How does Google Local match YP results to Web pages?

And how do they get it wrong so often?

[brycen]

Pick a random google local result, and you'll see some yellow pages results, with 'references' to websites. Does anyone have insight into how a local business owner can increase the chance of a correct match?

I find it odd that even the major sites are often wrong... say a major car rental company... three locations might link to three different websites, none belonging to the company.

[inbound]

To get a correct match you have to think of the data being matched.

If you have the same full address details and phone number on your homepage as the datasource does then they stand a better chance of matching.

I think you'll find many directory sites are shown as the reference as they often use the same data, also many site owners choose not to have full contact details (as mad as that seems to many).

[RossWal]

Problems arise for SEMs using unique phone numbers to measure print YP campaigns. It's reasonable to think of phone number as the strongest key to join both structured and non-structured data....employing tracking phone numbers clearly places the golden geese in harms way. Yet it's a critical measurement.

[brycen]

I've got some that Google matches, and some that don't.

One that Google misses is a mystery to me. The phone number matches, and city and state are listed. This particular business is truck dispatched, so they don't list a street address just a city.

I just adjusted the phone number from 617-XXX-XXXX to (617) XXX-XXXX in hopes Google will see it.

[Robert Charlton]

Problems arise for SEMs using unique phone numbers to measure print YP campaigns.

Or to differentiate leads generated by a website from all other telephone leads. Often, for local businesses, the website is the last thing up.

Seems to me phone numbers are used for tracking so often in direct marketing that the engines will need to address this.

[brycen]

I think I solved it for my client: their website said XXX 67th Avenue. Yet, 67th is actually a Street. I'll bet google kicked it out for this reason.

[ortelius]

I know that a lot of this data on the local directories is pulled from big data companies like #*$!. (Can't name them, right?) xxx, in turn, pulls their data from phone directory databases, in part, plus from surveys they send out. At any point in time, I'd say 20-30% of this data is out of date, and I don't see that that has changed, in the online iterations.

[brycen]

I had an address appear on GLocal which blew me away. The only (and I mean ONLY) place it ever appeared was on a single website. It was the address of a bike locker, actually. It came up on GLocal as an 'Unverified address'.