First, let us begin with the best of all original lists for Canadian citations, from David Mihm the well-known and respected LOCAL SEO expert, which can still be found here…. 

This list was the basis for our own listings, i.e. we very much liked that David had taken the time to look into our Canadian marketplace and give all of us Canadian SEO types a list to make our forays into the world of LOCAL search, so this is a solid beginning, eh!

Next, we added to that in our own blog posting here….back in November of last year, and those three additions are still solid citation performers as we’ve learned over the past 8 months for our own client listings. Dev Basu, another well known SEO practitioner who works out of  the Toronto area, also updated the listings for Canadian citations right here…and they too were added to our own master list which we’ve updated here for all you DIY Canadian SEO types, eh! 

Note too, that in our listing below we’ve found a few “new” ones to be added….so our own mid-year 2010 Canadian citations list now includes 28 working citations listings….here in Canada.

A note please on the layouts below which “do” include PageRank, Google’s proprietary ranking method on it’s own algo to measure the “value” of the link from each of these citation domains. As we’ve long ago learned that PR does NOT help in gaining you any serp traction, we do find — but as yet can’t truly correlate same — that PR does count it appears for LOCAL search linkjuice. We can not as yet “get” the value of that factor as it appears that for some of our clients, the juice from a PR of 8 does NOT get added to gain any more client channel traction…yet somehow a lower PR of 5 does! We don’t know why. We, like the rest of the SEO world, test and only believe empircal values…but that’s a whole other blog post, eh!

So here’s the latest list, our new Master Canadian citations listings for mid-year 2010!

Name	Citation	PageRank
YellowPages	YellowPages	8
BBB – Canada	BBB – Canada	8
Canpages	Canpages	7
411.ca	411.ca	7
Yelp.ca	Yelp.ca	7
WorldWeb	WorldWeb	7
CanadaOne	CanadaOne	6
Profile Canada	Profile Canada	6
Scott’s Info	Scott’s Info	6
WCities	WCities	6
WebLocal	WebLocal.ca	6
iBegin	iBegin	6
BELL Business	BELL	6
Found Locally	Found Locally	5
eSourceCanada	eSourceCanada	5
CanLinks	CanLinks	5
Canada Web Directory	Canada Web Directory	5
Shop In Canada	Shop In Canada	5
ZipLocal	ZipLocal	5
HotFrog	HotFrog.ca	5
Canadian Enviro	Canadian Environmental	5
Where.ca	Where.Ca	5
ZipLocal	Zip Local	5
YLM Canada	YLM Canada	5
N49	N49	4
CanadaDirect	CanadaDirect	4
BuyItCanada	BuyItCanada	4
Zoomit	ZoomIt	4

That’s pretty much, what we’ve found working here in google.ca land…we have succcessfully used them all, as shown, for various clients in many channels here in Canada and while we know that this list is a “working” list only….i.e. your own mileage may vary, we trust these enough to publish them here for all to see…and use! And if you DO find others, add them to the comment section here for us all to test against, if you will please? Would help all us SEO types, eh!

Yes, your ad dollars spent with the Yellow Pages folks have been busy lately and just yesterday, they went out and bought Canpages, our national local search and directories publisher!

The original Press Release notice is here for those of you who may want to dig to read it’s entirety…. and their fact sheet is here….

Prices noted for this sale were in the neighbourhood of $225 million dollars and the purchase included this quote –

“…Headquartered in Vancouver, Canpages publishes 84 directories for a total circulation of approximately 8 million copies. The company’s website, Canpages.ca, attracts more than 3.5 million unique visitors each month. Canpages generates annualized revenues of $110M, with an online contribution of approximately 23%. The company employs about 700 people in Canada, of which more than 450 are sales consultants…”

Now that’s an interesting quote, in that Canpages also has a deal that is a few weeks old, with PDC (Phone Directories Company) of Utah, to provide search data on a continental scale — and with them just being bought up by YPG….that both consolidates the data into one set of servers on a North American scale!

Hmmmm…you’re thinking, so how might that affect my own site and web traffic via SEO? Well, here’s our take on that issue….

Via the ownership of ZipLocal by CanPages also a bit ago it’s becoming apparent that as ZipLocal provides online local search services in Canada to connect buyers and local businesses (the company’s search sites include Zip411.net, redToronto.com, redMississauga.ca, 411 Canada.ca, and 411Canada.com) the consolidation is being distilled even more, in our view, eh?

Let’s face it, in our world, the yellow pages are dead. I have been asking family, friends, clients and many many more networked acquaintances, if they continue to use the yellow pages to find businesses…and the answers have ALL BEEN THE SAME! Not even once a month, does someone offer that they use same. Oh, there are the folks (me too!) who open up the yellow pages to the restaurant section to go through an ethnic menu listing (say for Thai food) that lists all kinds of dishes — but we order never from same, as we just use that list to find what we want and then order from our own local Thai delivery restaurant. Yellow page usage? Not any more…

Oh, and this just in too…that just last week, the YPG folks changed their logo — from the familar-now-for-decades one of the fingers walking over the top of the yellow pages themselves…to this new one with this quote too — “…YPG explained that the new logo removes the book in order to signal that the product is now multi-platform…” – i.e. the book is gone just like the dying model is too, eh!

 So if the yellow pages are dead….then what is the YPG doing about same — and here’s the angle to ponder!

They’re buying up as many digital indexes as they can. They know that paper is dead….so they’re moving into the digital world in a big way, consolidating indexes and trying to ensure that they will “still” be a major player for ad dollars in a decade….

Hence the purchase yesterday of the CanPages group and it’s new online oriented directories including not only our logo’d pix above, but what else it owns and operates at some of Canada’s leading properties and here’s only a partial list of their online directories, including ZipLocal,  YellowPages.ca™, Canada411.ca™, Auto Trader™(.ca), Home Trader™(.ca), and LesPAC.com.

And how big exactly is 411.ca, when it comes to online searches? Their latest stats show that 411.ca has close to 10% on online users generating 13 million queries for local Canadian businesses each month! They state quite clearly, that they are the most visited online LOCAL search engine in Canada, with over 2 million Canadians using their services to find more than 1.5 million LOCAL online business listings!

Now, that’s a claim that needs some notice, eh? Realizing that for most of us, that huge yellow paged book sits in a kitchen or office drawer, for the most part ignored by us all, online searches for businesses is the most efficient, real-time method to find a listing for a business you’re looking for at any given time.

We know that these listings come in many guises in the 411.ca directory, from basic free ones to full premiere listings for fees, we believe that if you run a business somewhere in Canada — you need to be on same!

Go to their “Add your Business” page and begin the process of getting that listing, to help your firm get “found” online….and remember, if new customers or clients can NOT find you, then you’re giving them the opportunity to find your competitors, eh!

Since then, both Dev Basu and I and a few others have updated that list with some more canadion-only directories to add to your normal listings, to help all of us involved in an SEO practice — but as of today (thanks Greg Sterling!) there is some news about one of the original citation sources on our lists — canpages.ca!

While it was pretty well known then that the firm had also just bought ziplocal.ca in about late June I think and as such there was only speculation as to what that might mean to us canuck SEO practitioners. Well, word’s out as of today!

Canpages.ca has just announced that they’ve struck a biz deal with PDC (Phone Directories Company) of Utah to become a major player in online directories on a continental scale! With now over 1400 employees and reach into more than 16 million homes, the new canpages.ca has experienced more than 400% growth with this one new deal. 2009 marked a string of firsts for canpages, including the launch of StreetScene on canpages.ca which provides views of Canadian cities and voice recognition search applications for the iPhone and Blackberry too. The Press Release on same is here… .

And over at ziplocal.com — a quick look/see over at ziplocal.com shows that yes, they now say “formerly pdcpages” and have the same Press Release available here too… Okay, so the purchase bears out and yes, we see that now, a canuck directory firm controls this new “merger” of US based directories….

But more than that, from my own point of view, is the “how and why” this deal will affect our clients’ SEO rankings and if there will be any new synergy through this new “leap” into the US marketplace with this merger tween the two firms business intelligence? I have my worries, of course, and yes I do realize that this is a novel step where a canuck directory firm gets into the US based search engine business via this company purchase…but I also do wonder as to how to leverage this for our clients sakes?

Going to canpages.ca and putting is a new listing is yes, still possbile today…but to see if that will rollout to US based geo-based searches is what’s really important, and until those questions are either answered or discovered by one of us SEO practitioners, we all await with baited breath, eh? To gain a link to that new continental directory, go here…

Go and get your free link, and then wait like the rest of us to see about just how “big” that link can become….and best of luck, canpages.ca…you will need it south of the border, eh…but methinks that this just might be the kind of “side-door” that may work for us all, eh!

So what’d I learn from that list? All are great lists, and yes, IMHO, some are better than others. First off, the yellowpages.ca is still very authoritative for use for rankings and as was pointed out by Andrew Shotland over at LOCALSeoGuide – click here to read same – and this will give you an idea on where the rankings come from and what the numbers are….you’ll need this to be able to tell which ones carry the bestest juice, eh!

So, nuff of setup, what spots do we want to add to that great list? Well, here they are!

1]. BELL — okay, I hear you, and yes “touting” our national telecommunications company up here in the #1 spot can be somewhat of a challenge to some who hate MaBell, but this is solid SEO, honest. The reg is pretty easy, the site gathers lots of searches especially by what I’d call the “old school” biz types…but this one does pass juice, eh!

2]. CanadaONE – this one is run by the folks over at canoe.ca, another large canuck business organization, but the reg is free and there are some synergy bonuses within that site too. Great ‘other’ content IMHO and this one passes juice too!

3]. Canadian Environmental Directories — if you’re in the ‘green’ space this is a long long scrolling list of various databases, directories and business listers. Why did I include this one here? Simple, really. This whole ‘green’ arena is pretty new, just getting started and for the most part I’ve no idea as to what kind of juice these will pass….but if you ARE in the ecology world, you should look some of these over!

And lastly for a great read by Mike Blumenthal, on exactly how and which online directories pass details TO Google MAPS — click here to read this definitive post! Great info there, eh!