Local Citation

 What's a Citation?

A citation is a mention of your business name with another piece of business information, such as your phone number, address, website, or a combination of the three. Citations are thought to be important for ranking in Google's local search results, so the more of them you have from quality sources, the better your business is likely to rank. Submitting your business to the sites on this page is likely to improve your rankings.

 

Why Citations Are Important to Your Local Business Listings

Citations are defined as "mentions" of your business name and address on other webpages, even if there is no link to your website. An example of a citation might be an online yellow pages directory where your business is listed, but not linked to. It can also be a local chamber of commerce, or a local business association where your business information can be found, even if they are not linking at all to your website . You may also see the term "web references" used on other websites a synonym for "citations".

Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms of the major search engines. Other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will probably rank higher than businesses with fewer citations.

Citations from well-established and well-indexed portals help increase the degree of certainty the search engines have about your business's contact information and categorization. To paraphrase former Arizona Cardinals' coach Dennis Green, citations help search engines confirm that businesses " are who we thought they were!"

Citations are particularly important in less-competitive niches (like plumbing or electrical) where many service providers don't have websites themselves. Without much other information, the search engines rely heavily on whatever information they can find!

Citations also validate that a business is part of a community. It's hard for someone to fake membership in a chamber of commerce or a city or county business index, or to be written about in a local online newspaper or popular blog. Citations (and links) from these kinds of websites can dramatically improve your Local search engine rankings.

Currently, the 'More About This Business' section of your Google Place Page is the most complete list of your citations, though Google probably doesn't show every single one it knows about. 

Where to Get Citations to Improve Your Local Search Engine Rankings

1) Local search engines

The Local search engines often crawl each other to find citations that will validate or correct the business information in their own indexes. Additionally, some engines and data providers (like infoUSA or Localeze ) share information with each other, either through a data leasing arrangement or syndication.
For example, you'll frequently see a business's Yahoo Local profile show up in the 'Web Pages' tab of its Google Local Business Listing. There are other second-tier search engines that show up frequently as well, such as Superpages.com , Yelp.com , and Local.com's network .

2) Local blogs

Local blogs, or even better, " HyperLocal Blogs ," are a great place to get your business listed. These will obviously vary by particular geography, but if you simply perform a search on your favorite engine for "[your city] blog" or "[your neighborhood] blog," you'll see good candidates.
The sites that show up for these kinds of searches are by definition very well-indexed by the search engines, and highly associated with a particular neighborhood, city, or region. Businesses that are mentioned or linked on these blogs are viewed as trusted, relevant results in the Local search engines.

3) Locally-focused directories

Like Local blogs, Local directories are well-indexed by the search engines and are highly associated with a particular city or region. Directories which are edited by a human are much better than those which are "free for all." Human-edited directories are less susceptible to spam, and are therefore more trusted by the Local search engines. An example of a terrific Locally-focused directory is Best of the Web's Regional Directory and Yahoo's Regional Directory . You can perform searches for things like "[your city] directory" or "[your state] directory" to find good prospects for these kinds of citations.

4) Industry-focused directories or blogs

Even if a website or directory is not focused on a particular region, if that website is focused on topics and keywords related to what you sell, it may be included among the sites that the Local search engines count as citation sources. For instance, the membership directory of your trade organization, or a blog that is popular among readers in your industry will probably be crawled by the Local search engines for citations. Searches like "[your industry] directory" or even "[your keyword] directory" will give you some ideas of the kinds of sites on which to get listed.

The following lists of sites are extracted from over 100,000 reports run using our CitationTracker tool. 

These sites are classified by country, with a different list of ‘Top 50′ sites per country. Their ranking is determined by ‘frequency of appearance’ in CitationTracker reports. We identify citation sites by querying Google, Yahoo & Bing for business data and then de-dupe the search results to leave 1 unique entry per domain per report. These sites are typically genuine ‘structured’ citation sites* which allow you to list &/or edit your business listings.
There are currently 4 country options available in our CitationTracker tool – USA, UK, Canada & Australia. Some of these sites are country specific and same have international coverage so may appear on more than 1 list.

No	USA	CANADA	UK	AUSTRALIA
1	yellowpages.com	yellowpages.ca	yell.com	truelocal.com.au
2	merchantcircle.com	canpages.ca	cylex-uk.co.uk	yellowpages.com.au
3	superpages.com	weblocal.ca	thomsonlocal.com	hotfrog.com.au
4	yahoo.com	cylex.ca	hotfrog.co.uk	aussieweb.com.au
5	manta.com	yelp.com	misterwhat.co.uk	reverseaustralia.com
6	yelp.com	manta.com	yelp.com	yelp.com
7	facebook.com	facebook.com	independent.co.uk	local.com.au
8	citysearch.com	yelp.ca	yelp.co.uk	cylex.com.au
9	showmelocal.com	hotfrog.ca	qype.co.uk	facebook.com
10	yellowbot.com	pagesjaunes.ca	thesun.co.uk	findlocal.com.au
11	citysquares.com	cdnpages.ca	ufindus.com	localbusinessguide.com.au
12	b2byellowpages.com	ibegin.com	scoot.co.uk	aubiz.org
13	yellowbook.com	profilecanada.com	manta.com	phonenumber.com.au
14	switchboard.com	businessnetpages.com	facebook.com	australianguide.net
15	mojopages.com	ziplocal.ca	touchlocal.com	whitepages.com.au
16	hotfrog.com	allpages.com	bizwiki.co.uk	whereis.com
17	local.com	directorycentral.com	brownbook.net	yelp.com.au
18	whitepages.com	goldbook.ca	near.co.uk	brownbook.net
19	directorycentral.com	salespider.com	accessplace.com	manta.com
20	gatehousemedia.com	phonepages.ca	localmole.co.uk	startlocal.com.au
21	dexknows.com	dakitaki.com	businessclassified.co.uk	yalwa.com.au
22	powerprofiles.com	brownbook.net	dentonsweb.com	superpages.com.au
23	ibegin.com	findusfast.ca	uk-local-search.co.uk	street-directory.com.au
24	mapquest.com	zoominfo.com	gomy.co.uk	dlook.com.au
25	allpages.com	n49.ca	mylocalservices.co.uk	youtube.com
26	theusaexplorer.com	ourbis.ca	thelocalweb.net	issuu.com
27	chamberofcommerce.com	canadianbusinessdirectory.ca	ukplaces.com	eatability.com.au
28	cylex-usa.com	reallymadeincanada.info	u121.com	bloo.com.au
29	yippie.biz	wikidomo.com	yahoo.com	locafy.com.au
30	salespider.com	bbb.org	locallife.co.uk	nearyouau.com
31	cmac.ws	highbeam.com	thediscdirectory.co.uk	gumsquare.com
32	ocregister.com	boomtrek.ca	192.com	womo.com.au
33	magicyellow.com	youtube.com	zettai.net	fyple.biz
34	locallife.com	issuu.com	pageinsider.com	scribd.com
35	post-gazette.com	foursquare.com	issuu.com	localbd.com.au
36	bbb.org	yalwa.ca	wheresbest.co.uk	localstore.com.au
37	a2zyp.com	canada411.ca	cityvisitor.co.uk	yahoo.com
38	kudzu.com	canadaspace.com	118.com	australianplanet.com
39	insiderpages.com	nearyouca.com	townpages.com	wowcity.com
40	yellowpagecity.com	411.ca	wampit.co.uk	nationaldirectory.com.au
41	justdial.com	yellowpagesgoesgreen.org	fish4biz.com	locationary.com
42	yellowpagesgoesgreen.org	locatefamily.com	fyple.co.uk	google.com
43	gopickle.com	canadianplanet.net	freeindex.co.uk	pageinsider.com
44	staradvertiser.com	yahoo.com	smilelocal.com	tuugo.biz
45	lookooh.com	yellowee.com	localstore.co.uk	vicdir.com
46	corporationwiki.com	opendi.ca	uk-web-index.co.uk	pinkpages.com.au
47	angieslist.com	pipl.com	companiesintheuk.co.uk	yellowbook.com.au
48	answers.com	fyple.ca	yudu.com	pipl.com
49	bundle.com	scribd.com	searchme4.co.uk	wampit.com.au
50	cortera.com	foundlocally.com	odovo.co.uk	clickibiz.com