It seems that every day something happens in our lives that causes a chain of events to begin. Something new came out, something broke that needs to be fixed, some problem that we may have that needs a solution. We then turn to one of the many devices at our disposal and begin searching for the answer. If we are looking for a local business, what happens if the information we find is incorrect? We lose faith in either the place we are looking or the company that provides the solution we are looking for, or both. According to a recent survey, 73% of people lose trust in a business when they find incorrect information about them and 67% say they lose trust in the brand if they got lost driving or walking to that business due to incorrect information. Regardless of whether it is the brand/businesses fault or the directory that posted it, the importance of the accuracy of your business listing should be obvious.
Google and other search engines get listing information from many sources. Including, you entering your own info, government sources, user generated content (apps like FourSquare and Swarm) and data providers. That being said, it’s important that you have a way to monitor all of your listings accurately and that you can affect change to any incorrect listings in an efficient way. Here is a case study of BMW of San Francisco illustrating the importance of not only making sure that your listings are correct in as many places as possible, but also that you don’t rely just on going to each directory separately and trying to correct your information yourself. We ran a reputation report for BMW of San Francisco and noticed that they had an incorrect address listed on many sites across the web. Sites like FourSquare, Facebook, Merchant Circle and Yellowpages were leading customers to an incorrect address. Despite a really high Presence Score of 90%, many sites reported the wrong address. Presence Score speaks to a percent of sites that you could be on, but doesn’t speak to listing accuracy. From search engines to review sites to local directories and social sites, BMW of San Francisco was coming up incorrect.
Digging a little deeper, we looked at how they appeared on the four major data providers and we found that there were inconsistencies with their actual listing and what Acxiom was reporting.
Xcite listing-distribution-casestudy-BMW
8055 E. Tufts Ave. Suite 240
