Top Local General Business Citations

With all the confusion and uncertainty around local citations and if/how they might impact a local business, we sought to create a list of general local business directories ranked by the probability that consumers might use that directory to find a local business. Our hope is that this list may help a local business better prioritize their citation building.

To determine probability of usage we created a formula using data from Google, Moz, SEMRush, and a survey of 1,500 Americans. We did not take into account how a citation on one of these directories might impact search engine rankings or rankings in other directories.

There are only 6 directories that scored a .99 or a 1 meaning they are the most likely to be used by your potential customers and therefore are likely most valuable general business directories. There are 18 local business directory websites that scored a probability over .7. Any directory that scored lower than a 0.05 was left off of this chart.

You can click the name of the directory to be taken to its homepage or to a page to setup your profile.

Top Local Citations Ranked by Probability of Being Used by Real Customers

Those with the highest probability of usage are either attached to a major platform (i.e. Google My Business, LinkedIn, Bing Places, or Facebook), offer a unique experience to their users (i.e. Yelp or BBB), or are bundled onto a hardware device (i.e. TomTom, Here, Apple Maps, Google Maps, etc..)

Directories that don’t meet one of the above three criteria tend to have lower declared user intent and gain a larger share of their usage from search engine rankings.

Note: This list ONLY includes general business directories which means websites like ZocDoc, TripAdvisor, HomeAdvisor etc… are not included as they are more niche. We’re performing the same research on niche directories and will publish that data soon.