Build citations that count

What a citation does

It tells search engines, from outside the business, that the business exists at that address with that number. Google's guidance counts information from across the web as part of prominence. A business with consistent listings on the sites a Dublin customer would actually use is easier to trust as real and established than one with none, and much easier than one with contradictory ones. The previous chapter fixed the contradictions; this one adds the missing listings.

Which ones matter

General. The map and directory services that most phones and browsers use besides Google, and the largest general business directories. Few, but foundational.

Irish and Dublin. The Irish business directories, the Golden Pages successor, local council business listings where they exist, chamber of commerce directories, and Dublin-specific listing sites. Relevance to the place is what makes these count.

Trade and professional. The register or member directory of the body that governs or represents the trade: the Law Society for solicitors, the Dental Council register, RECI for electricians, the Construction Industry Register and so on. These are the most authoritative citations a business can have, because membership is checked.

Review platforms. The sites customers use to review businesses of your kind. Being listed there, with the NAP consistent, both counts as a citation and lets the reviews accumulate somewhere Google can see.

Some of these listings are free; some are paid; membership bodies have their own processes. The handbook does not name individual sites as endorsements, and the list a given business needs depends on its trade.

What does not count

Hundreds of listings on directories nobody visits, submitted in bulk by a service. They are inconsistent by default, they are ignored by search engines, and they create the long tail the previous chapter had to clean up. A company that offers “500 citations” as a product is describing a problem, and it appears on the direct-answer property's red flags page. Twenty right listings beat five hundred wrong ones.

How to fill each one

With the reference values, character for character. The same logo. The same short description. The same categories, as near as the site allows. The website link to the correct page. Then the listing goes into the spreadsheet with its URL and the date.

Illustrative example. A solicitor's practice in Dublin 2 confirms its Law Society entry, adds itself to the two main Irish directories and the chamber's member list, claims its profile on the review platform its clients use, and stops there. Twelve listings in total, all matching. That describes a scope, not a result.

Output

The spreadsheet extended with every listing created, all matching the reference values. The listings part of the handbook is complete. Next the website, starting with whether it can be crawled at all.