Does position in local directories effect google detecting citations?

[dignan99]

You've asked quite a few questions in one post, but I will do my best to answer a few.

If you are focusing on local SEO, get into as many local directories as you can, and make sure you Name, Address, and Phone number are IDENTICAL in each directory as it is found in Google Places, Bing Local, and Local Yahoo.

When you are listing in the free directories that Google seems to appreciate, e.g. Yelp, Kudzu, Hotfrog, Merchant Circle the search engines will more than likely find them on their own.  However, if you are worried about them being crawled/indexed or not seen in a reasonable time frame you could always post the links to your profile to Twitter or Facebook, or in your blog which will also show up in your RSS feed.

While you shouldn't over do it, this can potentially help the process of being found.

Attempt to get into the powerful free directories before you start spending money on the paid, IMO.

[adriandg]

We are already listed in all the powerful free directories, and have been there for over 6 months. the information about our locations is consistent across all of these sites (i have tipple checked it). yet we still do not see very many citations appearing in the "more about this place" section of the places page.

I have noticed that our competitors that are getting citations from the same free directories that we are not getting our citations from.  We are listed in these directories under their free section but our competitors are paying for premium positioning in these directories.  Which makes me think that google isn't scraping the entire directory, to get all the way down to our name (which starts with an 'S').

take a look at this page:

http://www.shopintoronto.com/Home/Moving---Storage/

we are listed a few pages in. now try clicking the pages: 2, then 3, then 4, then 5... and you'll get this:

"We're sorry but your web browser has been blocked from our site because we have detected the presence of spyware on your computer.

We recommend you install a spyware remover to fix this problem.
Please click on one of the following recommended links to download and install a spyware removing program. "which leads me to believe they throttle to prevent google from fully indexing their site, thus only paying customers get the citation, and free customers don't really get anything, other than their time wasted....I've only noticed this in one place so far, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if other websites are using similar techniques to prevent google-bot from indexing anything more than the first page of each category.

[adriandg]

Here's another example:
http://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/Storage-Self+Service/Toronto+ON/

in this case the people paying for the priority positions on that page are right at the top of the page, rather than buried 5 pages into the results.  in fact they are right at the top of each page of the results, so over and over again they are above the free listings.

I have heard that google considers the value of a link based on its position on the page.  So wouldn't it be safe to assume that google also considers the value of a citation based on its position on the page?

[dignan99]

I think you might need the help of a professional SEO company since you have so many specific questions and theories.

Currently, you are cherry picking a few odd examples, when I believe your time could be better spent making sure you have registered at places that are relevant to your business, onsite SEO, offsite, SEO, linkbuilding, content building, following David Mihms guide...while this will take away from your investigation, it will put you a position to improve your SERP.

Dwelling on a competitor can be a huge waste of time and effort since you can only control what you do.  I very much doubt the paid positions are helping him at all.

[PerchDigital]

Its a valid question, and something I've noticed myself. There's a couple of things I'd suggest considering.

Firstly, how long ago were the listings in the local directories submitted and accepted? If it's been less than a month it may well be that Google hasn't associated the citation/ link yet to your places listing.

Secondly, have you carried out a search in Google to see if they have indeed indexed the page the link is on, or run a
"link: " type search to see if Google acknowledges the link.

[MBayes]

We do a lot of Local seo, and have found that Google is just not showing the citations this year that they did last. We also have researched enough of the citations to see that they are not showing up as links either.  Our thought is Google has stopped indexing many of these pages.

Last year we could count on 8-10 local citations on Places using the normal mix.  Since February of this year, only ONE of those directory listings has shown up as a citation or link.

We now use completely different strategies on citations.  We work on getting on local blogs, as well as other small business sites in the city.  The other clear trend we see, is if you want to have a well ranked site in Places the direct causation (after having a places account of course)  is PA of the sites home page.  We looked at ten local categories and the rankings on Google (Places and first page). Simple,  in the VAST majority of cases the rankings fall right in line with PA ranking.

The days of Local rankings being a significantly different system than organic SEO seem to be gone.

[adriandg]

Probably been about 6 months now. and yes, they are coming up in googles index. (well some of them, not the one i described above where the site throttles google's indexing process)

[adriandg]

This was a very informative and interesting post.  I guess i will move away from my focus of citations for a while and back to strong backlinks to build up our PA & DA.

Thank you for clarifying the matter for me.

[adriandg]

you are correct, i probably asked too many questions in one thread. i think i will open a new question about my last point. about not all citations are equal in value.

[PerchDigital]

That's really interesting to hear that the PA and rankings are pretty much in line (off I go to review my sites...)

There has been a drop off on Google showing citations, but they still seem to be showing images placed on local directories, in some instances taking the same image from a local directory over one added to a places listing in the live places listing.

[MBayes]

Gareth,  Let me know if you see the same things we do?

[PerchDigital]

Will do.

[hireawizseo]

Thx for sharing your perspective. I need to look into this more. We are just launching our new local campaign.

[hireawizseo]

Thx for sharing your perspective. I need to look into this more. We are just launching our new local campaign.