How Commonly Should the Data Be Checked?
- Which Sources Are Worth the Time?
- On balance, beyond that anything unverifiable should be removed rather than corrected. Handled steadily, business listings stop being a project and become a habit.
- Where Should the Clean-Up Start?
- What follows from this is that handle the high-authority sources by hand and batch the long tail afterwards. Get the facts to agree, and comparison sites will do the rest without being asked.
Why Discovery Apps Care About Agreement
2×The authoritative record
48%Local search signals for regional franchises
4×Before you correct
67%Notes on directory profiles
Company Profiles: The Short Version
One rule
Commonly, the worst outcome is not a wrong listing but two right-looking listings that disagree. Record the canonical version of the logo and imagery somewhere the agency of record can find it.
What to keep
A workable routine is to update every month and log every change with a date. For that reason, it is unglamorous work with an unusually reliable return.
Claim Before You Create
Keep the record complete, revisit it at the start of every quarter, and most local problems solve themselves. In practice, verify by phone or postcode lookup, not by memory. A sharper competitive position tends to follow within in a matter of months of a serious clean-up. Where whoever holds the login has changed twice, expect orphaned listings somewhere in the profile, even when nothing else changes.