Find Out What Happened to Our Rankings When we Used the CID URL in our Citations

Hey, it’s Chaz here and a few months ago I saw someone suggest a spin-off of a strategy that I was already employing to successfully move the needle with local map rankings. I was seeing consistent results by linking to and referencing a GMB listing’s CID URL using mediums like local press releases, branded web 2.0 links, and Google Stacks to connect the various brand profiles and pages to the GMB listing.

So when I saw a recommendation that people link to the CID URL in their brand citations, instead of the brand’s website, I was intrigued. I was also somewhat hesitant because I was unsure whether the website used in these citations being different to that linked to the GMB listing (or previously mentioned and linked in unstructured press release citations) would actually hurt the listings by causing “bad data” to be associated with the brand.

Understanding the CID

Before we get into the setup and results of the test, I think it’s important to quickly explore what the CID URL actually is and what those strings of numbers represent, as well as why they are so important to your GMB listing.

CID stands for Cluster Document Identifier. The act of clustering your documents during information retrieval allows a database to quickly reference an entire corpus or set of pages using only a unique numerical identifier. What this means is, as Google’s engine is out discovering new mentions for your entity (these new mentions ARE your documents), the engine is also assigning these documents to a particular local entity via the cluster document identifier. These documents help make up part of the local ranking factor and the CID URL is a direct representation of your entity in the local search engine and the entire collection of documents (and the weight of those documents) for the entity.

Because part of the cluster document process involves selecting and assigning credit to the correct entity for each discovered document, we can see how the concept of linking to that URL within a document could make it easier for the local engine to assign the document to the correct entity. And yes, this is actually a very serious issue, as well as being the entire reason people preach about the importance of clean data and a consistent NAP for local SEO! If Google is confused as to which entity to assign a document to (aka a citation or brand profile), you might not get credit, nor any corresponding ranking boost from that document.

Where to Find Your CID URL

If you want to start link building to your GMB CID URL, check out this short three-minute video detailing three quick methods of finding your CID URL.

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The Test Set-Up

We began our test on June 10, 2019, by selecting four Google My Business listings that had minimal optimization completed.

Specifically, the four test listings had the following tasks completed:

All four listings had a premium local press release published on February 1st, 2019.
All four had new websites built. The dates being:
1. Test Site #1 live 5/30
2. Test Site #2 live 4/3
3. Test Site #3 live 5/31
4. Test Site #4 live 3/26.

There was no other SEO or optimization completed on these listings, so I feel we started all of our tests from a very similar launch point.

Our local citation building team started the test by building a similar set of essential and secondary citations and GPS listings for each of the subject listings. We built 60 Essential Citations (top-level listings), 5 GPS listings, and 50 secondary citations.

We double-indexed all the citations using paid indexing services: Bulk Add URL and Index Inject. Indexation was dripped out for 7 days to help prevent a flood of signals being indexed too quickly, which we suspect can, in certain instances, trigger a local spam filter.

Click to See the Exact List of Citations Created for the Test

The exact list of citations and mapping profiles we built were:

60 Essential Citations

Yelp

Issuu

Mapquest

Foursquare

Angieslist

YellowPages

Merchantcircle

City-data

YellowPageCity

BizCommunity

ChamberOfCommerce

Brownbook

Hotfrog

Ezlocal

Communitywalk

Elocal

iBegin

Citysquares

Ebusinesspages

Tupalo

YelloYello

Parkbench

Cybo

Agreatertown

HubBiz

Callupcontact

Opendi

Tuugo

Enrollbusiness

iGlobal

Cataloxy

Find-us-here

Bizhwy

Lekkoo

Bubblelife

Myhuckleberry

Pininthemap

Gomylocal

Wherezit

Cityfos

A-ZBusinessFinder

Place123

FreeBusinessDirectory

Fonolive

BusinessRater

USA-YellowPagesOnline

Uservoice

Business

Thomasnet

us.justdial

Justpaste

Worldweb

Penzu

Yellowone

n49

CityOf

Storeboard

Gust

Askmap

5 GPS Listings

TomTom

Here

Batchgeo

Zeemaps

Where2go

50 Secondary Citations

City-map

Referralkey

Classifiedads

TopDesignFirms

Shopinusa

Macraesbluebook

Equitynet

Bizvotes

EveryMerchant

Findmeglutenfree

Faversham

Searchmonster

Expatriates

Usnetads

Addocker

Go4worldbusiness

LogisticsWorld

Wadline

lasr

Makeitlocal

Teleadreson

Tradeford

Wand

TheHall

Travelful

Hot-Web-Ads

Infignos

Finditguide

Directoryup

NearFinderUS

LocalSolution

Jobshop

Usplaces

Supplyfx

Usaonlineclassifieds

4mark

411

Bizearch.com

VeryGoodService

MyLaborJob

Oscarpages

n2local

USBusinessDirectoryListings

Americantowns

Biznet

UseMyBusiness

MyLocalBusinessDirectory

LocalBusinessListing

Bblocal

Fslocal

Day 20 Results

Test Listing #1 started to show great results late into the test but then suddenly tanked just a few days later, losing most of the rankings for some great “near me” keywords it had picked up. From where we started, the progress can be seen as an overall negative result since we actually lost 3 keywords and gained only 1 compared to our beginning position. We are continuing to monitor this test and will update this post in the event that rankings recover or we lose additional keywords.

Test Listing #2 produced very positive results very quickly. Of all the tests in this post, this listing responded quickest, acquiring very nice rankings for some top near me and non-location modified keywords. Surprisingly, we do not typically see this level of performance from most citation campaigns, so it is well worth noting that these gains were exceptionally good.

Test Listing #3 is the turtle of the batch. While this listing is experiencing positive movement, it is doing so very slowly. From where we started, we have gained two very strong near me terms, but have lost one city modified term. In a low competition niche, we would have expected quicker positive movement and more of it. So while the gains here have been quite positive, the overall lack of result volume has led us to call this one a neutral result.

Test Listing #4 is another winner. Overall, this listing has experienced very solid gains; even capturing the Google Map 3 Pack rankings for a few of the better near me search terms and several of the main city modified terms we tracked.

The Wrap-Up and Next Steps

You might think that we’ve confirmed a winning strategy from our test results, but I am going to recommend caution and further testing going forward. While it’s true that our positive test results outweigh the negative results by 2:1 (a very solid margin in SEO tests), I still feel we need to watch the SERPs and monitor our test listings for an additional two weeks before being able to firmly say that replacing the brand website URL with the CID URL on citations produces clearly positive results. Remember, we’re still watching Test Listing #1’s recent and precipitous drop and monitoring results for any signs of long term implications caused by adding the Cluster Doc Identifier URL to the citations.

Testing the implications of the CID URL in citation building isn’t the end of this test. My next step will be to begin building the backlink graphs for some of these CID citations using a mix of brand, CID, and keyword anchors on the second tier. To do this, I will be using our affordable private network links in an effort to test what happens when I boost these brand properties containing Cluster Doc Identifier URLs.

What I can say, with more confidence than ever before, is that generally speaking, linking to your GMB CID URL results in positive local map rankings.