×

    citations-not-indexed
    In 2016, Darren Shaw from Whitespark presented his results from an interesting citation study. In his study Darren wanted to find out what actually happens when you submit your citations through a variety of different data aggregator citation services including submissions to Infogroup, Nuester / Localeze, Acxiom, Factual, Moz Local, Yext, and manual submissions through Whitespark. To do this he created 7 different electrical companies with unique NAP and tracked their results.

    After the dust had settled after a few weeks an interesting observation arose. These are the numbers of indexed citations from his study:

    Infogroup: 10
    Nuester / Localeze: 4
    Acxiom: 1
    Factual: 0
    Moz Local: 13
    Yext: 24
    Manual Citations: 49

    As you can see by the numbers the highest indexation rate was from manual citations.

    This got me thinking…

    The numbers were troubling at first for me and got me thinking. If your citations aren’t indexed they are not going to be providing any weight in the rankings. This means that a citation that doesn’t show up in Google’s search results is not doing you any good. When you consider this plus the fact that services such as Yext submit to 50+ citations it seems a bit concerning. So I decided to do a little research myself to see what I could find.

    I ran a test on indexation rates

    test-grade-2To see how accurate this information was I took a sample from a variety of clients. Some of these citations were built manually and some were created automatically through services like Yext.

    In one test I found that only 6/25 citations were in Google’s index through an automatic citation service.This was a bit concerning to me so I attempted to see if I could change this easily by forcing a crawl of these citation URL’s. To do this I created a page with the citations I wanted to get indexed and submitted a crawl request through Google’s search console. The results worked pretty fast and within a few hours I found that I was able to get 25/25 of these citations in Google’s index.

    Time will tell if they stay, but I anticipate that they will. The good news is that you can do this too.

    How you can fix this

    As with any citation building you take on you should make sure you’re recording great data. This includes the login and especially the URL’s of the correct citations. If you have the URL’s of the citations you can try to force crawl them using this method.

    A quick disclaimer: I would try this method in small quantities of links. Don’t add 1,000 links to a page and expect Google to crawl them. Furthermore an influx of recognized links like that would appear unnatural. So be careful.

    1. Create a page on your website or older blog post. You could title it “Other places to review us on the web” or something to that extent.
    2. Add the links to the citations not showing up in Google’s index. If you’re not sure which ones you can copy and paste the citation URL into a Google Search and see if the result shows up.
    3. After the page is complete open up Google Search Console and select Crawl > Fetch as Google
    4. Enter the URL of the new page you created and select “Fetch and Render”
    5. After the status says complete you should select the “Submit to Index” option. When this pulls up it will give you two choices, select the “Crawl this URL and its direct links” option.
    6. Wait a few days and check the URL’s to see if they’ve made it into the index!

    see-clearly

    Prefer The Video? Casey Explains How To Check Your Citations & Get Them Indexed

    Examples of Citations Not Indexed:

    www.wherezit.com/listing_show.php?lid=1764795
    https://www.agreatertown.com/san_francisco_ca/gjel_accident_attorneys_0006847546
    https://parkbench.com/directory/gjel-accident-attorneys-4
    https://www.iglobal.co/united-states/san-francisco/gjel-accident-attorneys-18
    http://oscarpages.com/company/gjel-accident-attorneys
    https://yupye.com/places/united-states/california/san-francisco/legal/gjel-accident-attorneys-2/
    http://www.freelistingusa.com/listings/gjel-accident-attorneys-3/
    https://nearfinderus.com/business/ca/san-francisco/lawyers/gjel-accident-attorneys_8649330+9.html
    https://www.find-us-here.com/businesses/GJEL-Accident-Attorneys-San-Francisco-California-USA/33120462/
    https://www.a-zbusinessfinder.com/business-directory/GJEL-Accident-Attorneys-San-Francisco-California-USA/33120462/
    https://www.cityfos.com/company/GJEL-Accident-Attorneys-in-San-Francisco-CA-22586896.htm
    https://issuu.com/gjel01
    http://www.getlisteduae.com/listings/gjel-accident-attorneys/
    https://yelloyello.com/places/gjel-accident-attorneys-18432a28-99a0-49b6-942a-65d818ad8893
    https://citysquares.com/b/gjel-accident-attorneys-23526102
    http://tupalo.com/en/san-francisco-california/gjel-accident-attorneys
    http://www.spoke.com/companies/gjel-accident-attorneys-5da05cdb3013b4eade0047e2
    https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=3588264&location=San%20Francisco%2C%20CA%2C%20USA&add=1#
    http://www.freebusinessdirectory.com/search_res_show.php?co=251357&lng=en
    https://www.localbusinesslisting.org/gjel-accident-attorneys-3
    http://ebusinesspages.com/GJEL-Accident-Attorneys_e07fl.co
    http://www.travelful.net/location/4204765/usa/gjel-accident-attorneys
    http://www.askmap.net/location/5214244/usa/gjel-accident-attorneys
    https://www.professionalservices4u.com/san-francisco/business-services/gjel-accident-attorneys
    https://about.me/gjel
    https://www.smallbizpages.us/business-directory/87192/gjel-accident-attorneys/
    https://sanfrancisco.yalwa.com/ID_136770998/GJEL-Accident-Attorneys.html
    http://bizzectory.com/gjel-accident-attorneys-4/
    https://sanfrancisco.yalwa.com/ID_136770998/GJEL-Accident-Attorneys.html
    http://mylocalbusinessdirectory.com/san-francisco/place/2182041/gjel-accident-attorneys
    http://www.lacartes.com/business/GJEL-Accident-Attorneys/1346433
    https://www.yourlocaldirectory.online/california/san-francisco/professional-services/gjel-accident-attorneys
    https://bizidex.com/en/gjel-accident-attorneys-legal-services-137641
    http://sanfrancisco.citybase.com/business/gjel-accident-attorneys-id-323932
    https://www.classifiedads.com/attorneys/1cw72bmx31f2f
    https://yellow.place/en/gjel-accident-attorneys-san-francisco-ca-usa
    https://www.whofish.org/Default.aspx?tabid=45&modid=379&action=detail&itemid=161906&rCode=33
    https://www.bizyglobe.com/page/19687/GJEL-Accident-Attorneys
    http://www.announceamerica.com/Directory/ListingDisplay.aspx?lid=17038#.XaRKXUYzbcs
    https://www.directorytogoto.com/united-states/san-francisco/professional-services/gjel-accident-attorneys
    http://adforms.citiservi.com/1.0/user/682847/business/4879938
    https://ca-san-francisco.cataloxy.com/firms/gjel-accident-attorneys.1923779_c.htm
    https://www.dealerbaba.com/suppliers/others/gjel-accident-attorneys-1.html
    http://www.lekkoo.com/v/5da411518538193f53000006/GJEL_Accident_Attorneys/#lat=18.975000&lng=72.825800&zoom=12
    https://www.callupcontact.com/b/businessprofile/GJEL_Accident_Attorneys/7306255
    https://www.chamberofcommerce.com/united-states/california/san-francisco/personal-injury-and-property-damage-attorneys/2011522423-gjel-accident-attorneys
    https://www.townplanner.com/directorypreview/unclassified/gjel-accident-attorneys/82417/
    http://www.listnow.co/business/lawyer/gjel-accident-attorneys
    https://www.hotfrog.com/company/1264565262032896
    http://www.listylocal.com/business/lawyer/gjel-accident-attorneys-2
    Casey Meraz Casey Meraz is an entrepreneur, SEO expert, investor, creator, husband, father, friend, and CEO of Juris Digital. Casey is a frequent speaker at industry events and the author of two books on digital marketing, including "Local Marketing for Personal Injury Lawyers" and “How to Perform the Ultimate Local SEO Audit”
    X - Close
    X - Close