Of course my YMCA can be found. How hard can it be?
As it turns out, it is easy to find some information on the web about your YMCA. The hard part is finding the correct information. (And it is not just the YMCA, it is all businesses.)
There are dozens of websites that "specialize" in business information. Data Providers. They gather your business information (name, address, phone number, URL, etc.) and share it with other websites - Search Engines, Review Sites, GPS Systems and Directories. These websites then publish your business information for visitors to see.
But what happens if there is a mistake in your listing information? Face it, it happens. All the information on the web started out with someone typing information into a document. Now that error can be compounded geometrically. And it doesn't have to be a mistake that you make. Perhaps the business next to you mistakenly lists your address as their own. Or someone types in the wrong phone number. Now a directory picks up that mistake and shares it with 1.000 other websites.
Does this really happen? See the image below. Thrive ran a report on a YMCA that we have worked with for years. This is what we found...
In this example, only 52% of this YMCAs business profile was found. And the information found was not very accurate. The four dominant informational databases that power many of the online listings are Infogroup, Acxiom, Factual and Nuestar/Localeze. Here is a chart showing the results of this YMCA's business listings as compared on these four information providers.
Not a single site had all the information correct.
What does this mean? It means that the websites that rely on these data providers cannot possibly be accurate.
The good news is that Thrive licenses the technology to correct these errors. And it continues to correct these errors year round.
If you would like to know if your YMCA is listed correctly on the primary data websites, click the button below and Thrive will send you a report for your local YMCA.
In our next post, you will see the results of these errors as the erroneous information spreads to Google My Business, Facebook, Automotive GPS systems, Directories - across the digital ecosystem. If the four primary information providers don't have the correct information, then the 43 websites informational that YMCAs are listed on will not have the information correct either.
Comments