Next up in our Citation on Trial series is ExpressUpdate.com. This site is a part of InfoGroup, one of the four top-level directory aggregators in the US (the others are Acxiom, Localeze and Factual, which will be highlighted in a future update). ExpressUpdate is their online portal for businesses to create/update their own business information in a self-service fashion. Based on information on their About Us page, InfoGroup claims that the information you put in their database will be syndicated to:

• The Top Internet Search Engines (accounting for 98% of all search traffic)
• 85% of large public libraries
• Leading in-car navigation systems
• They list 24 citation partners as part of their network

Day 1

We registered on 4/14. The process was very simple, they simply asked for our NAP  (Name/Address/Phone). I also needed to provide a phone number to contact me – which could be different from the ‘P’ in my NAP. I kept it the same. Initially, I thought it was odd that you could provide an independent phone number to verify your business, since it seems like it would be easy to scam. More on this in a bit.

After I finished this process, I got a message that I should wait up to two weeks to get validated. However, I got an email the same day that the listing was approved. There was a link in the email to CLAIM my business, but when I clicked it, I was directed to a page that said I should call a toll-free number between 8:30-5:30 EDT or to email them. So I forwarded the approval email to the email address they have on their landing page.

Day 7

I received an email on 4/20 that I cannot claim the listing without telling them what our phone # is. This seemed odd, since I already gave them our main telephone number when I added the business and also listed it as my contact phone number. In any case, I replied to the email and provided our phone number. I noticed that our phone number was not listed in the email they sent us –  just our business name and address. Somehow, the initial phone numbers I provided were “lost” in the onboarding process.

Days 8-10

On 4/22, I got a call from Timothy at Infogroup. He left me a message that I needed to confirm that my business phone number was authentic and asked that I call him back. On 4/23, I called Timothy back but he wasn’t there and I left him a voicemail. He called back about 2 hours later. We had a nice chat – he concluded that the phone number we provided was indeed the official number for our business. He also indicated a prior business had that same number, which was another business of ours that I wanted removed from the directory. He said he could do that, and he also added the phone number and approved my ownership of the listing while we were on the phone together. Once that was done I was able to go to a dashboard where they have a fairly exhaustive list of items I can fill in for my business.

On 4/24 I filled out our business profile fairly extensively. By 4/26, I noticed that we now had directory listings on InsiderPages.com, CitySearch.com and CityGrid.com. They were all sparse listings (NAP info as well as category). We are still not listed on the other 21 Citation sites yet. Part of our ongoing research will be to see if we get listed on the other citation sites, and how long it takes. With the three above, it’s clear that InfoGroup and IAC have a fairly close (almost real-time) data sharing relationship. Good to know.

Overall – very well done and efficient, albeit with the phone number hiccup.

On trial: ExpressUpdate

Verdict: PASS