Hendrik Vos of Online Business Builders asked me a great question yesterday:
“I wonder how far off 100% is the probability that Google eventually ends up treating all these manufactured citations/ links in the same way they did manufactured backlinks to websites.”
The question came up because of the giant post on citations I did on the Whitespark blog the other day. It’s come up before. Mike Blumenthal wrote a post on this question last year, and hit the nail on the head.
But because citations have been on my mind – and on others’ minds, apparently – I just thought I’d share my off-the-cuff reply to Hendrik:
“I’d say there’s about a 5% chance that will happen. I say that for many reasons – but just to rattle off a few:
“First of all, there’s nothing sneaky or below-board about listing one’s business on a directory of businesses. It’s not an attempt to “game” Google, partly because there are very tangible reasons to list your business on various IYPs: you want users of those sites to be able to find you, and you want reviewers on sites other than Google to be able to review you. As opposed to link exchanges and the like, where the links have no purpose other than to try to puff up one’s rankings.
“Second, Google needs the data that’s on the most-important sites (where you can get citations). It relies on them in order to populate its results. Without them, Google’s local-business data would be incomplete at best, or – more likely – an absolute train-wreck.
“Third, most businesses have citations that their owners didn’t even build: They grow naturally over time. The citations profiles of those businesses are usually indistinguishable from those of businesses for which someone has been proactively working on citations.
“If it sounds like I’m absolutely certain Google will never treat citations differently, you might be wondering: “Where does the 5% come in?” Well, Google is full of surprises :)”
Your thoughts? Leave a comment!