What Happens When The Wire Service Sends Your Information To Online Directories?

Eric S

Eric S

Demoted Webmaster
Jul 12, 2005
2,944
2,096
113
Tustin
www.everydayflowers.net
State / Prov
CA
Well folks thanks to ?

I just found out that a number of my directory listings where altered and canceled.

Today I noticed my google place page was pretty much missing.

After logging on to my account I found that my places tag was cancelled. WTF!!

So I had to reactivate it and then I started noticing some other things on Yahoo, Bing, City Search Insiderpages and Yelp. So I have spent that past 4 hours fixing this mess.

So then I checkout my email and see a nice little message from Teleflora today.

Shop information for eFlorist members has been uploaded to Google on a regular basis for the last few years. Having your shop information and a link to your website listed in Google's Places directory is a vitally important way to gain new customers, as two-thirds of web searches go through Google's search engine. Starting in November, 2010, eFlorist members will be included in dozens of major online directories in addition to Google Places, including Yellowpages.com, Facebook Places and Yelp.

Click here to see the full list of U.S. and Canadian directories where your information will appear.

We'll get your basic information listed, but claiming your listing is the next step. All of these sites let you claim your listing for free, but you do have to set up an account with them. It takes just a few minutes and prevents anyone else from poaching your listing.

Download instructions for claiming your listing on the following directories:

◦Google Places
◦Bing
◦Yahoo! Local
◦Facebook Places (requires phone with internet access or laptop with geolocation capability)
◦Yellowpages.com
◦Yelp
Click to expand...

Get ready people and start checking your stuff. Everytime my good friends at Yellowpages start submitting your business info it begins to change and screw up everything online.

Could be just a coincidence that Teleflora announced this today and it just happened to happen.

I'll have to get to the bottom of this tomorrow.
 
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Look to the big YPs first for the mess up. They hold A LOT of clout with G listings and if one of them deletes your company or goofs up the name, address and phone number (NAP), it really can torpedo a listing.

Our idiot YP rep put my husband's school phone number down for our shops in our IYP listing a couple years ago and it took me months to get the G listing fixed. (I got the YP listing fixed in just a week but G only updates every few months so the time lag is horrible.

It kills me that a legit, claimed listing with numerous citations can get wrecked by an YP rep - and a fake local florist can get a G Local listing just cuz an YP rep will take money to list a fake local address with a call-forwarded local phone number.

Sorry you have to go through this.
 
Yep Eric..... it's a coincidence all right.... yep, I believe that.... (I was just born yesterday ;) )
 
Eric, I checked mine and found everything all in order..I did find an unclaimed listing on yellowpages.com with Telelfora as a brand in my brands or affiliations, I will assume they got my info from here. I claimed the info and added to it, just to make sure it was all mine...I will go ahead and check off that other people do not have the right to change my info and that should take care of that, I hope...


How is it possible for another entity to change a claimed listing???once claimed my thought is that noone but the owner should be able to change things...I hope this does not turn out to be like roll out on the websites...I know they are just trying to help clueless florists with unclaimed ads get a web presence and help them selves get 3.50 per order, but this is rediculous..

What kind of info changed??
 
Eric -

I just checked and YP.com has a different phone number listed for your shop than the one showing on Everyday Flowers' Place Page. It's important the main phone numbers match. See if you can get YP.com to display the same number that's on your G listing.

Also, be sure and check the data TF is submitting to SEs. Is the info a match with what's already showing (NAP)? If not, it needs correcting right away.

I know of another florist who had his G listing split in two due to different phone numbers appearing in different authority sources. Even though the data is now corrected, the listing is still waffling between correct and split.
 
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FYI - another thing going on is the filtering of user reviews by Google. Mike Blumenthal has been covering this for about a week and there are 3-4 posts addressing the changes in Place Pages user review displays. At fist, folks speculated the changes were due to a bug, but now the thinking goes that G is filtering reviews on purpose.

You might want to subscribe to Mike's RSS feed since I'm pretty sure this issue will continue to be a hot one.
 
Still no response to the email that I sent last week.

I have received notice from Teleflora that information will be sent for eflorist members to online directories in November.

Shop information for eFlorist members has been uploaded to Google on a regular basis for the last few years. Having your shop information and a link to your website listed in Google's Places directory is a vitally important way to gain new customers, as two-thirds of web searches go through Google's search engine. Starting in November, 2010, eFlorist members will be included in dozens of major online directories in addition to Google Places, including Yellowpages.com, Facebook Places and Yelp.

Click here to see the full list of U.S. and Canadian directories where your information will appear.

We'll get your basic information listed, but claiming your listing is the next step. All of these sites let you claim your listing for free, but you do have to set up an account with them. It takes just a few minutes and prevents anyone else from poaching your listing.

Download instructions for claiming your listing on the following directories:

◦Google Places
◦Bing
◦Yahoo! Local
◦Facebook Places (requires phone with internet access or laptop with geolocation capability)
◦Yellowpages.com
◦Yelp
I need to know what information (if any) has been sent for our business. If you can please include the exact information that was submitted and when this information (if it was sent) the exact date of the submission and what directories the information was sent to.

I’m trying to figure out some problems that we have been experiencing over the years with many of our directory listings that have been altered and deleted over the years to determine the cause of these problems.

I appreciate you helping me resolve this problem.

Sincerely
Eric Shaw
Owner
Everyday Flowers
15012 Red Hill Ave Ste F
Tustin, CA 92780
TF Member xxxxxx
714-258-7293
Click to expand...
 
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