I was doing my due diligence last week, reading up on the latest and greatest in Local Search when I came across an article about a cool app to put on my phone called foursquare. It’s a game / tracking tool that you can use to track where you’ve been, leave tips about places, and follow where your friends have been. As you use the app you unlock badges, little rewards to motivate users to use it more often.
The thing that drew me in is this article that Google is crawling foursquare for local citations. The way this site is set up is tailor made to improve your local search results. The “Add Venue” option requires businesses to provide their name, address, phone number and a cross street. Local search lives or dies by a businesses NAP (name, address, phone number), and this is a strong place to put it.
On top of that, it’s fun. The person with the highest amount of “check-ins” is declared the “mayor” of a place (I’m mayor of 2 currently) and you can compete with your friends, or track your results in comparison to the entire city you’re in.
I’m in the process of making sure that all my customers’ locations have been added to this site and I’m having fun in the process. What more can you ask for?