Data Quality & Consistency
Online traffic continues to grow, but consumers are branching out to new sites that pop up every day. With ease of access to base data from providers like InfoUSA or Acxiom, directory sites launch and try to build community around the data, in an attempt to drive advertising dollars. One noticeable problem for merchants, however, is the multitude of derivations of their business information, making it impossible to manage it and the reviews, comments, and other user-generated information that circulates around them on the Internet.
I just did a search on my family’s business on Google. In the first 3 pages of results, I found directory listings on ECNext, SuperPages, YellowBook, Switchboard, MerchantCircle, YellowPageCity, InsiderPages, AllPages & MyPages – and all of these listings has slight variations among them. How could anyone keep this information accurately updated, and keep up with any consumer reviews, comments or otherwise that shows up on these sites? And why did his business not show up in Local.com, YellowPages.com, Yahoo Yellow Pages, Google Local, Judy’s Book, TrueLocal and others?
Data quality has been a topic raised by some people in this industry, but it has not been adequately addressed for usability by merchants. With more sites embedding comments, reviews and opinions every day, it’s become impossible for the plumber, retailer or other small merchant to monitor and see what others are saying and doing – to the detriment or benefit of her business.
Centralized data management, monitoring and interactions will be very relevant topics in the coming months. More to come on this topic for certain.