In our last post, Factual: A Key Player in Local Search, we talked about the data aggregator Factual and its impact on local search marketing. In this post, we will discuss Acxiom, a more established and prominent data aggregator.
About The Company
Acxiom is a publicly-traded company that was founded in 1969. The company is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. According to Wikipedia, “Acxiom offers marketing and information management services…Acxiom collects, analyzes, and parses customer and business information for clients, helping them to target advertising campaigns, score leads, and more”. According to Forrester Research, Acxiom is one of the leading database marketing services and technology companies in the world.
As A Data Aggregator
Acxiom has a major influence on the local search ecosystem. According to Moz Local, Acxiom is the primary or secondary feed to several important directories, especially Superpages, YP.com, and Google My Business (formerly Google+ Local):
Acxiom says their information goes to the following places:
- Directly to over 80 companies in the Internet Yellow Page and Local Search marketplace
- Directly to the largest search engines
- 250+ distribution partners through online private labeled solutions
- Directly to the top directory print publishers
Because of Acxiom’s powerful influence on the local search ecosystem, it is important that you take control of your listing in their database. We’ve seen instances where a company’s Google listing has their current address while Acxiom has their older address. This seemingly minor inconsistency led to the Google listing being suspended.
Claiming Your Listing
The good news is that, unlike Factual, it’s relatively easy to claim and modify an Acxiom listing. The first step is to create an account in Acxiom’s My Business Listing Manager. Once logged in, you need to search for your business to see if it’s already there. If not, you must create a listing. Listing verification can be done via telephone or through submitting official documents that contain the business’s name and address.
For the most part, creating and claiming an Acxiom listing is pretty straightforward, but complications can arise. At 3PRIME LLC, Acxiom is an essential part of our Local SEO package. We believe having Acxiom under control, a lot of common problems in local search marketing can be avoided.
To receive a proposal for our annual program to optimize local search rankings and use online business listings for effective marketing, contact us today!
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