What is listings management?

Listings management is the process of creating, updating, and optimizing your business information across a multitude of online platforms. This includes major search engines like Google, Bing, and Apple Maps, social media sites like Facebook, and countless online directories and review sites.

The goal is to ensure that your Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) are consistent and accurate everywhere your business is found online, along with other important details such as opening hours, services, photos, and customer reviews.

Listings management also includes monitoring suggested edits, tracking performance, and proactively responding to customer interactions, helping you to present a reliable and trustworthy brand.

How it Differs from Building Citations

While often used interchangeably, ‘listings management’ and ‘citation building’ are two different but related practices.

Citation building primarily focuses on creating new citations (mentions of your business’s NAP) on various directories and platforms. It’s about establishing a foundational presence and expanding your reach. 

Listings management, on the other hand, is an ongoing, proactive activity. It includes not only building new citations but also monitoring existing ones, ensuring their accuracy, optimizing them for search, responding to reviews, and managing any suggested or external edits that may arise. 

In short, citation building is one of the activities involved in listings management. 

Why You Need It

Proper listings management isn’t just a best practice; it’s necessary for any local business aiming to thrive online. Here’s why:

• Boosts Search Visibility: Accurate and optimized listings show search engines that your business is legitimate and trustworthy, leading to higher rankings in local search results and maps. Plus, AI search engines use these as sources for information, too.
• Helps New Customer Discovery: When potential customers search for businesses, complete and optimized listings make it easier for them to find you, understand what you offer, and choose you over competitors.

  For example, according to our Local Business Discovery and Trust Report, 61% of consumers use business information sites to discover new local businesses.

• Provides Essential Customer Information: Online listings give potential customers key information like your hours, phone number, and location, making it easier for them to decide to become customers.
• Enhances Customer Trust and Experience: Inaccurate information can frustrate customers and damage your reputation. In fact, BrightLocal’s Local Business Discovery and Trust Report 2023 reveals that 62% of consumers would avoid using a business if they found incorrect information online. Consistent and reliable listings build trust and provide a seamless experience, whether they are looking for your phone number or checking if you offer curbside pickup.
• Improves Local SEO Performance: Search engines prioritize businesses with accurate and consistent information. By actively managing your listings, you provide clear signals that improve your overall local SEO position.

Not All Listings Sites Are Equal

While there are thousands of listing sites out there, your focus should be on these four powerhouses: 

• Google Maps
• Apple Maps
• Bing
• Facebook

Why? Because together, they capture the vast majority of local consumer engagement, meaning that’s where your customers are looking.

Now, imagine the holidays are coming up, and your opening hours are changing. You need to update them across every single platform where your business is listed, especially those crucial four. Going to each site manually to make those changes is a time-consuming headache.

Centralizing it is a much better option.

Tools like BrightLocal’s Active Sync act like a central control panel for all your business information, saving you valuable time and ensuring consistency. Here’s what it does:

1. Keeps everything correct and consistent: You tell Active Sync your business details once, and it automatically makes sure that the same correct information is on all the important websites where your business is listed. 
2. Makes updates easy: If your hours change or you get a new phone number, you just update it in Active Sync. It then pushes that change out to all your connected listings, saving you a lot of time and hassle.
3. Give more control: It directly connects to big sites like Google Business Profile and Apple Maps, giving you more power over how your business appears there.
4. Monitors external edits: Many listing platforms, including Google and Bing, allow consumers or other data sources to suggest edits to your business information. These external changes, if incorrect, can negatively impact your local search visibility and customer experience.

   Active Sync helps monitor your listings, so if someone tries to change your information incorrectly (like a wrong phone number), it will alert you so you can catch it and fix it.

Things to Consider for Effective Listings Management

To truly master your business listings, consider the following key things:

Crafting a Business Description

Your business description is often the first impression a new customer has. It should be clear, succinct, and highlight your unique selling points, products, and services. Keep character limits in mind for platforms like: Google (750 characters) and Apple Maps (500 characters), and always avoid keyword stuffing. Active Sync can help you manage and update these descriptions efficiently across platforms.

Using Phone Tracking Numbers or URLs

While most major platforms don’t strictly prohibit tracking numbers or URLs, be cautious when using them. Google, Apple, and Bing generally allow them as long as they connect directly to your business location and you have direct control.

However, consistency is key: using different tracking numbers can confuse both consumers and search engines.

How Frequently to Update and Optimize Your Listing

Your listings should be living documents, updated as often as necessary to reflect any changes in your business. This includes:

• Seasonal or special opening hours
• Changes to products, services, or pricing
• New payment methods
• Updates to contact information
• Adding new photos and responding to reviews (at least weekly for Google Business Profile)

As mentioned, Active Sync enables you to push these critical updates instantly, ensuring your information is always current across all synced listings without having to update each platform manually. 

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Monitor and Audit Listings

Regularly auditing your business listings is a crucial yet often overlooked step. Over time, your business information can become outdated, duplicated, or even (as mentioned earlier) altered by third-party sources. If left unchecked, these inconsistencies can hurt your visibility, confuse customers, and destroy trust.

By making listing audits a regular part of your local SEO strategy, we’d suggest quarterly at minimum, you maintain control over how your business is represented online and ensure customers always find the right information when they need it. 

Scan for and Eliminate Duplicate Listings

So, at least every quarter, scan for duplicates. Duplicate listings, especially on platforms like Google, Bing, and Yelp, can split your ranking power, confuse search engines, and send mixed signals about your business. Identifying and removing or merging them ensures you maintain a single, authoritative version of your business information across every directory.

Double-check Your Map Pins and Address Formatting

Next, verify the accuracy of your listing details, especially your map pins. A misplaced location pin on Google Maps or Apple Maps can send customers to the wrong place, leading to missed opportunities and frustration. Manually check that your business appears correctly on each platform and that the address formatting is consistent.

Use Tools to Monitor and Maintain Listing Health

Finally, use reliable tools to uncover issues and track your listing’s health. BrightLocal’s Citation Tracker can quickly highlight inconsistencies, duplicates, and missing information across major platforms. Tools like Active Sync not only help you manage updates but also monitor your listings in real time, flagging issues before they escalate. 

Monitor Google Business Profile Insights and Use UTM Tracking

Keeping tabs on how your listings are performing is just as important as managing the information they contain. Google Business Profile (GBP) provides valuable insights that show how customers are interacting with your listing, and these metrics can help guide your optimization efforts.

Here’s what you should be monitoring regularly:

• Website Clicks: See how many people are visiting your site directly from your GBP. If clicks are low, it might be time to refine your description, add clearer calls to action, or improve your images.

• Direction Requests: A high number of requests suggests strong local interest. If these numbers drop suddenly, it may signal that there’s an issue with your map pin or location info.

• Phone Calls: GBP Insights show when and how often people call your business. Use this data to track trends over time and see if certain days or promotions are generating more inquiries.

• Search Impressions: This shows how often your business appears in local search results. If you see a drop in these numbers it may indicate listing or SEO issues.

Additionally, to gain even more granular data on website traffic originating from your GBP, implementing UTM tracking is highly recommended. UTMs are simple code snippets you can add to the end of your URLs. When someone clicks a link with a UTM code, it sends specific information back to your Google Analytics (or other analytics tool), allowing you to see exactly where your website visitors came from and what campaign drove them.

For your GBP website link, you might use UTM parameters like:

• utm_source=google_my_business

• utm_medium=organic

• utm_campaign=gmb_listing

This allows you to differentiate traffic from your GBP from other organic search traffic, providing a clearer picture of your listing’s performance in driving website visits.

Monitor and Respond to Reviews

Online reviews are more than just feedback; they’re one of the most influential trust signals for local consumers and search engines. When someone looks up your business on Google, Yelp, or Facebook, reviews are front and center. That makes review monitoring and responding a core part of effective listings management.

Ignoring your reviews (even the positive ones) means missing out on the chance to build stronger customer relationships, enhance your reputation, and boost your visibility in local search. In fact, 89% of consumers expect business owners to respond to all types of reviews, according to BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey.

Best Practices for Review Management

• Monitor Reviews Across All Platforms
  Keep an eye on your reviews. Each listing is a customer touchpoint that influences perception and buying decisions.
  
  
  Tip: Use our Reputation Manager tool to monitor, manage, and respond to reviews across multiple platforms from one centralized dashboard.
• Respond Promptly and Professionally
  Make it a habit to respond to every review—positive or negative—ideally within 24–48 hours. Thank customers for kind words and address any issues in a polite, constructive manner. This not only reassures the original reviewer but also shows potential customers that you value feedback.

• Spot Trends and Take Action
  Pay attention to recurring themes in reviews. Are customers frequently mentioning slow service, unclear directions, or outdated business hours? These insights can signal problems in your operations or your listings that need addressing.

• Encourage New Reviews
  A steady stream of recent reviews signals to both customers and Google that your business is active and relevant. Make it easy for happy customers to leave reviews by sharing direct links, adding reminders in post-service emails, or using in-store signage.
  
  
  Tip: With our Get Reviews feature, you can send review requests by email or SMS and direct happy customers to your preferred platforms.

How Abbreviations Affect NAP Consistency

NAP consistency is essential for local SEO. While Google and Bing are often smart enough to understand common abbreviations (e.g., ‘St.’ for ‘Street’), it’s best practice to maintain exact consistency across all listings. If you choose an abbreviation, stick to it everywhere. As mentioned already, Active Sync can help keep all your business info the same everywhere online. This stops confusing differences that could make it harder for people to find you in searches.

How to Manage Multiple Business Listings at the Same Time

Managing listings for a single business location is already a significant task, but when you operate multiple branches or franchise locations, that complexity multiplies. Each location may have unique hours, services, contact details, and reviews to manage. Without the right systems in place, things can quickly spiral into inconsistency and confusion.

Here’s how to effectively manage multiple business listings without losing control:

Use a Centralized Listings Management Platform

The key to managing multiple locations efficiently is centralization. A tool like Active Sync becomes indispensable when handling multiple listings. It allows you to:

• Control all listings from one dashboard: Manage every location’s information from a single interface instead of logging into separate accounts

• Maintain location-specific information: Even with centralized management, you can customize descriptions, categories, and attributes for each location to reflect local differences.

• Stay on top of suggested edits and duplicates: Active Sync monitors each listing for third-party edits or duplicate entries, alerting you so you can act before issues impact your visibility.

Centralize Review Management

With multiple listings, reviews can come in from many platforms and locations simultaneously. Using a tool like Reputation Manager, you can:

• Aggregate and track reviews from all major platforms
• Get notified of new reviews in real-time
• Respond quickly and consistently, maintaining a strong brand voice across all locations

This central approach helps to ensure no customer feedback slips through the cracks and reinforces trust with both search engines and potential customers.

Leverage Google Business Profile Manager

For businesses with multiple locations on Google, the Google Business Profile Manager is essential. It allows you to:

• Create and manage profiles in bulk
• Organize listings using business groups
• Apply updates across multiple locations simultaneously
• Share access with team members or franchise managers, with controlled permissions

This ensures your presence on Google remains consistent, accurate, and easy to manage at scale.

Assign Roles and Responsibilities

If multiple team members are involved in listings management, clearly define who’s responsible for what. Whether it’s updating business hours, responding to reviews, or conducting regular audits, assigning specific tasks ensures:

• Accountability
• Timely updates
• Fewer errors or oversights

Monitor Performance Across All Locations

Tracking performance by location helps you understand what’s working and where improvements are needed. Use tools like BrightLocal, Google Business Profile Insights, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console to monitor key metrics such as:

• Website clicks: To measure engagement and conversion potential
• Direction requests: To track local demand
• Call volume: To identify peaks in customer interest
• Search impressions: To evaluate overall local visibility

This data enables you to identify top-performing branches, optimize underperforming listings, and catch issues like outdated info or negative reviews before they impact your reputation.

Conclusion

Managing your business listings properly is an ongoing process that requires attention to detail and consistent effort. By understanding the nuances of listings management, differentiating it from simple citation building, and leveraging powerful tools like BrightLocal’s Active Sync, you can ensure your business information is always accurate, optimized, and working hard to attract and retain local customers.

Why should you optimize local business citations? 

Optimizing citations can help you to enhance your online presence by providing Google with more information about your business. Actions such as adding keywords to your business description, or choosing the right category, help Google better determine when your business should be displayed to local search users. 

Greater online visibility for relevant searches can also result in more traffic to your site, more conversions, and increased footfall to your brick-and-mortar location.

What does citation optimization entail? 

Citation optimization considers each element of your business listing. This includes which directory and listing sites you pursue when building citations, the accuracy and consistency of information, and the amount of helpful detail shared. 

How to Optimize Your SEO citations 

Whether you’re going back through existing listings to identify opportunities for optimization or creating a new listing, optimization efforts should be systematic and include each citation element. 

Maintain Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) Consistency 

NAP consistency is a local search ranking factor. To reap the most benefit from this, you’ll need to check each listing and verify that they all use the same NAP data.

Check Your Business Description 

Optimizing your business descriptions is another way to be confident that your citations are working as hard as possible for your business. 

In addition, a clear, concise description is a valuable data source for Google and other search engines. It can help search engines better understand which local searches your business should rank for. 

For popular sites that receive a large volume of consumer traffic, such as Tripadvisor, Facebook, or Google Business Profile (GBP), there’s the added benefit of being able to provide potential customers with useful information.

Choose the Correct URL 

For small local businesses with a single location, choosing the correct URL to attach to your business listing is straightforward. 

For larger, multi-location businesses, it can be more complex. You should link to the location page specific to the citation. If your citation relates to your outlet in Denver but you also have outlets in Miami Beach and Atlanta, your citation should link to the Denver-specific page on your site.  

A benefit of taking this approach is that consumers looking at the Denver business listing can click straight through to the relevant webpage without needing to hunt around on your site.

Select the Most Appropriate Business Category

Selecting the most appropriate business category for your website provides additional insight to Google. It helps it understand what your business does and which search queries you’re most relevant to. 

In the case of citations from GBP, your primary category is the number one local search ranking factor for Local Pack visibility.

Add Engaging Imagery

If the citation site permits image uploads, selecting high-quality, attractive photos can help your listing stand out. Images also clearly show consumers what they can expect from you.

A range of photo types is most useful for consumers. Google suggests adding a mix of pictures showing your business’s approach from several directions, as well as the interior and exterior of the building. Google also recommends sharing photos of key staff members, customer areas, and shots of individual products or services.

For example, a hotel may want to upload images of the rooms, while a bar may wish to share pictures of cocktails and other popular drinks.

Grow Your Review Profile 

Many sites where you’ll optimize your business information will allow consumer reviews. Where this is the case (and it isn’t against the review platform’s policy to solicit consumer reviews), you should have an ongoing review generation strategy in place. 

Specifically for GBP, review signals — such as the recency of reviews and percentage of positive reviews — are known to be local search ranking factors. 

If you only have a few citations referring to the office in question, then it’s not a big deal, but businesses will rarely have just a couple of citations. If anything, it’s likely you’ll have hundreds of citations for each location.

The whole situation can seem really disheartening because while citations aren’t difficult to change, they sure do take a lot of time to manage. And, let’s face it, it can be a pretty dull job.

Does the above scenario sound like something you’re experiencing? If so, you’ve come to the right place. I’m about to take you through the steps required to effectively update your citations, now that one of your business locations has moved. This guide will ensure that all the information you decide to include is correct, and it will make it easier to manage your citations should your business decide to relocate again in the future.

1. Gather a List of Your Citations

While there are online tools out there that can automatically gather your list of citations for you (and handily tell you which information — if any — is missing), I’m going to assume that you don’t have access to any of these tools.

Now, in an ideal world, you would be able to easily access a list of your business’ citations, with whoever originally listed your business deciding to make it simple for everyone to access in the future. In real life, though, that’s probably not the case. And even if there was a spreadsheet that was created at the time of citation building, it could’ve been so many years ago that the information simply got lost over time.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t start by searching the depths of your company’s shared folders, just on the off-chance there’s a document with all the answers — but don’t be disheartened if there isn’t. When are things ever that simple?

When you need to update your client’s citations, you’ll likely be using SEO software that enables you to track links. However, even if you aren’t, you can still discover your list of citations for free.

Head on over to Google Search Console, click on ‘Links’ (under ‘Manual Actions’) and ‘Top Linking Sites’. You’ll now have a list of every single website that links to yours.

Scroll through the list of URLs to see which business directories are currently linking to you (Yelp and Foursquare are two of the big ones).

Now, you have two options here: you can either copy and paste the URL of the business directory (which will be the homepage) to your spreadsheet, or you can click on the URL, search for your business, and then copy and paste the URL that takes you directly to your listing.

When searching and gathering your list of citations, don’t forget that it’s not just business directories you’re looking for. Your social media channels (e.g. Facebook and LinkedIn) will list your address, as will your Google Business Profile (GBP) account, Bing Places, and any other local directory you’re present on).

2. Review the Most Important Citations

The likelihood is that you’ll have hundreds of citations that you’ll need to update to your office’s new location, which means that amending them all is going to take time.

If there’s a team of you who can tackle the citations all in one go, then that’s great — but if it’s just you on your own, then you’ll need to prioritize.

Does one particular citation drive a lot of traffic to your website, or generate a notable number of calls or visits to your store? If so, start with that one. However, realistically most businesses build citations to increase the number of links to their website, without much (if any) traffic being generated.

If the second scenario is the case, then the way you prioritize your citations will be different. The domain rating (DR) or domain authority (DA) — depending on which one you measure — are what you should be looking at. Facebook, GBP, LinkedIn, Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, and Yahoo Local all have extremely high DRs and are the ones you should be targeting first.

3. Update Your Spreadsheet

After following the first two points, you should now have a long list of citations that need updating to reflect your office’s new location, in the order that you’ll tackle them.

Don’t stop there, though! As you’re updating your citations, make sure you update your spreadsheet so that anyone who accesses it can easily tell which ones have been updated and which ones haven’t. Including the date that you actioned each one can be extremely helpful, too.

Another thing that’s safe to assume is that it’s unlikely you’ll have the passwords for all of your citations. However, this isn’t an issue either — you’ll just need to claim your listings.

For the majority of listings, there will be a button that says ‘unclaimed’ or ‘claim your listing’. Click on it and follow the instructions. Usually you just need to make an account, but in some cases, you’ll need to verify your location by having a code sent to you, usually via a phone call or postcard.

When it comes to GBP, you can simply log in and change your address. If you don’t have the login details, you’ll need to request access from the current listings owner or report the incorrect address to Google Maps directly.

The one thing you should avoid doing when changing your address in GBP, though, is to create a new listing. If you do this, you’ll end up with duplicate listings, which can be very damaging. If this does happen, you can remove any unverified listings yourself. However, if you’ve somehow ended up with more than one verified GBP listing, you’ll need to contact Google.

4. Check the ‘N’ and ‘P’ in ‘NAP’

Every single SEO expert should know the NAP acronym! When you’re updating your business address, you should also check the name and phone number to ensure they’re both still correct.

For most businesses, citations are typically created in one go as part of a link-building initiative, never to be looked at again. This means that until you realized you had to amend your address, it’s possible your citations hadn’t been looked at in years!

While you’re updating your office’s new location, it makes sense to check the name and phone number listed to ensure they’re still correct.

Another thing to check is your opening hours. After all, how many times have you opened up Google Maps or Apple Maps to see what time the store you need to visit is closing? How annoyed would you be if you were told you the shop was closing at 6pm and you arrived at 5.30pm to find it already shut? You don’t want to do that to your potential customers.

It takes just a few seconds to check this information and update it if it’s missing or wrong, so it makes sense to include it in the process of managing your citations.

5. Keep a List of Passwords

Having gone through the process of claiming each business listing individually, you’ll appreciate how much simpler it would have been had you had a list of passwords to hand.

Make it easier for the next person who’ll have to go through your citations (you never know, it could still be you!) and note down the passwords on your spreadsheet. Also include the relevant email address. I would suggest using a generic business address such as info@mybusiness.com, instead of your personal business address.

6. Find New Citation Sites

Once you’ve updated your current list of citations, it’s useful to check if there are any other citation sites you could list your business on. If you’re moving locally, it’s likely you’ll have all bases covered, but there’s no harm in checking.

Aside from a simple Google search, the easiest way to find new sites is to see where your local competitors are listing themselves. The more business directories you list your business on, the more brand awareness you’re raising and the more links you’re driving to your site. As we all know, more links can help you to rank higher in search engine results.

When your business moves locations, it’s an exciting yet stressful time, and citations form just one tiny aspect of the move.

While they aren’t difficult to update, the process can soon become very time-consuming. These steps will ensure you’ve updated all of your citations. Also, you’ll have created a central document that has all the information required to update citations again in the future!

Once a citation has been created and optimized, it should be maintained appropriately. If this doesn’t happen, the SEO and consumer benefit could be lost. 

Having a structured system to track the status of your citations is an easy way to always see the complete picture. Additionally, this allows you to quickly remedy any issues before they take root and replace citations that are lost for any reason.

Manually Tracking Citation Status 

If you don’t mind manually checking listing information, you can track the status of your citations using a spreadsheet. 

Your spreadsheet should list each citation along with information such as the date it was created, the date it was last checked, the listing URL, and whether the citation is confirmed as accurate. It’s also a good idea to have a column to track if and when citations are lost and a note of the remedial action taken.

How often you’re able to check the status of your citations will depend on how many you have and how much time you can assign to the process. However, it’s a good idea to check at least once a month.

How to Manually Track Citations

Create a Tracking Spreadsheet

First, you’re going to need the ‘dashboard’ to keep all of your findings, refer back to, and log any changes. The easiest way to do this is to create a spreadsheet that contains all of the pertinent information. You can find a citation tracking template here. 

Make a List of Directories and Sites

First, you should add any and all directories and sites on which you know for certain that your business has been listed; this typically includes big names like Google Business Profile and Yelp—citations that you actively remember building. 

Once you’ve logged those, it’s time to research what the other top directories for your business would be. This can include general directories (like Yell and HotFrog), industry-specific directories (like Zocdoc and HealthDirect for doctors), and location-specific directories. 

As you find relevant directories, add them to your spreadsheet in the ‘Site/Directory’ section. Once you have your list, you’re ready to start filling in the rest of the spreadsheet. 

This step is especially useful as it also allows you to see any future citation-building opportunities.

Search for Your Business Across Directories 

Now, it’s time to start finding your business’s listing across directories. Some directories may have existing citations that need claiming and updating. Some may just need claiming. No matter what, all citations for your business that you come across should be logged. 

Others may need you to create a listing from scratch, which you can do now or make a note to come back and build later—after all, citation building is another key part of your local SEO strategy.

At this point, you should determine what each directory on your list needs to ensure that your business’s information is listed accurately. 

This is also the time to start doing additional searches across Google and other search engines to see if your business is already listed on any other directories that didn’t appear in your initial research.

Every time you claim, update, or upload a listing, make sure to log it in your spreadsheet!

Check Back on Your Listings

Now that you control your listings, it’s time to monitor them consistently. Make a note to check in on them regularly—once a month is a good baseline—to ensure that no vital business information has been changed. If you have to make any updates, log them.

It is also important to remember that any time a key piece of information about your business changes, you must update it across directories. The last thing you want is conflicting information about your business online. 

Keeping on Top of Tracking 

Manual revisions can be quite time-consuming, especially if you have thousands of citations to keep track of. A tool can make life much easier and save hours of effort by automating the process.  

Using a Tool 

A tool like Citation Tracker can automate the review process for you and this is more efficient than conducting manual checks. The software can flag up inconsistencies in name, address, and phone number (NAP) data, compare your profile with competitors, and keep close tabs on whether your total citation count has gone up or down. 

Using a tool also means you can scale the frequency with which your listings are status-checked without needing to hire an extra pair of hands. 

How to Use BrightLocal’s Citation Tracker

Creating Your Citation Tracker Report

To get started with using BrightLocal’s Citation Tracker, you need to create a report within the tool. How you do this varies based on whether you currently have an existing Location within the BrightLocal platform or not.

Existing Location

If you have an existing Location, you can navigate to the ‘All Locations’ section of the platform (found in the Top Menu), which will bring up a list of Locations. You must then hit the ‘view’ button to be brought to a Location Summary. From there, you simply hit ‘Citation Tracker’ on the left side of the screen and then ‘Monitor Citations’. You will be asked if you want to monitor all of your SEO data versus your citations only. Select your preference. This will create a Citation Tracker Report. 

No Existing Location

If you do not currently have an existing Location in the BrightLocal platform, you should navigate to ‘Local SEO Tools’ in the top menu and then Citation Tracker. Then, you simply click on ‘New Citations Report’ in the top right, and follow the instructions to create a new Location report. 

Choosing Report Frequency

Once the base report has been set up, it’s time to fine-tune the general settings. Here, you select which Location the report is for (this field will autopopulate if you are working from a pre-existing Location) and how often you want the report to run. 

You can choose to run your reports monthly on a day of your choosing, weekly on a day of your choosing, or ad hoc (which will need to be manually triggered). 

Adding Business Details

You will then be asked to enter your business details—specifically, your type of business and primary location.

For your type of business, it is important to enter a specific business type as opposed to a broad business category so that competitors can be accurately identified (think ‘Personal Injury Attorney’ instead of ‘Lawyer’). 

For the primary location, you should use your town/city name or zip code/postcode. For US-based businesses, only use your five-digit zip code.

When you enter your business details, it is vital to ensure that the information you enter is accurate so that the system has the correct data to base its search on. 

Notifications & Alerts

You will then need to set up what notifications you would like to receive regarding your Citation Tracker reports. You can enter up to five emails to receive notifications for completed reports. 

Saving and Updating the Report

You will need to click the button at the bottom of the page that says ‘Run Citation Search’ or ‘ Update Report’ in order for your changes to be saved. You will then need to re-run the report (navigate to the ‘Actions’ dropdown in the upper right corner to find this) to see any changes reflected. 

Essential for business discovery, local search visibility, and consumer awareness, these little nuggets of information must be managed correctly for their full benefit to be unleashed. 

Can I still build local citations if my business doesn’t have a customer-facing location?

If you’re a service-area business that meets customers at their place (such as a plumber or landscaper), your business may not have a physical location. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t build business listings for your service-area business. It may be a problem if your legal business address is also your home, though, as is typical for many small service-area companies. 

Understandably, you may not wish to share your home address publicly. However, the business address is required for most listings, which can leave service-area businesses stuck. 

While PO boxes are usually not permitted, you may be able to use a virtual office address. You won’t be contravening Google guidelines if the virtual office is staffed during working hours. If that’s not an option, try exploring these specific citation sites for service-area businesses. 

Should multi-location businesses invest time building citations?

Citation building isn’t just for small local businesses. Large multi-location enterprises can still benefit from the SEO and consumer benefits associated with having listings on sites such as Yelp, Facebook, Tripadvisor, and Google Business Profile (GBP). 

However, it’s worth noting that large organizations, such as Starbucks or Home Depot, will need to use a specialist tool to build, optimize, and manage listings on a grand scale. 

My business has a toll-free number, will that be a problem?

It shouldn’t be a problem to use a toll-free number. Most directory sites will allow a toll-free number to appear on a listing. 

While it doesn’t expressly prohibit the use of a toll-free number, Google’s guidelines say that a local number is preferable. Therefore, if you have a local number for your business, it’s advisable to use it where possible.  

Can I use a call tracking phone number for building local citations?

When creating local citations, you can use a call tracking phone number as your main business number. This is good news as you’ll be able to track where your leads come from. 

However, this must be done correctly as you don’t want to create consistency issues by having different numbers appear on different listings. On your GBP, you can set your call tracking number as the primary phone and the standard business number as additional. 

What if my business address is home to several businesses?

Suppose you’re in a shared office space, or you’re a practice or practitioner business (such as a lawyer, real estate agent or dentist). It may be that several companies wish to use the same physical address in their citations. 

Multiple businesses at the same address will not present any issues for your listing. Individual practitioners can also create a listing using their location separate from any citations for the practice. 

Do I have to verify my new business listings by phone or mail?

Most citation sites will offer several methods for verifying new listings. Standard options include by phone, email, and post. One problem with verification by post is that it can be a slow process, also there’s always the danger of the postcard getting lost or being delivered to the wrong address. 

GBP has often relied on postcard verification but now offers a range of verification options, including video calls.  

The only way to see which verification method is required is to create your business listing. 

How do I update my listing if I move to a new address?

If you move your business to a new address, you may wonder how to maintain consistency with your name, address, and phone number (NAP). Unfortunately, a common mistake is to think that you need to change all of your current listings to ‘permanently closed’ and begin from scratch. Happily, that’s not the case. 

All you need to do is update each of your listings with your new address information. You can do this manually but be aware that a management tool substantially speeds up this process. 

I’ve completed a citation campaign for my business; why am I not ranking higher on Google?

Citations are known to be a top-five local search ranking factor, but they’re not the only factor influencing your search position. The three core pillars of this ranking algorithm are:

• Proximity (how close you are to the searcher).
• Relevance (how closely you match the searcher’s need).
• Prominence (how prolific your business is online). 

Google uses a wide range of signals to determine position alongside data it gathers from citations, including your GBP, link profile, website content, and your consumer review profile. 

Manual citations, data aggregators, or both? What should I focus on?

Building manual citations takes time as you need to visit each listing site and input your business information by hand. 

If you opt for a data aggregator, you’ll submit your information once, and then the aggregator will submit it to a wide range of sites. You can choose to build submissions manually, use an aggregator, or go for a combination of the two.

Aggregators are a fast way to build lots of listings, so they can save you a significant amount of time. The downside is you can’t specify which sites to target. If you want to build visibility on specific niche citation sites, you may need to do that manually, even if you subscribe to a data aggregator. 

We have a handy comparison of manual submissions vs data aggregators to help you decide on the best approach.