Four companies feed most of the business directories on the internet. Fix your data there and hundreds of listings correct themselves.
TL;DR Submit to the aggregators before you touch individual directories, because they propagate downstream. Manual submission is free, permanent, and slow. Paid tools are fast and rented. Pick based on how many locations you have.
The upstream layer
| Aggregator | Feeds |
|---|---|
| Data Axle | A large share of smaller directories, apps, and in-car systems |
| Foursquare | Apple Maps, Uber, Samsung, many mobile apps |
| Neustar Localeze | Many mid-tier directories and telecom listings |
| Attom and related property data providers | Property, local, and civic data ecosystems |
Why order matters. Fix a single directory and you fix one listing. Fix an aggregator and you fix the many listings it feeds, over the following weeks. Doing it in the wrong order means correcting downstream listings that get overwritten by stale upstream data.
Manual versus paid, honestly
| Manual submission | Paid tool (Yext, BrightLocal, Moz Local) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Roughly $200 to $600 per location per year |
| Speed | Weeks to months | Days |
| Coverage | The big four plus what you do by hand | 50 to 100+ directories |
| Permanence | Permanent | Managed listings can revert when you stop paying |
| Duplicate suppression | Manual | Automated |
| Effort | One long afternoon | An hour |
The Yext trade-off, stated plainly. Yext is fast and it genuinely works. Listings it manages are maintained through their API, which means when the subscription lapses, some revert to previous data. You are renting corrections rather than owning them. That is not a scam, it is the model, and it is worth knowing before you sign.
My recommendation by size
- One location: manual submission plus a one-time cleanup service. Best economics by a wide margin.
- Two to five locations: manual is still viable, paid saves real time.
- Six or more: paid. The hours saved exceed the subscription.
Duplicate resolution rules
Duplicates split reviews, confuse machines, and send customers to dead numbers.
Work in this order
- Claim before you merge. A claimed listing is far easier to edit or remove.
- Keep the strongest listing. Most reviews, most complete, correct address. That is your survivor.
- Merge, do not delete. Merging preserves reviews. Deleting loses them permanently.
- On Google: Suggest an edit, then Close or remove, then Duplicate, and identify the survivor.
- Document what you did. Duplicates resurface. A record saves you re-diagnosing in a year.
Never abandon an unclaimed duplicate. It keeps routing customers to nothing.
Vetting niche directories
Your trade has directories that matter more than general ones. Others are worthless.
Worth your time if
- Real people use it to find your trade. Search your service plus your town and see whether it appears.
- It allows a genuine, editable listing.
- It has actual traffic and current content.
- Competitors you respect are on it.
Skip if
- It exists only to sell listings.
- It is stuffed with expired businesses.
- It charges for a basic listing with no traffic to justify it.
- It appeared in a spam email.
The test. Search your main service plus your town in an incognito window. Any directory on page one is worth claiming. Anything that never appears is not worth an hour.
The submission checklist
Before you submit anywhere, lock your canonical record.
| Field | Locked value |
|---|---|
| Business name | Exactly as on the sign. No keywords |
| Address | One format, “Street” or “St”, never mixed |
| Suite or unit | Consistent placement |
| Phone | Real main line, not a tracking number |
| Website | With or without www, pick one |
| Hours | Including holidays |
| Categories | Primary matching your Google profile |
| Description | One paragraph, reused verbatim |
Paste the same values every time. Variation is the entire problem you are solving.
Maintenance
- Every six months: search your phone number in quotes and see what surfaces.
- After any change of address, number, or hours: aggregators first, then the named directories.
- Annually: check for duplicates, since directories merge and scrape continuously.
Twenty minutes twice a year protects an afternoon of work.
Start with the four aggregators before you touch anything else. Fixing downstream first is the single most common way people waste a weekend on this.
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