Your Free Listing

There are over 70 local search engines (plus lots of other things) that Google uses to answer people searching for your local business.  One of the most important aspects of the search engines is the information provided, freshness of the data, and if the Name address and Phone Number (NAP) is consistent throughout all local search engines.  

The information provided should represent your company in a way to tell potential customers what you are about and what you sell to whom.  The “whom” is your target audience.

Freshness of data.  Google looks at the last update date and sees if you are keeping your data fresh or updated.  If the data is a year-old, Google will not put as much stock in your data compared to a competitor who just recently updated their data.

NAP – If your NAP is not consistent, Google does not know which name, address, or phone number to give to your potential customers.  The bad part is Google does not like to guess, so your data will get buried in the search engines.  The other negative is, if there is only data in a few of the local search engines, Google will not trust it as much as a competitor that has many local search engines to verify its data.

How you appear to Google – If you click on the image above it will take you to a link that will give you a free report of all the local search engines and how you appear to Google.  It will also give you some hints on your website. 

Caveat – Please don’t be offended at what you see in your free report.  In all things Digital Marketing it’s best to know how your site appears to the large search engines like Google.

Update Your Info – You can update the local search engines yourself, or you can contact me for a low-cost tool I use.

Questions? – If you have a question or a topic you would like more information on please email as I want this site to be the most helpful.   Please use the contact page.

Google wants to give the best answer to anyone searching for local business information.    Google looks to the information stored on other local search engines to provide the best answer for one of their users looking for a particular local business.  For example; perhaps they key in or verbally ask “Where is the best pizza business still open near me?”, Google looks to those local resources to find the best answer. 

For a quick test, ask Google a question one of your customers might ask while searching for your type of business.  . . . How’d you do?  

There are over 70 local search engines. 

Right now Google is really focused on helping local businesses to improve the quality of search results for the benefit of their Google users.  For example if you have your business in 10 local search engines and your competition is in all 70+,  Google would most likely trust the one that’s in all 70 more and give it a preferential ranking over yours.  

The name address phone number (NAP) must be consistent. For example if you have different addresses, phone numbers or business names in the local search engines, Google can’t choose which is right so it would rather not show bad data.  In the unfortunate instance that this is you, your business will not be shown.

The last update date is important.  Why?  If you have local search engines updated 3 years ago and your competition has had regular monthly updates, Google knows you are still alive.  How does Google know your business survived Covid if the last information provided is before last year or longer?!

What should I update in the local search engines?  Please read the previous article on key words due to the fact that updating key words in the Local Search engines is one way to talk to Google.  You should have a theme each month for your business.  For example, do you have specials for Valentines Day?  If so, February key words should be around Valentines Day.  Do you have annual events?  Does your monthly sales for a particular product or service change?

If you go to the recommended products page you can get a link to a Free list of local search engines and lists.  You then have 2 options you can manually update all of these or you can purchase this service for $100/month and I will update for you.  The report comes from the product I and many others use.

Whichever option you choose please take a free look at your local search engines today, and be aware it takes a few months for Google to give you the much sought after Google ranking brownie points.