Yext Infographic: 64% of Foursquare Listings Have Missing or Incorrect Info | Street Fight

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Yext Infographic: 64% of Foursquare Listings Have Missing or Incorrect Info

5 Comments 23 April 2012 by

Yext, the local listings company that spun-off its pay-per-call business earlier this month, has released an infographic that takes a deep dive into the accuracy of business listings on the Web. The graphic draws from data collected through the company’s diagnostic tool, and shows that upwards of 40% of business listings on major hyperlocal services and directories include incorrect or incomplete information.

According to the graphic, Foursquare has the highest percentage of listings that are incorrect or incomplete, with 64% of the listings in the service including an error or missing key information (like a phone number). It is followed closely by AOL-owned MapQuest and Citysearch at 57%. Overall, Merchant Circle and Yelp return the most accurate information, with only 40% and 47% of listings showing incorrect or incomplete information respectively.

The graphic also breaks down listings by vertical, and though it’s largely a mixed bag, health and real estate businesses show the most common errors. According to Yext data, 87% of legal businesses show the wrong name altogether.

Fragmentation is a major issue on the distribution-end of the local information space and Yext is making a big bet that the market will not be consolidating anytime soon.

Steven Jacobs is an associate editor at Street Fight.

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  • http://www.ngsmarketing.com/ Nyagoslav Zhekov

    The infographic and the data is truly great! However, the reason for “Business is permanently closed” wave on Google was not caused by bad data, but by bad, massively spammy UGC.

  • http://www.yext.com Eric Vreeland

    I think that the infographic tells a really interesting story, but the data can also be easily misinterpreted. 

    I don’t think that Foursquare’s results are really accurately represented by this article. As you can see from the call out in the infographic, the main reason for Foursquare’s unusually high incorrect percentage is that a large portion of their listings don’t include a phone number at all. Perhaps we were wrong in calling these listings “incorrect” and should have had an entirely different designation for “incomplete” data.

    I also think the flexibility that Foursquare offers its users in creating venues leads to a very enjoyable experience. If every venue was required to have a phone number then how would I have ever had such a great time at Snowpacolypse or Earthquakepocalypse. 

    In fact, I find it fascinating that Foursquare’s address data is the most accurate of the bunch, given that such a large portion of it is generated by customers. 

    The team at Foursquare has done some great things and to compare their social discovery site with all of the other Internet Yellow Page and directory sites out their really isn’t fair to begin with. 

    • http://twitter.com/jdmoran Jim Moran

      Not to mention 4sq accuracy isn’t a checkin-weighted average figure. I bet popular bars & restaurants have a much higher completeness % than, say, general contractors, which are rarely accessed by 4sq users. From a weighted average perspective, I bet they are best in class. 

  • http://twitter.com/seovectramind vectramind

    The team has done some great things and to compare their
    social discovery site with all of the other Internet Yellow Page and
    directory sites out their really isn’t fair to begin with. Good data will always useful for the best results on search engines.

  • http://www.SmallBusinessOnlineCoach.com Matthew Hunt

    Steven I missed this.  Awesome infographic.  We don’t see many on this topic. I’ll send you some link love on this one.

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