Newsletter #27

Whitespark Local Insider

May 24, 2017

Whitespark's Monthly Local Search Newsletter

Local InsiderMay 2017

Citations still play a critical role in local ranking factors both for local pack/finder results and local organic, but not all citations carry the same weight. Earlier this year we broke down our top recommended citation and data sources into different classifications by rank of importance, they are: Core Search Engines, Primary Sources, Tier 1, Tier 2 , Tier 3, and Tier 4.Darren has discussed these tiers in his talk at MozCon Local, the LSRF Study, and in the recent webinar for the Local Search Association. But a lot of people have asked for clarification on this categorization. Below we have examples of what this looks like for sources in the USA and a description of each category:Core Search Engines These search engines are receivers of business listing data, not distributors.

  1. Google

  2. Bing

  3. Apple Maps

Primary Data SourcesThese are the data aggregators that aggregate and validate data from a number of sources (government, telcos, utilities, web research, etc), and then distribute this business listing data to hundreds of other sites.

  1. InfoGroup

  2. Acxiom

  3. Localeze

  4. Factual

Tier 1 These sites are prominent on Google and are frequently used by people searching for businesses. In addition to generic sites that are used nationally, this tier also includes city/state and industry/niche citations that add significant value to your citation profile.Generic

  1. Yelp

  2. Facebook

  3. Yellowpages

  4. BBB

  5. etc.

Hyper-Local & Niche

  1. Lawyers (dot) com

  2. Avvo

  3. CityofChicago (dot) org 

  4. Denver (dot) com

  5. etc.

Tier 2 These are business listing sites that have some prominence on Google, decent domain authority, but may be lesser known.

  1. Yellowbook

  2. Merchant Circle

  3. HotFrog

  4. etc.

Tier 3 Even lesser known and lesser frequented business listing sites.

  1. Yellowise

  2. My Local Services

  3. Local Database

  4. etc.

Tier 4 Sites with low domain authority that you've probably never heard of. Examples:

  1. iGotBiz (dot) com

  2. UnitedStatesSeek (dot) com

  3. etc.

From the Blog

Why Did Google Remove Some of My Reviews?If you’re a small business owner who actively gets reviews, it’s likely that you’ve ran into a case where some of your reviews on your Google My Business listing randomly vanished. Google has an active algorithmic filter in place to remove reviews that violate their policies.Like for instance this review was removed because it violated one of the policies: 

In this guest blog post by Joy Hawkins, she explains what can prompt a review to be removed from a Google My Business listing, and what you should do if your business has reviews that have disappeared. 

We are super pumped to announce that we will have a partner booth at MozCon again this year. We highly recommend attending this conference! If you're planning on going save $50 on your ticket by using this special discount code: mozfriend100

Around The Web

Bing Places is taking their local search results to a new level by integrating chatbots to make search more interactive and transitional. Check out Greg Sterling's report on this new feature. 

Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm's Street Bytes weekly discussion on Local Search focuses on fake news and reviews this week. A topic that has taken increasing importance since Google posted their "research" on spam. 

Have you noticed prepackaged  search queries that take the form of shortcut icons while using Google  on mobile? Greg Sterling has more on these machine learning-driven results that bypass the traditional search box. 

If you're struggling with deciding how to publish your content, Phil Rozek has shared his list of situations when you should publish content as a page versus a blog post based on factors such as goals, preferences, and more. 

In this article John Doherty outlines four main areas that local businesses should look to in order to survive in the digital world. Now, not all of these work for every local business, but the suggestions are a great starting point for businesses looking to grow through potentially new channels. 

When was the last time you cleaned up your website? Alex Ramadan of UpBuild has some easy tips and suggestions to help you give your site a little more pep this spring. 

Google has introduced new features and updates over the past few months that you may have noticed, but haven’t seen any official new for. Check out the list of changes that Joy Hawkins has compiled. 

Over the past few months Facebook has increasingly been making algo changes, and we're seeing more positive changes to crack down on Clickbait. Josh Constine of TechCrunch has more details on this update.

Upcoming Conferences

SEARCHLOVE BostonJune 5 - 6, 2017Boston, MAWISTIAFESTJune 11 - 13, 2017Boston, MASMX ADVANCED SEATTLEJune 12 - 14, 2017Seattle, WAMNSEARCH SUMMITJune 23, 2017St. Paul, MNCALL TO ACTION CONFERENCEJune 25 - 27, 2017Vancouver, BCMOZCONJuly 17 - 19, 2017Seattle, WA