Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Which On-line Directories provide details to Google Maps
Google Maps attempts to gather authoritative details of a local business by crawling & parsing the semi-structured data of on-line directories (see also Bill Slawski’s patent summary). I was curious which directories they actively use to fill in the details section.
To start answering that question I analyzed the directories listed Google Maps in the restaurant industry, one of the industries that clearly benefits from local search. I analyzed the local listings of the first 16 restaurants listed in the Buffalo, NY market and summarized which on-line directories Google is using.
Here is the summary in alphabetical order:
| Directory | # of Listings |
| 10best.com | 3 |
| ChefMoz.org | 3 |
| Citysearch.com | 10 |
| DiningGuide.com | 4 |
| Frommers.com | 2 |
| Gayot.com | 4 |
| Hotelguide.net | 3 |
| JiWire.com | 2 |
| Marriott.com | 1 |
| MobilTravelGuide.com | 1 |
| Mytravelguide.com | 2 |
| Provided by the business owner | 1 |
| RestaurantRow.com | 7 |
| Sidestep.com | 2 |
| SuperPages.com | 5 |
| Talkingphonebook.com | 2 |
| Travelocity.com | 3 |
| Wcities.com | 7 |
Some observations and notes:
Of the listings 11 were locally owned, non-chain restaurants, 3 were hotel chains with restuarants and 2 were national food chains.
The top 3 listings were Hotels
Only one national chain (the Marriott) appeared to provide an XML feed
Only one business (Days Inn) had edited their own business listing
The listing with the most detail from on-line directories listed had 8 references and was the number one listing.
Some conclusions and questions:
Obviously some of these on-line directories are not available to all restaurants such as Hotelguides.net but most are and restaurants should be listed in as many as is feasible.
It is clear that Hotels have an advantage in this game in that they have been doing on-line marketing longer with services like Travelocity that seem to confer authority. But the spread is not that great and could be overcome with moderate effort.
It appears that national food chains were under-represented which seemed odd.
Given that only one business owner (or their proxy) availed themselves of controlling their own listing, there is a lot of opportunity for that to happen either by SEM professionals or sophisticated business owners.
There was a number 11 listing that had 7 detail references, as many as the second and third listings and it was not clear why they were that far down the list. Their reviews were not starred perhaps because there were too few and perhaps their on-line directories did not provide as much authority.
The varied nature of these sources and the fact that so few business owners had modified their own record, dictated that things like hours & pricing etc. was very erratic.
There are some questions:
Are any of these on-line directories regional in nature and are there others?
Which ones allow free listings and which ones charge?
What relationship does Google have with these directories? Are they remunerated and if so how?
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Comments
13 Comments
Nice post.
I’d definitely recommend to someone interested in appearing in local results to imitate your efforts here to see which sources the search engine is using for a particular niche in a particular region.
The listings definitely include a mix of information paid for from telecoms, as well as crawled from directories and web sites. Many review sites are also included. Here’s a patent that describes some of Google’s efforts to collect and aggregate review information:
Method and system for finding and aggregating reviews for a product
The title says “products” but they also include services, and I believe that they may be using this to collect reviews of businesses for their local search.
Where reviews for more than one location appear on the same page, they also came out with this patent application which describes a process that they may be using (I haven’t done the research to see if it’s actually in effect – something worth doing, which I think I’m going to try now.):
Document segmentation based on visual gaps
I’ve seen regional directories, as well as international.
Good point. I was next going to try to do a summary of the reviews and see how much overlap there is. Thanks for pointing to the patent on reviews, I will take a look.
Good stuff, Mike. I think there would also be value in listing/analyzing the sources used for the “Reviews” tab — though, in both cases, I think more data/analysis would present a better overall snapshot. Maybe I’ll do some digging if time allows, unless you beat me to it.
I’m not surprised to see you mention only one business is controlling its listing. This gets back to why I’m not optimistic about the adoption/impact of Click-to-Call. Small businesses (and many larger ones) don’t have the time or knowledge to deal with this stuff. We’re are still very much in Local Search 0.5 phase, where education has to happen before there’s a chance for adoption.
Anyway, I digress. You ask if there’s any remuneration involved. I would be surprised, given that Yahoo Local is one of the sources Google uses in the “Reviews” section. Perhaps there are different arrangements for “Reviews” compared to “Details”, but I kinda doubt it. I think it’s all crawler-based.
Yes I agreee, Matt.A bigger sample would be great. I am on vacation in NC so you willprobably beat me to it. 🙂
Certainly the Google’s Business Listing tool is not yet widely adopted. I am not sure that small bussiness will ever be better at that than they are at optimizing their site for organic…some will do it them seselves but I suspect most will outsource.
I have read about “agreements” between Google and some directories…never have I read what that meant…perhaps a trade for Adwords?
[…] have links from sites, which are associated with local geographical position (local business directories, for instance) […]
Matt-
It would seem that the copyright issues here are distinct. If Google is going to use a Star Rating from a directory they must have permission to do so.
I just read this from the BBB in Texas:
Another major change for the bureau will be to use its hundreds of thousands of reliability reports in partnerships with other government and nonprofit agencies and businesses, Cole said.
“We’re working with Google Local on a deal right now,” he said. “If you’re looking for a business through them, you could get a link to our reliability report about them.”
[…] Some interesting data from Mike Blumenthal a couple weeks back…. He dug into Google Maps/Local a bit and came up with a list of online directories Google is using to get local business details. There are some obvious sources, and several I’ve never heard of. […]
[…] In Part 1 of this series I review which directories Google is using in creating their Local Listing for Restaurants, in Part 2 I looked at their sources for reviews and ratings and its impact on ranking.  In this third installment I will review the aggregate results of all data Google uses in providing information for the Local Listing in the restaurant industry Google Map’s ranking algorithim is complicated. This summary reviews its sources and from that one can glean some ideas about what influences ranking. Clearly though the underlying rules rely different weighting and factors that have yet to be determined. In fact it is clear that Google Maps and Google Organic weight the data differently. My simplified analysis does not (and can not) establish definitively what these are. Here is a summary all the details that Google Maps captured for the search Restaurant Buffalo, NY on each listing that I analyzed: […]
Hi Mike,
Great read.
I was so impressed with your analysis, I decided to base my analysis on Google Maps Australia & the directories that it draws information from on your methodology. See here
Many thanks
Mark
http://www.raveaboutit.com.au
[…] If you do any online marketing for small local companies, or huge companies with thousands of local brick and mortar locations I suggest you hustle over to check out Which On-line Directories provide details to Google Maps. […]
[…] One of the most opaque local search”platforms” – especially in terms of questions about source data and possible strategic alliances with source data providers – is Google Local and by extension Google Maps. The following article from a blog entitled “Understanding Google Maps and Yahoo Local” called Which On-line Directories provide details to Google Maps offers some interesting observations and conjectures about the role of locally targetted and locally “value-added” directories and other sites in determing Google Maps rankings. […]
[…] Over this past year one of my most frequently read articles was Which On-line Directories provide details to Google Maps (Nov 2006) […]
[…] Mike Blumenthal, on exactly how and which online directories pass details TO Google MAPS — click here to read this definitive post! Great info there, eh! Share and […]
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