SEO News

Posted by MarkTraphagen

On June 25, 2014, Google’s John Mueller made a
shocking announcement: Google would be removing all author photos from Google search results. According to the MozCast Feature Graph, that task was fully accomplished by June 29.

In this post I will:

• Give a brief overview of how Google Authorship got to where it is today.
• Cover how Google Authorship now works and appears in search.
• Offer my take on why Author photos were removed
• Investigate the oft-repeated claims of higher CTR from author photos
• Suggest why Google Authorship is still important, and speculate on the future of author authority in Google Search.

A Brief History of Google Authorship

The Google Authorship program has been my wheelhouse (some might say “obsession”) since
Google first announced support for Authorship markup in June of 2011. Since I am both an SEO and a content creator, Google certainly got my attention in that announcement when they said, “…we’re looking closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors and rank search results.”

Of course, in the three years since that blog post, many search-aware marketers and content creators also jumped on the Google Authorship bandwagon. Occasional comments from prominent Google staffers that they might someday use author data as a search ranking factor, along with Bill Slawski’s lucid explanations of the
Google Agent Rank patent, fueled the fire of what most came to call “author rank.”

Below is a video from 2011 with Matt Cutts and Othar Hansson explaining the possible significance of Authorship markup for Google at that time:

During the three years since Google announced support for rel=author markup, there have been many changes in how Authorship appeared in search results, but each change only seemed to buttress Google’s continued support for and improvement of the program.

In the early days of Google Authorship, almost anyone could get the coveted face photo in search by correctly setting up Authorship markup on their content and linking to that content from their Google+ profile. As time went on, Google became pickier about showing the rich snippet, and some sort of quality criteria seemed to come into play. Still, it was not too difficult to earn the author snippet.

Then at Pubcon New Orleans in October 2013, Matt Cutts announced that in the near future,
Google would start cutting back on the amount of Authorship rich snippets shown in search. He said that in tests they found when they cut out 10% to 15% of the author snippets shown, “overall quality went up.” In December of that year we saw the promise fulfilled as the percentage of queries showing author photos dropped, and many individual authors either started seeing a byline-only snippet for much or all of their content, or losing Authorship snippets completely.

It was clear by then that Authorship as a search feature was a privilege, not a right, and that as much as Google seemed to want people to adopt Authorship markup, they were determined to police the quality of what was shown in search associated with that markup. But none of that prepared us for what has happened now: the complete removal of author photos from global search.

Google Authorship without Photos in Search

Here are the fundamental facts about how Authorship is used in search as of this writing:

1.
The only Authorship rich snippet result now available in global search is an author byline. Google has dropped author photos entirely (except for some unique exceptions in personalized search; see below). Also, Google dropped the “in xx Google+ circles” link that showed in some cases and led to the author’s Google+ profile.

2.
Author bylines now link to Google+ profiles. Previously, at least in the US, author bylines in search results linked to a unique Google search page that would show just content from that author. This feature is no longer available.

3.
Qualification for an Authorship byline now is simply having correct markup. This was a bit of a surprise given Google’s move last December to differentiate and highlight authors with better quality content who publish on trusted sites. But in a Google Webmaster Central Hangout on June 25, 2014, John Mueller indicated that now as long as the two-way verification (rel=author markup on the content site linked to author’s Google+ profile, and a link back to the content site in the author’s Google+ Contributor To links) could be correctly read by Google, a byline would likely be shown.

You can check for correct Authorship verification for any web page by entering its URL in Google’s
Structured Data Testing Tool. If Authorship is correctly connected for the page, you should see a result similar to this:

However, it is well known that this tool isn’t perfect. For example, even though it shows
Eric Enge‘s post on Copyblogger as being verified, Google has never shown an Authorship snippet for any of Eric’s posts there, and even now does not show a byline for that content. Eric is a very well-known and trusted author who gets a rich snippet for all his other content on the web, and Copyblogger is certainly a reputable site. Why his content there has never displayed an Authorship snippet remains a mystery.

In the Hangout, John Mueller went on to say that in the future they may have to reevaluate showing bylines for everyone who has correct markup, once they get more experience with the byline only results. He promised that there will be continued experimentation. If they see that people are using the bylines as a gauge of how great or trustworthy an author is, that might be impetus enough to try to re-implement some kind of quality factor into whether or not one gets a byline.

So are there actually more Authorship results in search now? If Mueller is correct that Authorship snippets are now based merely on a technically-correct connection, and there is no longer any quality factor, then wouldn’t we expect now to see more Authorship in search, even if only bylines? Not necessarily.

Moz’s Dr. Pete Meyers shared the following with me:

So, in my data set, Authorship [measured the old way – by thumbnail photos] peaked on June 23rd at 21.2% of SERPs (in our 10K data set). Measured the new way [bylines only], Authorship is showing up around 24.0% of SERPs. That could mean that, in absence of the photos, Google has allowed it to appear more often, or it could mean that there were a handful of SERPs with byline-only Authorship before. I suspect it’s the latter, but I have no data to support that.

I agree with Pete’s latter guess. The fact is that from the December 2013 “purging” of Authorship in search until the recent change, there have been two kinds of Authorship results: Those with a photo and byline, and those with byline only. I called the latter “second class Authorship,” and it looked like when Google ran its quality filter through the Authorship results, most lower-quality authors dropped to second class, byline-only results rather than being dropped altogether from Authorship results.

So it appears that the net result is no overall change in the amount of Authorship in search, just an elimination of a “first class” status for some authors.

4.
Author photos may still be shown in personalized search for selected Google+ content. This was an unannounced change in Google search that showed up at the same time author photos were being eliminated from global (logged-out-of-Google) search. Now Google+ posts by people you follow on Google+ may sometimes show an author photo when you search while logged in to your Google+ account (personalized search).

The example below is an actual screen capture from my own logged-in search for “Google Plus for Business.” Joshua Berg is in my Google+ circles, and Google shows his relevant Google+ post both elevated in the results (higher than it would occur in my logged-out results) and with his profile photo.

In my testing of this, I have seen that these personalized author photos for Google+ posts are most likely to show if the author is high in the “relevancy” sort in your Google+ circles, and is someone with whom you have engaged fairly frequently.

While not Authorship related, it is interesting to note that Google+ brand pages that you circle and have engaged with may now show a brand logo snippet in personalized search for their Google+ posts. While some other parts of the world have had these branded results for a while, this is entirely new for US Google searches.

I’ll have more below on what I see as the significance of these new results and what they may say about the future of Authorship and author authority in Google.

So Why Were Author Photos Removed?

So if Google was committed to continued improvement of the Authorship program, why did they drop photo snippets entirely? Was this a complete reversal, a “beginning of the end for Authorship” as some thought? Or were author photos in search simply not producing the results Google was looking for?

Before I give my take on those questions, I highly recommend Cyrus Shepard’s post ”
Google Announced the End of Author Photos in Search: What You Should Know.” I agree completely with Cyrus’s take there, and won’t duplicate what he covered. Rather in the rest of this post I will try to bring some added insights and informed speculations based on my intensive observation of Google’s Authorship program over the past three years.

Let’s start with the explanation given by John Mueller in his announcement post, linked at the beginning of this article. John said:

We’ve been doing lots of work to clean up the visual design of our search results, in particular creating a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices. As a part of this, we’re simplifying the way Authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count. (Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one.)

It sounds like Mueller is linking this change to Google’s
“mobile first” initiative. Mobile first seeks to unify, as much as possible, the user experience between desktop and mobile. It is a response to the rapid increase of mobile usage worldwide. In fact, at SMX West earlier this year Google’s Matt Cutts said that he expects Google searches on mobile to exceed desktop searches before the end of 2014.

In subsequent comments on his Google+ post and elsewhere, Mueller elaborated that images in search results take up lots of bandwidth in mobile search, slowing down delivery of results on many devices. They also take up considerable screen real estate on the smaller screens of mobile devices.

But were UX and mobile concerns the only reasons for removing author photos? I seriously doubt that. If author photos were providing a significant benefit to searchers, according to Google’s data, then it is likely they would have worked on some compromise that would have made them more compatible with mobile first.

Furthermore, John Mueller himself, in the
aforementioned Hangout, hinted that there were other considerations involved. For example, he commented that there may have been too many author photos for some search results, and that too much of any one feature in search is not a good user experience.

My Personal Speculation. I don’t doubt Mueller that demands by Google’s search user experience efforts may have been the main driving force behind the removal of author photos, but as I said above, I do not think it was the only reason.

I believe that after much testing and evaluation Google may have decided that author photos for now send a disproportionate signal to searchers. That is, the photos may have been indicating an implied endorsement of result quality that Google is not yet prepared to back up.

Remember that in December we saw Google reduce the number of author photos shown in search as an attempt, according to Matt Cutts, to increase the quality of those results. However, when questioned about the concept of “author rank” (Google using author trust data to influence search results), Cutts consistently speaks about the great difficulty of evaluating such quality or trust. He elaborates that finding a way to do that remains a strong goal at Google, but he doesn’t expect to see it for years to come. (For example, see
my remarks on his comments at SMX Advanced last month.)

Given all that, it may be that Google, realizing that they still have a lot of work to do toward evaluating author trust and quality to a degree where they would allow those factors to influence actual search rankings, decided that even though Authorship does not currently affect rankings, the photos still might imply to searchers a trust and authority for the author of which Google could not be fully confident.

In addition, I believe that three years into the Authorship program, Google realized that they were never going to get the vast majority of authors and sites to implement Authorship markup. If author authority is to succeed as a contributor to better search results in the future, Google has to find ways to identify and verify authors and their connected content that are not tied to either markup or Google+. That also will be a long-term project.

So this may actually be merely a temporary retrenchment as Google knuckles down to the hard work of figuring out how to make author authority something truly worthwhile in search.

What About Ad Competition? When the dropping of author photos was announced, there was immediate speculation by many, including Moz’s own Rand Fishkin on Twitter, that the author photos were seen as too competitive with the AdWords ads displayed in search.

It’s impossible to either prove or disprove such speculation, as only Google holds the data. I personally find it a little hard to believe that it came down to a zero sum game between author photos and ads. In other words, is it reasonable to think that was either/or; that author photos were so attractive and got clicked so much that when they appeared too many people totally ignored the ads?

Also, that speculation is based on the assumption that author photos were, in recent history, huge CTR magnets. In the next section I’ll examine those CTR claims.

What About Author Photo CTR?

One of the most oft-repeated alleged benefits of author photos in search was that they dramatically increased click-through rates (CTR), as people were drawn to those results even if they were lower on the page.

I was as guilty as anyone else in confidently proclaiming in my online articles and conference presentations that “studies have shown” this increase in CTR for Authorship results. So it shocked me as much as anyone when John Mueller in his announcement post said, “Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one
.”

First, we should note some ambiguities in Mueller’s statement:

• He does not actually say “click-through rate,” though that’s what most readers assumed he was talking about. He called it “click-through behavior,” which could refer to other things, such as how quickly people bounced back to the search results after clicking an author photo result. In that case, higher CTR would not be a good thing from a search quality viewpoint.
• He does not explicitly say that the click-through behavior was for the author photo results exclusively. It could be an evaluation of overall click behavior on search pages that included author photos.
• This could be a reference to click behavior aggregated across all queries showing author photos. If so, then it may be that while CTR was higher for photo results in some queries, overall the effect may have been a wash.

But were we ever really sure there was as huge a CTR increase for author photo results as was frequently claimed? After investigating those claims, I’m not so sure.

• Google themselves never made a positive claim of increased CTR for author photos. A much-cited paper by Google researchers on social annotations such as face photos in search was based only on eye-tracking studies and user interviews, not actual click behavior. It actually found that image-based social annotations were not necessarily as attractive to searchers as believed, and only were attractive under certain circumstances.
• I found hundreds of blog posts proclaiming “30-150% increase in CTR!” for Authorship. Those all seemed to trace back to one article two years ago that cited a 30% increase of CTR for rich snippet results in general. That post did not talk about Authorship specifically, nor was it made clear exactly how they determined the 30% raise.
• Most of the other articles or “studies” purporting to show increased CTR from Authorship are based on one-off, anecdotal evidence. In other words, the authors implemented Authorship, and then saw more organic traffic to their sites. While interesting, such correlative claims at best may demonstrate a one-off accomplishment for that particular author for particular queries, but they do not prove that there was a general, or even universal, CTR boost.
• Testing for actual CTR boost is probably impossible outside of access to Google’s own data. That’s because CTR is highly volatile by ranking position, and it is impossible to know if you’re comparing apples to apples. For a truly conclusive test, one would have to be able to randomly show the same result for the same query in an A/B split with half the results showing an author photo and half not. I don’t see any way for us to set up such a test.
• In the Webmaster Central Hangout mentioned previously, John Mueller hinted strongly that whatever CTR boost there may have been, Google has seen it wear away over the past couple years. He mused that it is likely people became more used to seeing author photos in search over time, and so they had less impact and drawing power. If Google sees a feature not having much effect, it is natural that they would remove it.
• Unfortunately, the Author Stats feature in Google Webmaster Tools is no help in evaluating CTR of author photo results vs. post-author photo results. Before June 28, for me it showed hundreds of pieces of content showing in search as Authorship snippets. Since June 28, only one result shows, and that is for a Search Engine Land article I wrote that made it into Google News results, where author photos can still show. Apparently the Author Stats tool was measuring only results with author photos.

All that is not to say there was never any rise in CTR for any Authorship posts. But it is to say that we never really knew for sure, and we never knew how much. Most importantly, there was never any proof that any CTR boost was universal. That is, there was no reason to assume that just because your results got an author photo, they were automatically getting a CTR boost.

So Does Google Authorship Still Matter?

In a word, yes. If Google had actually lost its enthusiasm for and commitment to author identity as a future, important aspect of search, then this would have been the time to pull the band aid all the way off, rather than just removing photos. But, in fact, Authorship still works in search.

Let me conclude with some reasons why I think Authorship still has value, and that author authority is still a major priority for Google search.

1. Authors still matter. The bylines are an indication that Google still cares who created a piece of content, and thinks that is significant and useful information for searchers. Every pixel of a search result is very valuable real estate. Google realizes that, and is still willing to give up some of that territory to an author’s name.

2. Bylines are not invisible. Sure no one believes that a byline might capture the eye of someone viewing a search page to the same degree that a face photo probably did, but it does not follow that bylines are without value. More and more SEOs are advising their clients to optimize the meta descriptions for their pages. Why? Not because they are a ranking factor (they are not), but because they can have a significant effect on “selling” the searcher on clicking that result.

We’re used to hearing that the number one result for a given query usually gets the most clicks by far. But it doesn’t get all the clicks, and on some queries the top result may not be as attractive as on others. If we all believed the top result was always the best, wouldn’t we just click that “Feeling lucky?” button on Google’s home page?

The truth is that when the title of the top result doesn’t immediately grab the searcher as a sure thing to fulfill her search need, she will begin looking for other clues in the other results. Among those will be the descriptive text under the results. When an author’s name appears there, it may move the searcher to think the result is more reliable (written by a “real person”). And if that person is someone already known to and trusted by the searcher, the value goes up significantly.

3. Author and brand images now in personalized search. While limited in appearance, the fact that Google now will sometimes show an author photo or a brand image for Google+ content in personalized search indicates that they have not at all abandoned the idea that such image results can have value. It may be that they see that such highly-personalized recommendations have real value to searchers. It makes sense that if I regularly engage with Rand Fishkin on Google+, I will be more likely to value his content when I do a logged-in search with a relevant query.

This may have implications for the future of author authority in search in general. It is conceivable that even if Google does implement it and expand it for content beyond Google+ posts, that it will remain highly personalized. In other words, Google may decide that it is most reliable to boost authors with whom you already have some affinity.

4. Authorship still builds your author rank database with Google. Using Authorship markup on your best content is still the clearest way to let Google see what you create and how people respond to it. You can be sure that Google has been tracking such data all along, and will continue to do so. Even if author authority is still not a ranking factor (outside of personalized search, and some search features such as In-Depth Articles), it likely will be someday. When that day comes, if Google has a clear history of your growth as a trusted author in your field, you may have a competitive advantage.

5. Google remains committed to author authority as a search factor. As recently as SMX Advanced in May, just a few weeks before the announcement of the end of author photos, Google’s Matt Cutts reiterated his enthusiasm for author authority, while noting that it was a difficult and long-term project. For a transcript of his remarks, see my post here. Google understands that people are wired to trust other people long before they trust “brands” or websites.

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Posted by Casey_Meraz

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Did you know that having consistent and correct citations is mandatory for any successful local SEO Campaign? If you’ve read the 2013 Moz Local Ranking Factors survey or you’ve been in the local SEO game for a while, it’s no secret how important citations are to ranking locally in Google. In fact, citations and external location signals are the 3rd most important ranking factor according to the Moz local search
ranking factors survey. This is why it’s essential that you have your correct NAP listed across the major citation sources.

So what is the NAP format? NAP stands for
Business Name, Address, and Phone Number. Having this information listed on another website such as Yelp, Citysearch, or Yellowpages acts like a positive vote for your local listings. While many people know they need to build citations to help increase their local rankings, surprisingly many people overlook having duplicate listings and incorrect listings.

Some people think they only need to update their Google My Business listing which is incorrect. In fact, according to David Mihm from Moz “If all you’re doing is updating your Google+ Local Page, you’re going to continue to see problems because “new” erroneous data will constantly feed into Google from all of its other sources.” This has been known to create bigger problems down the road. So what is the downside if you have inconsistent citations, duplicate citations, or citations that are just plain wrong?

In a nutshell you’re missing out on getting credit for that citation, it’s
hurting your local rankings in Google, and its potentially creating longer term issues when the incorrect data is scraped. Unfortunately while there are some resources you can use to simplify this process, it’s not as easy as waving a magic wand or blinking while wearing your Google Glass.

Let’s Start With The Basics: What is an Incorrect NAP?

So what is an incorrect NAP? The long and the short of it is that Google and other search engines want to give you credit for having your business name, address, and phone number listed on other reputable websites. It acts as a vote of confidence for you similar to a link in organic SEO.

You should make sure that your Google My Business Listing has your correct NAP format the way you want it displayed across the web. If any of this information is not the same as it is listed in Google My Business then you may not be getting credit for it. Additionally if you have a duplicate listing it could be hurting you as well. Just because you didn’t create or publish the incorrect information doesn’t mean it’s not polluting the local ecosystem. There are plenty of ways this can happen as I discuss a little later in this article. But first, let’s take a look of some good and bad examples of correct and incorrect NAP.

How Exact Do These Citations Need to Be?

As you can see from the examples above, I was very clear with the items I changed from the correct example. Although Google has gotten good at detecting minor differences, you should always aim to be the least imperfect. The whole reason we are fixing these in the first place is to make it easier for Google to associate the proper listings together for your business. Minor differences such as Street and St. should not be an issue. However, incorrect, duplicate, or false information is a big no no.

The long and the short of it is that the Business Name, Address, and Phone Number you want to use should be 100% correct in your Google My Business Dashboard (formerly Google Places, Plus Local, etc.). From here, you can copy this exact format on every source you wish to get a citation from.

Overall, there are three types of citations we’re trying to fix during this process. These include:

• Duplicates -Duplicate listings on the same directory
• Mismatches – Listings for your business that have the wrong Business Name, Physical Address, or Phone Number (or just the 800 number and no local number). This can get especially complicated for doctors and lawyers, as I will discuss later in this article.
• Incomplete Citations – It’s important that you fill out the profiles to completion once you’ve claimed them. This includes adding photo and filling out every field there is an option for.

How Does This Happen & What Causes These? 

Just because you don’t remember creating an incorrect listing doesn’t mean there is no bad data in the local ecosystem. In fact, here are just some of the common reasons you have incorrect NAP across the web:

• Your business moved physical locations
• You used tracking phone numbers at one point
• You hired an SEO to create citations or get listed on online directories
• The data aggregators have incorrect information
• You inherited a dirty phone number
• You changed your local phone number
• You used tracking phone numbers
• You used an 800 number and not a local number
• You have different trade name or business name variations
• Your listing was incorrectly submitted and scraped to other sites
• Someone in your organization setup the listings without knowledge of NAP consistency (this is pretty common)

While there is a major possible ranking benefit of cleaning up this data, there is another reason it should be on your radar too. If you’re a fan of brand consistency like me, then you want to be the least imperfect and ensure all information about your company is accurate across all mediums you control.

The example below shows just how confusing this data can be and the issues that can be caused by incorrect citations on one of these sites. (Graphic from David Mihm’s
Local Search Ecosystem)

Before We Start: Here are Some Important Things to Know 

• If you’re paralyzed just thinking about the hundreds you need to fix, don’t sweat it. While a good long term-goal would be to clean up a lot of the data, the reality is that your first focus should be on the top citations for your industry and city. Also check out Phil Rozek’s list here and the Top 50 Citation Sources that Whitespark mentions on this page. Focus your efforts on the primary citation sources for your niche and area. Once these are fixed up you can move on. Just spend 15 minutes a day cleaning this up. 
• Keep good records using this spreadsheet. You will need to follow up with these directories again and again in some cases. Don’t worry, I made a spreadsheet below that you can use for this. 
• Make sure to update the old incorrect citation instead of just adding new ones!
• This work can be tedious, but accuracy is essential. Don’t try to use shortcuts. 
• Read Moz’s case study from David Mihm regarding cleaning up citations

Let’s Start By Identifying Possible NAP Variations & Recording Them In the Spreadsheet

The first step in the citation cleanup process is to find out exactly what information is actually out there about your business. I put together an
awesome spreadsheet you can use here. The first tab has a place to post the duplicate information. I like to color code it for simplicity as you can see in the example below:

In the example above, I have the correct business information at the top of the spreadsheet in green for easy reference and the incorrect variations in red. You will want to record every variation you find here to make our job a little bit easier moving forward. But how do you find the incorrect variations for your client or business?

I prefer to start at the source by talking to the business owners and marketing managers. After you have collected their proper NAP info, ask these questions to see if you can get any details:

1. Have you ever moved physical locations?
2. Is this the address you have listed on your legal business paperwork with the State and Federal government?
3. Have you ever used tracking phone numbers?
4. Have you ever hired an SEO company or someone to manage your online presence. Do you have a list of logins or websites they submitted you to?
5. Do you use any lead generation services? (Sometimes they use tracking phone numbers)
6. Does your business go by any trade or fictions business names?

Typically asking these simple questions up front can save a lot of time in the long run. If you don’t get any good info from them or they just don’t know there are several ways you can look for this information online first to make your life easier. 

After You Have Asked the Questions, It’s Time to Do Your Own Investigative Work

While the questions above are helpful, it’s important to dive a little deeper and see what you can find. These are the steps I typically take:

1. Check the secretary of state’s filing for the business. Most have an online search platform where you can see who registered the business. If it has a different Name, Mailing Address, or Phone number go ahead and add these to the spreadsheet. We will want to check these out when searching for duplicates. (BONUS TIP: Search their filed business documents online and see if they had previously filed for a fictitious business name or DBA.)
2. Review the company BBB listing. Check out Phil Rozek’s article on his BBB Hack for finding possible conflicting information. The long and the short of it is that the BBB.org business listings show additional reported phone numbers, business names, and addresses as shown in the example below from his website.

   

3. Check Google Map Maker. By viewing the classic Google Map Maker, you can see the edit history of a business. This will tell you if a phone number or business name has been changed. To get this data simply pull up the Classic Map Maker, search for a business and then select the history tab. Once you’re on the history click “Show All Changes” in the upper right corner of the listing as shown below:

   
   Once you have clicked on this, it will show the entire edit history. Look for edits to the NAP over the time the listing has been live. In the example below, you can see how the business name was actually changed at one point. This is the business name I will want to record in my spreadsheet (the old one).

   

Once you feel like you have a good handle on this, you can start by moving on and searching for these culprits hiding across the web. Now it’s time to get fixing! 

Here is a Quick Way to See What NAP Variations Google Already Associates with Your Business

If your business is recognized by Google and has reviews on other websites the new Google My Business dashboard tries to condense that information in one place. It provides examples of listings it has associated with your listing already. I recommend checking this to see what differences it recognizes for your business and mainly used for reference. If Google detects an inaccurate citation, don’t assume that it will find others. Remember, always aim to be the least imperfect.

To access this simply follow the steps below:

1. Login to your dashboard at www.google.com/mybusiness
   
2. Open up one of your locations and scroll down to the reviews section.
3. Click the blue “Manage Reviews” button
   
4. Then scroll down and check under the “Reviews from around the web” heading and see what pops up.
5. You should see the listings here of other detected reviews.
6. You can click the “View full review on….” link and view the full review there.

   

7. Check the NAP for that citation and see how or if it varies from your correct NAP. Record the differences as we can use them later in this guide. 

Start With the Data Aggregators Before Your Manual Efforts

Tools are great and help make tedious jobs like this easier. While there are some tools I advocate for this job, the reality is that most of them don’t cover the niche specific directories and others you may be listed on. That being said there are some great tools you can use to help save time and money and are recommended in my overall procedure below.

1. Start with Moz Local. Moz Local provides a Check My Listing score which will scan your listings just by entering your Business Name and Zip Code. This will give you a score that includes the citations that are Complete, Incomplete, Inconsistent, and Duplicates from the Top 15 citation sources and data aggregators. If you’re not starting here, you might be shooting yourself in the foot. Signing up for this service which is $50 a year will help fix this data at some of the sources that distribute their data to many other providers across the web. You can also use this service to find other possible NAP variants. 
2. Consider additional tools to see if they will help you. My manual methods are below but if you want to pull other data, you can also check out Brightlocal‘s Local SEO Checkup product which will show you NAP variants and the accuracy of major listings. You can also check out Whitespark‘s citation finder to start with a list of sites it detects you being listed on. They both offer great citation finding resources which will make this a bit easier. Also, Yext just recently introduced a product for fixing duplicates. While I have not had a chance to review this yet I believe it’s only for their network and it is a paid service.
3. Once you’re ready, it’s time to move on to the manual side of NAP Cleanup using my method below. 

The Manual Cleanup Process

When dealing with citation cleanup,
efficiency and accuracy is the name of the game. I have developed a process that I find works best for me when it comes to being productive in fixing citations and removing duplicates. This is what I’m going to explain below in more details, but basically it boils down to four steps.

On the second tab of
this spreadsheet that I created for you, you will see the sheet has several columns. They are identified and explained below:

Below are two screenshots of how the spreadsheet looks when you pull it up. 

Once you start finding the citations, you will want to color-code each row after evaluating the citation. This will help you prioritize your work later once your’re ready to start fixing these up. 

The Process

1. Audit Your Citations – Using my spreadsheet and the methods listed below you can start by auditing every citation source you find for your business.
2. Record the Data – Record the NAP information in the spreadsheet provided and don’t be shy with the details. After you have identified a problem make sure to color code the row. Red is a very important fix, Yellow is something you can fix but can wait, and Green is good meaning there are no problems and no duplicates.
3. Outreach & Fix – Once you have a list of your action items, you can sort the list by RED or priority items. You can then outreach to these sites and record it in the notes with the date.
4. Follow Up, Record, & Repeat – You can’t just send an email or contact form and call it good. You have to follow up. Don’t change the color of the row until the live listings are fixed. This will allow you to check and re-check until these issues are cleaned up. The reality is that some of these listings will require multiple contacts to get fixed (just like link removals). 

Finding Your Incorrect Citations

Finding these citation sources can be a difficult task. However, if you already have a list of primary citations you want to tackle you’re in a good spot. Remember that focusing your efforts on the
primary sources will provide the most ROI. 

Remember that when you’re searching for citations using these methods you will want to search for each of the ones you identified to ensure complete accuracy. In other words, don’t just search a directory by the proper business name or phone number. Also, search it with the
WRONG information you identified to see if any wrong sources come up. 

Method 1: Search Specific Directories & Websites

If you only have one business location this task gets a bit easier as there a search string you can use to narrow down your results. However if you’re a multi-location business it may not work as well (depending on how many locations you have). This search string is going to use three commands. The first command
site: searches only within the website immediately following the colon. If I just wanted to search Yellowpages.com I could type site:yellowpages.com. Now putting information after the site command will help narrow down your search. Let’s say that I wanted to search only YellowPages.com for my exact company name, but only for listings that DO NOT contain my primary phone number that is associated with my NAP. In this case I could put in this search:

site:yellowpages.com “The Reeves Law Group” -714-550-6000

• The site: command tells Google to search only the website (in this case YellowPages.com)
• The Quoted “The Reeves Law Group” tells Google to only return results that include the company name in that exact phrase order
• The -714-550-6000 tells Google to not include any results that use this phone number. The minus allows you to exclude information you don’t want to appear in the results. 

If you have a list of citation sources you want to check such as the Moz Top 10 by City or Industry, you could then use these search strings, identify duplicates and problems on the primary sites. 

Most reputable websites also have an internal search function as well. It’s important to check this too as the Google Site: command only searches for indexed citations. It’s possible that the incorrect one may not be indexed yet, but could cause problems in the future. 

Method 2: Searching Google’s Index Citations

While you can search specific directories for incorrect citations if you already know the websites you want to check, what if you don’t have that list? Another easy way is to pull the incorrect results direct from Google. To do this we will use the MozBar and modify our search settings which allow us to scrape 100 results at a time. Simply follow the example below. 

Before using this method, you need to change your search settings in Google
Start by pulling up Google.com and clicking on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of a search page. You will want to navigate to search settings where you will check the button “Never Show Instant Results” and then change the Results Per Page slider to 100. This will allow you to search 100 entries as a time. You can see the settings we changed in the picture below:

You will also need the MozBar for this. If you don’t have the extension you can download the
Chrome version here and the Firefox version here. Once you have the MozBar installed you will be ready to start scraping these results! 

When the MozBar is on and you do a search in Google you will now be able to see 100 results and easily export them by clicking the export button in the top left corner of the MozBar as shown in the example below. Once you have these results you can copy and paste them in my trusty spreadsheet for evaluation. Of course if you’re doing a lot of searches I recommend conducting the searches first, combining the results, and then removing duplicates in Excel. This will save you a ton of time! 

So Which Search Operators Should You Use?

Using the proper search operators and getting a bit creative will save you a substantial amount of time. Don’t think that you’re stuck with the ones I have provided below. Get creative and think outside of the box based on your situations. Below are some examples you can use along with an explanation of them. They are sorted by categories below.  

Casey’s OCD Pro Tip: Using Google can produce different results depending on how the data is entered on the actual citation site. For example it’s a good idea to search different Phone number variations. Some variants include: 111111111111, 111-111-1111, (111) 111-1111

Take note that when you do a search with quote around the keyword (e.g: “Keyword One”), it will search for the words in that order exactly as they appear. If you want to learn more about creative boolean search terms check out this resource. 

How to Find Listings With Incorrect Phone Numbers

What you should search: 800 Number -Local Number

Example: 800-644-8000 -714-550-6000          This search when preformed in Google is telling it to search for the main company’s 800 number (800-644-8000), but exclude the local phone number of the main office (which is why I used the – sign before 714-550-6000). If you have one location that uses or used an 800 number at some point this will be your primary go to search. If you have multiple locations though it will likely just return results from the other locations. You could of course add – to additional offices and search this way as well. 

What you should search: 800 Number -Local Number +Company Name

Example: 800-644-800 -714-550-6000 +Reeves Law Group         At first glance this search operator probably looks like the one above with the simple addition of +reeves. However take a closer look and notice how I took out one “0” from the 800 number. What I am doing here is looking for a possible wrong entry but also making sure that part of the company name (in this case The Reeves Law Group) is shown in the string.  

How To Find Incorrect Business Names That Have The Proper Phone

What you should search: 555-555-555 -“Company Name” 
Searching for the office locations phone number and then excluding the company’s name using the -“company name” command will show all results for that phone number that do not mention the proper company name. This is an easy way to find variants of the business name across the internet. 

Other Searches You Can Try

What you should search : “Business Name”+”Address”         With quotes this will search for all instances of the exact business name and exact address you put in. The more specific you get the narrower the search results will be. 

What you should search : “Business Name”+”Zip code”              Doing this will give you another list of  options that could include listings without the proper business phone number.

Finding Which Citations are Correct

What you should search (Without quotes): “City Name”+”Zip Code”+”Company Name”+”Phone Number”

Thankfully, you can also use these tricks to see which citations you have that are correct. If you’re scanning for citations this way make sure you also check each of these sites for possible duplicates as you could have one correct listing and one or more bad ones too. 

Once you have your list of sources you can us the Mozbar export option outlined above and sort through these on the spreadsheet. 

Once You Have Them Documented You Can Prioritize and Outreach

Once all of these are all properly documented comes the painstaking task of fixing them. Some of these websites will allow you to claim listings and directly edit them which is nice. Some you will have to hunt for the contact information and if you can’t find it I recommend checking their WHOIS information to get the data of the domain owner. Most reputable sites though will have some way of contacting them. 

Usually when you encounter duplicate listings, you will have to contact the website to get them removed. Be patient. Remember that in most of these cases you’re not paying to be listed on their website so their response can take some time. Be sure to document your contact dates in the spreadsheet as well so you can easily follow up. 

Here are a few tips for the outreach methods:

• Make sure all email contacts come from an email address on your websites domain such as Webmaster@YourDomain.com. This may help the back and forth verification process where possible.
• Some listings will require you to claim and verify them and may call the business with an automated system. Be prepared to take a few calls.
• Always be very clear with your request but also be concise. They don’t typically spend a lot of time on these requests so making it as easy as possible with the links is recommended. 
• Make sure to read the websites FAQ’s for removing duplicates or updating listings. It will save you a lot of time and they may already have a process in place for this.
• If you can’t find the procedure try the contact form on the website first, then email if you don’t hear back in a reasonable amount of time. 

Contacting Websites to Fix Listings via Email

Below is a very quick and easy sample outreach email I use for some of these contacts. This example can be used if you have two listings at YellowPages.com that are on the following URLs: 

1)
http://www.YellowPages.com/Listing1
 

2)
http://www.YellowPages.com/Listing2

Sample Contact Email:

Hello,

I recently discovered that your website has two listings for my business, “Business Name” located at “Address”. I was hoping you could help me delete the duplicate listing.

The correct listing is: 1) http://www.YellowPages.com/Listing1

The listing I need deleted is: 2) http://www.YellowPages.com/Listing2

Could you please notify me once you have had the chance to fix this?

Thanks!
– Business Owner 

How This Helps
By sending out clear and concise emails you may eliminate the back and forth emails and get them done quicker. Over time you may notice that some of these websites don’t reply. The reality is that some of them won’t reply or will charge a fee to be fixed. You can make the decision on a case by case basis whether these are important enough to worry about. 

Conclusion

I hope you found this guide useful and hope it’s something tactical that you can put to use right away. Using this method you will be off to a good start at fixing up your citations. Like everything else in local search this will take time to cleanup and time to process. Let Google find and index these naturally over time and watch your local rankings soar. If you have any other tips for citation cleanup please post them in the comments below. Additionally if you have any specific questions please feel free to contact me directly anytime. Just take it one step at a time and you’ll be done in no time!

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