Factors affecting google places citation indexing

[ilyaelbert]

I'm sure we have all been there; filling out yellowbook/yahoo/citysearch/merchant circle citations flawlessly, only to wait months and months for google to decide if they're worth 'attaching' to your places listing.

I still believe that the number one factor for getting them to stick is consistensy of information, however my question is what factors affect the speed of 'stickiness'.

I've implemented google alerts and rss feed/link pinging services to get citations from hotfrog and BOTW indexed almost the same day, however after examing the google places listing, I'm not showing them as listed as citations; which leads me to my next point; that google places could possibly have their own 'indexing rules and speed?'

I've heard several suggestions on how to accelerate indexing, and quite a few of them included building backlinks TO these citations to improve pagerank. Do mozzers have any 'foolproof' ways of getting these citations to 'stick' to google places listings within days, or weeks, instead of months?

[saibose]

sadly, the Google places listing is one place where the DQF algorithm doesnt work. The things that are mainly considered 9when the user is logged in or personalized search is on is: Proximity of listing to the user or the user's query. No of reviews that are attached to the places listing. The amount of detail you have filled. The number of reliable sources where you have reviews for your entity. Now, the "authority" sources are a big question mark and differs based on the nature of listing you have.

[ilyaelbert]

Saibose

The authority sites are fairly established in most areas. They're the citygrid sites like merchant circle, citysearch, etc, also yelp, hotfrog, botw. Then there's the secondary yellow pages like superpages.com, yellowbook, angieslist, brownbook.

The question I'm asking is how to get those sources to STICK once you know what they are.

[Guest]

This post is deleted!

[Whitespark]

Hi Ilya,

It's a common misconception that the only citations that "count" (or stick) are the ones that Google lists on the Place Page. All the local SEOs I know, myself included, consider the citation listing in the Places page to be about as useless as Google's lame link: command. Google doesn't show you all the citations for your business. Doesn't have anything to do with them getting indexed or not.

Search for your business phone number plus the name of the directory in Google. If you see results, your citation is indexed, and you can move on to the rest of your citation building list.

[GriffinHansen]

It would seem to follow logic that Google would count and attach citations from authoritative, trusted sources. It might help to build links to your citations, if that makes sense.

[MBayes]

We have been watching this for a while. In our research we have tried linking to the citation sites, and have had little success. There is no doubt that the principles of places ranking are related to, but not the same as normal organic.

Reviews are very helpful, and next to the normal important areas (profile completeness, address and others) I would put reviews as top priority. Not only on Places, but Yahoo, Insider pages, city search, yelp, Angies, and even customer lobby. I am sure there are more.  Recently Places started displaying reviews from the Places accounts owners web site. Seems if you use reviews or testimonial in the URL  they may pick that up. This may be an attempt on Google's part, to slow down the number of duplicate reviews. (Those with ears , let them hear). <- not sure what I mean, but I have only had one cup of coffee so far.

Look at the simple fact, that you will rarely find a places account on the 2nd or 3rd page of results that have a significant amount of reviews.

We have stopped using the "usually suspects" for citations, as in the last 5 months they seem to have little value. What we do see working is citations on other "local"  sites.  Not directories, but  related local sites. Much harder work, but Google likes it when we work hard for a citation or link... right?

PS-  We are not all that large in SEO, just do local clients , so our research is very limited.

[joemas99]

I have experience the same as Darren. In my frustration I did a yahoo placement page for $10 a month, with excellent local search results. Well worth the money. Doing a free bing one now.

[adriandg]

Thank you, i found this quite helpful.

[qlkasdjfw]

What is the DQF algorithm?

[Whitespark]

I think he meant to say QDF. Quality Deserves Freshness.

See: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-query-deserves-freshness