I wanted to know whether Albertsons was still open, so I did a Google Search. Here are the results:
As you can see, Google saw that my search query had local intent, since I have a city name and state. And you can see they picked the two nearest Albertsons locations. So far, Albertson’s is 1 of 1.
I call the phone number on their listing and got the number not found or has been disconnected message. Ooops– someone at Albertsons is not keeping their local listings up to date. Score: 1 for 2.
So I click on the link for their listing and it takes me to this page:
This is their store locator page, not the individual listing that I’d expect to see with the store map, locations, hours, items carried, and so forth. Score: 1 for 3.
Okay, well I’m already here, so let me put in my zip code of 80234, which is Westminster, Colorado– which should give me the nearest stores, right? After all the url is locator.albertsons.com/StoreLocatorAction. And here is what comes back:
That’s it– no store listings, navigation menu that lets me go to the albertson’s home page, nothing. The message says there’s a store in my area, but it seems that Albertsons is not interested in telling me where it actually is. If you click on the link they provide, asking you to view their press release, it goes to this page:
Whoa– I suppose it’s interesting that 3 years ago, Cerberus Capital Management bought out all the Albertsons stores. But really, I wanted to know if I could do some late night grocery shopping. How bizarre! There is a link back to the store locator page, but I decided not to go through that same series of hoops again.
Folks, this is what happens when you don’t take care to manage your local listings.
- Have you made sure that your company locations are properly being submitted to Google, Yahoo, Bing, InfoUSA, Acxiom, and the 200+ other directories out there?
- Are you sure that the information is accurate and up to date, whether you have one location or 5,000?
- Do you take full advantage of what the search engines provide you with– to also input pictures, videos, reviews, rich descriptions, and even coupons? It’s free, you know.
- Do you have a process to regularly monitor these listings so that you can add, update, and delete the locations that you have?
In audits, we often see over 40% of local listings with inaccurate data– that’s a lot of people you are denying to your stores. Let us run an audit for your locations and you might be shocked. Contact Eric.Evans@blitzlocal.com if you want an assessment, by the way.
We estimate that it would take you 30 hours to go claim and verify a listing for a single location across the top 20 sites. The manual process of doing this is painstaking– you have to confirm a PIN sent via phone or postcard or respond to a phone call from a verification company weeks later. The odds of getting it right are low. Now multiply that 40 hours per location times however many locations you have– then you have an approximate cost to do it yourself. If you do want to do it yourself, let us know and we’ll send you our guide on how to do so.
But if you’d like an audit, we have special pricing through the end of the year for $3 per location if you have over 100 locations. We handle this entire process for you. Else, it’s just $10 per month per location you have– and that includes the submission, verification process, as well as reporting back on how many listings made it through. It’s also month-to-month, in case you aren’t happy with the measurable results we provide.
Somebody should call Albertsons and tell them about this.
Google placed in beta yesterday a new service to create 
