Do you remember the Yellow Pages? That big thick book that used to be delivered to homes and businesses in countries all over the world? They are still around, but in much smaller numbers, and most people either throw them out if they do receive one (or use it as a doorstop or something similar)
Why? Because people use the web to find what they are looking for these days. And the web utilized Local SEO citations to assist in delivering that data to them. In a nutshell, a local SEO citation or local business citation (the two are essentially the same thing) is any listing that contains (at a minimum) a business’ name, address and phone number. Google and other search engines depend heavily on what are referred to as citation sites to discover local businesses to incorporate in their results.
When it comes to directories and citation sites, they go out and scuffle business data from the web – in huge quantities. They then take out business information into their database and communicate it with the world. Google My Business, Yelp, Foursquare, Trustpilot, Merchant Circle, CitySearch – they’re all examples of citation sites. And those are just a few of the big ones, there are many more.