Hudson, Ink


We recently read a major online study citing that “94% of small businesses haven’t claimed their local listing”. Since an “unclaimed” listing would send a company’s search results far down the list, we felt that number was too high, especially for contractors who’d be giving up a significant lead source.

So we queried 9,800 contractors from our list who granted us behind-the-scenes permission to check their listing, completeness, and ranking.

Yet after compiling results, the cited figure was close enough. Turns out 88% of contractors polled had not claimed their listing, or had a “minimally completed” listing. This is a serious problem.

If you have not claimed your local listing or have an “incomplete” listing means your local search and online lead results are critically low.

Two significant dangers emerge:

  1. Theft. Those with unclaimed listings are targets of theft by a) Companies who claim your listing and hold it ‘hostage’ for payment/control and b) Competitors who not only get your listing, but leads intended for you also. Once taken, your listing is very difficult to regain.
  2. Loss of Leads. Your local listing search ranking has nothing to do with how elaborate your website is; it has everything to do with how Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, and SuperPages allows customers to find you. Solutions explained below.

Many contractors who attempted to get their local listing in-house (21% of respondents) or paid an outside firm (14%) had several rank-killing errors. Most common 3 were:

  • Incomplete – companies were only ‘partially’ listed, not even grabbing the allowed minimum data. This shoves your results farther down, while completed listings rise to the top.
  • Inconsistent – even in the partial listings, we found inconsistent company names (even showing “ABC Inc.” in one place and “ABC Services” in another hurts your rank), addresses, business type, some photos were “tagged”, some weren’t. This further damages your results.
  • Mobile Disabled – some listings had no provision for viewing on a smart phone, which blinds you to about 40% of users. A ridiculous waste of leads.

And the list goes on. It is disturbing that many contractors paid others to get their listings, but never checked their rank, only “assuming” others legitimately outranked them. Not true. A few tweaks can significantly change results.

Fixing those errors is not too difficult, but the result can mean a higher rank, more leads, and of course more sales. Here’s how –

  1. Make SURE your listing is claimed. Is it? Go here to find out.
  2. Optimize your claimed for maximum leads. Does yours commit the errors above? Test your site against a Site Rank Indicator. This will give you a numerical ‘grade’.
  3. Maintain your optimized listing for regular updates.
  4. Measure the results through qualified analytics, not guesswork.

This problem will not go away by ignoring it. For the 88% of “unclaimed” or “uncompleted claim” contractors, this means those who do claim and optimize their listings have an almost unfair advantage.

As Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, SuperPages and other search engines continue to “rule” results, learning to play by those rules – and bend them to your favor – pays very handsome returns.