directory A, but "Random Rd" on Directory B, I've heard this can result in them not being recognized (cited) as the same company.
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    Bonnie
    ProfitBasedMarketing.com
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  • Profile picture of the author sdentrepreneur
    I agree...if you are using directories as your citations, make sure it matches exactly.
    Has anyone but me dabbled with putting the link to Google Maps as the URL of some of the directories?
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    • Profile picture of the author Catalyst eMarketing
      I agree with Jim. Google is seldom showing new citations any more, even authority citations. But when I've talked to Mike Blumenthal and others about it we all feel G still COUNTS them, just does not show most of them on the Place page.

      Could be to save space and bandwidth, but I think it's more to mess up the spammers and even honest marketers. Since UBL and Localeze are common knowledge now and so many are doing mass submissions to all the usual suspects to try to boost ranking - my theory is they aren't showing them to make it harder for people to figure out the alto and try to game the system.

      FYI I was invited to contribute to David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors this year, just blogged about it. If you've been in the biz you know it's considered "the Bible". It SHOULD be coming out today but David is traveling back from Scotland and Amsterdam, so it may be delayed. I'll keep you posted.

      Anyway as a contributor I've gotten a sneak peak at all the data and there is a lot of info in the report from all the local experts and it includes a section on what everyone believes to currently be the most important citation sources.
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      • Profile picture of the author Xebekn
        Originally Posted by Bennette View Post

        Did you check their listing? I had a client that said they did it but when I checked it wasn't completed correctly. Also do they have reviews?
        I did check their listing and they do have reviews.

        Originally Posted by Bon508 View Post

        To add to what Bennette said, is it possible that the information isn't entered EXACTLY the same way in each listing? For example, if part of the address entered is "Random Road" on Directory A, but "Random Rd" on Directory B, I've heard this can result in them not being recognized (cited) as the same company.
        There is definitely a chance and I'll make sure I take time to go back and retrace those steps. Aside from uniformity though, what else stops the citation process?

        Originally Posted by sdentrepreneur View Post

        I agree...if you are using directories as your citations, make sure it matches exactly.
        Has anyone but me dabbled with putting the link to Google Maps as the URL of some of the directories?
        Forgive me, I'm new to this. What other sources are out there for citations besides directories?

        Also, by using Google Maps as the URL of the directories, did you mean you were using your Google Places URL as the website when a local directory asks for yours? Would you consider this a better practice than using that to get a backlink to your own website?


        Originally Posted by Catalyst eMarketing View Post

        I agree with Jim. Google is seldom showing new citations any more, even authority citations. But when I've talked to Mike Blumenthal and others about it we all feel G still COUNTS them, just does not show most of them on the Place page.

        Could be to save space and bandwidth, but I think it's more to mess up the spammers and even honest marketers. Since UBL and Localeze are common knowledge now and so many are doing mass submissions to all the usual suspects to try to boost ranking - my theory is they aren't showing them to make it harder for people to figure out the alto and try to game the system.

        FYI I was invited to contribute to David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors this year, just blogged about it. If you've been in the biz you know it's considered "the Bible". It SHOULD be coming out today but David is traveling back from Scotland and Amsterdam, so it may be delayed. I'll keep you posted.

        Anyway as a contributor I've gotten a sneak peak at all the data and there is a lot of info in the report from all the local experts and it includes a section on what everyone believes to currently be the most important citation sources.
        Will the report be free?
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