Implied intelligence an analytics firm just announced based on data, that Google has the most accurate local search data and beats all other local search providers in the UK comprehensively. Earlier they had declared similar reports about the US and it had announced that yellow pages sites like Superpages and Bing had better and wholesome data. However, as far as the United Kingdom is concerned it is Google that is at the top.
The methodology adopted for the test was immaculate and comprehensive. First Implied Intelligence created a sample size of 1400 local businesses. Needless to say each of these businesses had a website. All the listings were manually checked and the records like name, address, telephone numbers verified. Other details like working hours were also verified. The test did not include franchises and chain stores.
All local search directories were tested on various parameters and rated on a scale of 1 (worst) to 5 (best). Some of the aspects checked were
- Address errors
- Phone errors
- Number of duplicates
- Coverage record
- Accuracy re homepage URL
- Coverage re homepage URL
- Number of records with opening hours
- Number of records with additional information
In all the aspects Google stood out as the best and scored the highest. In terms of coverage it had 58.8 percent coverage while 192.com and Hotfrog were the next best. In terms of URL coverage the top three were Google, Yell/hibu and Bing respectively. The local search that did the worst in terms of inaccurate phone data was ‘The Phone Book’. In terms of richness of content, both reviews and check-ins, after Google were Yelp followed by Hotfrog.
Overall it can be safely stated that Google had the honors followed by Hotfrog, Bing, Yell, Scoot and so on.