Scion Reach Local Campaign messed up my Directory Listings

[Daringo]

I work at a multi-franchise dealership. When I first got here we were pretty much indexed across the web as "Acme Auto Group" .. but over the years, and because of Google Places, we separated all the franchises into their own listings and grouped them when appropriate (i.e. Cadillac/Chevrolet, Toyota/Scion).

So things are looking good until...

Scion talks someone over here into signing up for a Reach Local campaign. No one ever told me of this. So just a few days ago, my hard work gets destroyed because of this new campaign.

So instead of seeing listings like:

Acme Toyota Scion
1234 Acme Street
Anytown, CA 12345
555-123-1234
www.acmetoyota.com

They now appear as:

Acme Scion
1234 Acme Street
Anytown, CA 12345
555-444-1234 (tracking number)
www.acmescion.com/?utm=reachlocal&id=123456677

So what's the problem?

1) We sell a LOT more Toyotas than Scions.
2) We are not in control of the displayed phone number.
3) We have lost Toyota visibility on certain directories
4) We did NOT Authorize this

So how does this happen? Well I will tell you. In case you don't know, City Grid Media is the main force behind sites like Insider Pages, CitySearch, Merchant Circle (a special little monopoly they have formed). They, in turn, feed up info to other sites like Bing, Yellow Pages and a few others (thank goodness NOT Google).

Now you can gain control of your CityGrid Media listings, get verified, make updates and so on UNTIL... someone comes along and PAYS them - like Reach Local - to make changes. You would think, as the business owner, you have complete control. But as soon as someone throws a little money at CityGrid, you are NO LONGER in control of your listing.

And so there you have it. Not sure what will happen once the Reach Local campaign ends (hopefully things revert back to their original state).

Has anyone else had this issue? Do you ever wonder why your listings "magically" change?

I guess it's time to consider a service like Yext (not an endorsement, just the only one that comes to mind) and fight fire with fire - er money.

 

[Daringo]

Just a quick follow-up to this post as I've been messaged privately by a few folks. I had a phone conference with Reach Local and Scion today and everything seems to be back in order now. Mostly because this trial marketing campaign was only good for 30 days and ended yesterday. So boom, today all the listings are back to normal.

That said, I think we all learned a little from this. First I cannot blame Reach Local for this one bit. The offered a service, Corporate Scion tried it out, and Reach Local delivered what they promised. In fact it was Reach Local who coordinated the conference call and were very understanding. In turn, Scion is now aware that in their effort to gain more exposure for their brand, they need to make sure it does not come at the expense of big brother's Toyota brand (i.e. stripping Toyota's name, phone, and website from the listing).

It sounds like - moving forward - there may be an effort to separate the brands in the directories / search engines. Similar to Volkswagen / Porsche / Audi insisting they are listed separately. So it looks like we might need to reserve a local phone number for Scion and perhaps add a suite # for Scion because folks like Google+ Local really frown on 2 listings having the same address and phone number.

So there you go.

 

[csabatka1]

Good luck with managing Google Places, of all the good products Google offers, this is quite possibly the worst user friendly product ever offered. I've gotten our listings from a completely asinine amount of listings - mostly automated listings down to a barely number. Currently we have over 40 suspended listings within our Places account.