The Guide to Canadian Citations for Local Search
MIHMORANDUM NO. 414 | June 22nd, 2009
This article is part of a four-part series on International Citations.
Experienced Local SEO’s no doubt already understand the tremendous importance of citations for ranking well in Local Search. Below are my recommendations for where to acquire citations for Canadian businesses after a qualitative (though fairly extensive) review of Maps.Google.ca results across a number of industries, provinces, and city sizes. Additional valuable guides have been published by Jim Rudnick and Dev Basu.
1) YellowPages.ca
Please note that ALL individual listings on Maps.Google.ca now seem to display “Business listings distributed by YellowPages.ca™ ” at the bottom of each Listing Details page (here are a couple of examples) — so that’s where I’d start. It appears that all that’s required is a business line registration with the Canadian Yellowpages. Note that PagesJaunes.ca appears to be the same company & also frequently appears as a citation.
2) 411.ca
Probably needs no explanation. Sign Up Here
3) ShopinCanada.com network
This standard, well-optimized business directory seems to appear awfully frequently, especially in less-competitive niches. Perhaps comparable to Marchex’s OpenList in the US. Sign Up Here
4) CityDirect.info network
Similar to ShopinCanada and Marchex’s OpenList, each individual city in Canada (at least the major metropolitan areas) has its own directory. Sign Up Here
5) Canpages.ca
Their interface looks a little dated, but apparently their information is pretty good…because it seems to show up quite a bit. Sign Up Here — Update — Greg Sterling relayed today that CanPages has acquired ZipLocal.
6) ZipLocal.com
The process for submitting to ZipLocal is a little convoluted, but you can visit their homepage and click “Add a Listing” in the footer.
7) WebLocal.ca
Looks like a fairly new, but well-indexed, entrant in the Canadian Local Search space. Sign Up Here
The process for FoundLocally is a little easier, but you’ve got to find the proper city first. Here’s a direct link for a Calgary business submission
Citation Sources not Specific to Canada
1) Yelp Canada
Probably doesn’t need a description…here’s where to sign up for Yelp for Canadian Business Owners
2) BBB.org Canada
BBB requires an application for accrediation — fill one out by contacting their Vice President for Business Relations
3) Hotfrog Canada
Hotfrog got a somewhat surprising number of mentions in the recent Local Search Ranking Factors results. Here’s where to submit for Canada
4) iBegin.com
Ahmed Farooq is well-known for his involvement in the Local SEO community & iBegin is a great place to submit your business listing (free of charge)
David Mihm is a
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:39 am
Hi David,
Just wanted to let you know that weblocal .ca has been around for about 8 months and is a partnership between YellowBot and Transcontinental Media. If you’ve got any questions about weblocal.ca, please feel free to send them over to me. :-)
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:21 am
Thanks for that Emad — looks like you guys have done a really nice job getting indexed…I saw plenty of citations across most geo areas in Canada.
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
Love the photo, David. This is a great post for all of our friends up North!
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:01 am
Hey David! This is a great compililation of Canadian citation sources in addition to what Dev had written. It’s good to see how the number keeps growing, providing more choices for Canadian businesses to get recognized.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Another is infocanada.ca, but it seems you can’t submit there, supposedly there is a way to submit Canadian businesses through infousa.com, which then feeds infoCanada, but I’ve not found the way. Another suggestion put forth was to submit to UBL, which feeds infoUSA, then feeding infoCanada, but the form for submitting in UBL, though the form says province/state in the drop down menu, no Canadian provinces are listed as options to choose. I sent them an email and they said they are working on it an expect to be taking Canadian listings by end of year.
Seb Provencher at Praized media just launched http://praized.com, a localized social networking site. Pulling US data from Localeze and Canadian data from YellowPages.ca Is still in Beta.
Another is Canoe411.ca. Supposedly you can submit free business profiles but I can’t find where the submit is. Got an email out to them, will update when I find out.
June 24th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Thanks for the link David – I need to update my post on CDN citations as I’ve found a ton of them since I first wrote it. Check out Shagun’s blog as well because she’s extensively used Praized, Brownbook, and WebLocal.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Canoe411.ca is still in beta, they are however taking submissions by email.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:29 am
Great List David! As a company located in the Hamilton area, we know well how to SEO our clients locally, and your list is pretty complete too and we’ve added the few we’d not found to our internal listings!
Muchly appreciated!
:-)
Jim
September 6th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Most of the sites in this list implement Google Maps. Is it possible that the presence of GMaps have an equal influence on the Local business Listings as citations do?
November 12th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
So many great sources and so easy! Thank-you!
November 17th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
I’ve been loving all the work you’ve shared with us re: local search and citations. I’ve had a lot of American customers in the past and refer to your posts often. Many thanks. They’ve been very helpful.
I was kind of sad when I was doing Canadian work the other day and discovered that most of the citations weren’t available for Canada. I happened to stumble upon this list today (looking for something entirely different) and am stoked once again. You rule!
I plan on creating a list of Canadian citations myself soon, so I’ll be sure to include a link to this article.
November 17th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
I fully agree with Jim, Jason and the rest. A tremendous resource.
Steph, I’ll keep an on your blog as well.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:00 am
hi
i am looking a tool for give the general idea and position about our local listing?
any one can say me about the tool for Local listing like
http://getlisted.org/
this tool only for US customers
any other tool for uk and canada?