Value of Citations? Citations had little to no impact?


Dec 12, 2013
I don't have any data to back up anything, so, I'm more with "feeling" on this one. (I have seen a few pretty interesting research, I can't remember them all but, I think Dan Liebson had a very cool presentation about it that influenced my thinking).

My feeling is, I can't imagine that Google cares what has in their database about your business. You can convince me that the top 10-15 sites are probably important both for users (and voice search, and navigation), and maybe for SEO, but, after that, it's a waste of time.

Part of the issue is, if so many people are doing it, how could it be a valuable signal to google?


Jul 18, 2012
Greg Sterling is actually in the process of writing a piece on this where he's going to get a bunch of people to chime in. Here is what I sent him.

I often find that people are are surprised to hear that my agency doesn't focus much on citation building or "maintaining" as a strategy. We've found that time is better spent on other high-impact tactics. We only bother with citation work if the client has recently moved locations. Even then, we notice that it doesn't make a huge difference. We had a client move last summer and after we updated the website and Google My Business listing we actually saw an increase in rankings due to their new location being closer to the center of the zip code (that's where we were scanning ranking from). Additionally, their leads continued to rise month-over-month even though we hadn't updated a single citation. We don't ignore it completely, it's just labelled here as a low-impact tactic so it's not what we tackle first.
Sep 22, 2017
My view is kind of like Hoosier said, it is a "feeling".
Everything I do comes from "if it is there, we should". I always update citations. I always build the ones I like, that add value, especially if it allows for certain things like a map or clickable phone number.
In my opinion, there is no reason not to. I look at my methods as holistic in that, SEO and digital marketing should include everything.
Again, only my opinion and feelings :)


Jun 14, 2019
It's the same as backlinks, a good local/hyper-local citation is worth a 100 generic national ones. I run the existing citations through my own Top100 list which my team prepares at the start of any project and then focus on getting the balance over the duration of the project ( 3 or 4-month Local SEO campaign). This saves money and provides better value to my clients.

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