The Guide to UK Citations for Local Search

Note: this article is part of a series on International Citations.

Some of you probably know I’m a huge Anglophile.  I lived just off Farringdon Road in London EC1 for a semester, and have visited a number of times for both golf and sightseeing. So in some sense, I’m a little disappointed this post has taken me so long to get out, as I’d LOVE to be able to take on a few UK clients & fly over for some in-person meetings :).

If you are new to Local Search, you’ll probably want to read these articles on the importance of citations for ranking well in Local Search before this one to understand why these are such good places to list your business. And thanks to Martijn Beijk, Distilled, and Sokratis Papafloratos for their contributions to this article.

Where to list your business for UK Local Search

1) The Local Data Company
LDC appears to be the infoUSA, or perhaps more appropriately, the Localeze of UK Local Search. Check out their impressive list of customers…and lo and behold Google UK actually allows them to use their logo explicitly.  You can submit or update your data here.

2) Market Location
Perhaps the secondary major data provider for Google Maps UK…it looks like this is the place to sign up.

3) Yahoo Local UK
A no-brainer, obviously.  Somewhat surprisingly, they don’t appear to manage their own results…sign up below instead.

4) Infoserve
Infoserve provide results to Yahoo Local in the UK, as well as a few other portals, undoubtedly. Click here to sign up

5) Qype
According to multiple UK sources I’ve talked to, including the experts at Distilled, Qype may be the most popular Local portal in the UK at the moment.  It’s also very well-spidered by maps.google.co.uk. Sign up here

6) TrustedPlaces.com
The aforementioned Sokratis Papafloratos is the main man behind this well-indexed Local Search portal. Sign up here

7) Brownbook.net
Dave Ingram, who penned this excellent article on SMB reputation management a few weeks back is the founder of Brownbook, a well-indexed, wiki-style Local portal. Sign up here

8) Yell.com
Though Distilled and Martijn both speculate that Yell is not a quote-unquote “major” data provider, they still show up pretty frequently under the Web Pages tab.  Sign up for a free listing here

9) Yelp.co.uk
Just launched a few months ago (March?), most folks feel Yelp will be just as successful in the UK as it’s been in the US…at least as far as appearing in Google search results.  Sign up here

10) Thomsonlocal.com
According to Martijn, this is a major player in the UK. Sign up here

11) Touchlocal
An OpenList style portal for the UK.  Thanks to Joshua Sciarrino for this tip.  Sign up here

12) Scoot
Scoot bills itself as the online business directory that does all the hard work for you.  Whatever that means.  Sign up here

13) Tipped.co.uk
Looks like this site started in London but is branching out to some of the UK’s larger cities such as Cardiff, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester, etc.  Sign up here

Geo-specific sites to London include:

London Online | View London | Visit London | All in London | London Town | Timeout | SpoonFed

Hospitality industry sources include:

Square Meal | Fancy a Pint | HotelGuide

Any others I should highlight here, Brits?