Local Visibility System

The Last Local SEO Guy You'll Ever Need

customer

Local Business Directory Support-Team Email Addresses: How to Reach a Human When You Need Help

by 40 Comments

https://www.flickr.com/photos/trailimage/12826185203/

For reasons that may or may not have to do with local SEO, you need to fix your online listings.  Maybe you want to fix 50, or just one.

All these sites all make you jump through hoops.  You’ve done everything they’ve asked you to.  You’ve filled out their forms to submit new listings as directed, and to make fixes as directed.  You’ve waited.

That process has probably worked for most of your listings, but you’ve got stragglers.  Either the form’s broken, or you get an error message no matter what you do, or the changes don’t stick, or it’s been 5 months and they still haven’t processed your listing.

It’s time to bother a human.  Someone who works at the site.

That’s only fair.  You may only have a free listing and not pay the site directly for a primo listing, but they can only make money from ads if they have a business directory big or good enough to get them traffic, which they boast about in order to sell the ads.  Your business info is part of their directory, and therefore part of their sales pitch.  They owe it to you to make basic fixes to your listing, if they don’t give you the means to do it yourself.

But most of these places don’t give you an easy way to reach someone who can help.  (Hey, time is money.)  So how do you reach someone?

I’ve compiled a list of support-team emails for various local directories, search engines, and data-aggregators.

Many of these addresses my helpers and I have used successfully.  Others are for sites we’ve never needed to contact by email.  All should reach someone who can help you, or who will refer you to someone in a neighboring cubicle who can.

Please email wisely:

  • Use a domain email if at all possible (yourname@yourcompanysite.com). Consider setting up one, if you don’t already use it for your citations.
  • Be polite. Maybe you hate the yellowpages-type company, but the support rep didn’t do anything to you (and can always find a way to decline your request if you’re nasty).
  • Make it clear exactly what you want, so they can oblige you without wasting your time or theirs on back-and-forth.
  • Make it clear you’ve tried everything else, including the normal channels.
  • Don’t email them 5 times in a day because they didn’t get back to you within the hour.
  • If for some reason they can’t say yes to your request, ask how you can get your listing fixed.
  • If you have 75 locations, first ask how you should go about getting those listings fixed en masse.
  • Don’t email them constantly. If you pee in the pool, we’ll all have to get out (but might want to throw you back in).

Here are the support emails, from A to Z, for 21 sites you might be wrangling with:

Acxiom / MyBusinessListingManager email:
mblm@acxiom.com

Angie’s List emails:
angieslist@angieslist.com or memberservices@angieslist.com

Apple MapsConnect emails:
mapsconnect@apple.com or mapsconnect-business@apple.com

Bing Places email:
placesfeedback@microsoft.com

City-Data.com email:
errors@city-data.com

CitySearch / InsiderPages emails:
myaccount@citygridmedia.com or customerservice@citygrid.com

Cylex email:
info@cylex-usa.com

Factual email:
accounts@factual.com

Foursquare business email:
support@foursquare.com

InfoGroup / ExpressUpdate email:
contentfeedback@infogroup.com

LocalEze emails:
support@neustar.biz, support@localeze.com, or localezesupport@neustar.biz

Manta email:
help@manta.com

MapQuest email:
supportteam@mapquest.com

MerchantCircle emails :
toplevelsupport@merchantcircle.com or support@merchantcircle.com

ShowMeLocal email:
support@showmelocal.com

SuperPages & DexKnows email:
customerservice@supermedia.com

Yahoo Local email
listings-support@yahoo-inc.com
(If Yext won’t help you – and you’ve tried their free-fix method – you can email Yahoo.  We’ve had success in getting duplicates removed this way.)

Yellowbook emails:
team@hibubusiness.com or servicecenter@hibu.com

YellowBot email:
help@yellowbot.com

YellowPages emails:
ypcsupport@yp.com or customer.care@yp.com

Yelp Business email:
feedback@yelp.com

I don’t have a direct, non-phone-tree phone number for most of these (yet?).  If you also want non-email ways to contact some of these sites, here are a few great resources:

Be Where Your Customers Are with Local Business Listings – Max Minzer
(includes some phone numbers and extra detail)

Major Internet Business Directories – Mike Munter
(includes some phone numbers and extra detail)

Twitter Handles for Local Business Citation Sources – Bill Bean
(in case you want to try to get help via Twitter)

Thanks to Austin Lund for letting me know about some emails (see his comment).

Special thanks to Nyagoslav of Whitespark for telling me about a few emails I didn’t know about.  By the way, if the thought of fixing all your listings yourself makes you feel like Fred Sanford, consider hiring Whitespark to help clean up your citations.

—

Which sites have been helpful – or not helpful – when you’ve emailed them?

Any email addresses you’re still looking for?

Any emails I’m missing?

Leave a comment!

“Some of My Google+ Reviews Just Got Filtered. What Should I Ask My Customers to Do?”

by 8 Comments

One of my oldest clients asked me that question the other day.  He had dozens and dozens of Google+ Local reviews that he earned over the months.  3-4 of them got filtered after living happily on his page for several weeks.

He then asked, “Should I just ask customers to repost their reviews on Google+?”

I said, “Take it easy, Rambo.”

Then I suggested an action plan:

It’s true that Google’s filters aren’t as tough as they used to be, but they still do filter reviews (as we’ve seen).   If Google sees customers re-post the same reviews that got filtered, that looks weird.

It also looks weird if a customer isn’t a frequent reviewer on Google+, and posts one review, and that review gets filtered, and he/she posts another review of the same place.

Here’s all you can do: if those 3-4 reviewers have written reviews of other businesses besides yours, it’s probably OK to ask them to post another review on Google+, provided that they rewrite it rather than post the same thing.  But if your business is the only one they’ve reviewed, don’t ask them to review you on Google+ again.  Ask them to write a review elsewhere.

—

What do you suggest asking customers to do if they’re still willing to write a review after their first one gets filtered?  Leave a comment!

Checklist for Keeping Google+ Reviews out of the Filter

by 12 Comments

Don’t you hate it when your customers’ Google+ reviews get devoured by the hungry “anti-spam” filter?

After all, all you’re doing is asking your customers in a polite and un-pushy way to leave some honest feedback on your business’s Google+Local listing.

They say “No problem,” they go to write you a review…and nothing happens.  They’re frustrated, you’re frustrated, and your reviews end up swimming with the fishes.

It shouldn’t be this way, but it is.  Getting reviews takes some finesse.

I’ve had a lot of success helping my clients and others get the results of their karma, in the form of Google reviews.

That’s why I’ve put together a quick checklist of what are, in my experience, the best ways to prevent customers’ reviews from getting gobbled by Google’s filters.  It’s a quick reference for business owner and local SEO-er alike.

Here you go:
(click to download PDF)

 

Obviously, there’s never any guarantee that your customers’ reviews won’t get filtered.  But if you’re following those best-practices, you’re probably not trying to spam or game the system in any way, and you should end up with the reviews you deserve.

(By the way, if you want even more info, check out my monstrous complete guide to Google+ reviews.)