Superpages.com has more accurate and detailed business listings than Google Maps
Don’t take our word for it. An independent market data company recently completed a test of the accuracy and completeness of business listing data on the following local search sites:
- Bing Maps
- Citysearch
- Dexknows
- Foursquare
- Google Maps
- Mapquest
- Superpages
- Yellowpages.com (YP.com)
- Yelp
The test was conducted independently by Implied Intelligence which provides a range of data-related services (e.g., enhancement, cleansing, de-duplication) to marketers and publishers. They crawled and hand-checked 1,000 independent local business websites in the US (no chains or franchises were included in the test) and compared the information it captured.
The Criteria and the Surprising Findings
In an article on Search Engine Land, Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence reported that Implied Intelligence evaluated and scored the local search competitors on the basis of the following criteria:
- Coverage (was the listing present?)
- Number of duplicates
- Accuracy of information
- Richness of information (presence of additional information beyond business name, address and phone)
Superpages.com the overall winner
Overall Superpages.com was the winner for total scores in accuracy and completeness, followed by YP.com with Google Maps coming in third. Foursquare was the overall loser, however Yelp also didn’t fare that well. Tables courtesy of Greg Sterling 
The table below offers a comparison among these sites in terms of basic listings coverage and accuracy. The yellow highlighting indicates the high score in each category. 
- Google Maps had the most complete coverage: 80 percent of the 1,000 local listings were present.
- Superpages.com had the fewest errors.
- YP.com had the fewest duplicate listings.
- No site had 100 percent of the 1,000 listings.
- Foursquare had the worst coverage at only 16.7 percent.
The table below shows the scores on enhanced information. YP.com had the highest scores with Superpages.com in second place. Reviews and check-in data were not considered because Implied Intelligence felt this didn’t allow for an “apples to apples” comparison across sites. However, had reviews content been included Yelp, Google and Foursquare would likely have fared better. 
