FreeSearch engine + public recordsAbout 45 min

Look People Up Before You Publish Them

Before a business goes live in your directory, look it up. Find its real website, its license record and its public profiles. Write down what you found.

This lesson has a paid link. We earn a commission if you buy through it, at no extra cost to you. You can finish the step without it. How we handle paid links.

By Anthony Limpert, founder of Clickflame

Why This Matters

A bare name, address and phone number adds nothing Google does not already have. Batches of those pages are thin, and Google's spam policies target pages made in bulk with little value. Worse, you can publish a business that closed or has a wrong number, and a buyer calls it.

✓ How To Do It

Pull the next ten businesses from your sheet. Do ten at a time, not ten thousand.
Search the exact name and city. Open the business site. Confirm the address and phone match. Note if the site is dead or the business looks closed.
Check the state license board for trades that need a license. Link to the board record itself. If you find no record, do not write that the business is licensed.
Look for public profiles the owner made, such as a map profile or trade group page. Link to them only when they are clearly the same business.
Write two or three true sentences from what you found. Say what they do, how long the site or profile shows them operating, and what area they serve. Use only what a source says.
Fill the checked on date. If you could not confirm the business is open, mark the record hold and do not publish.
Use your own photos or ones the owner gave you rights to. Never copy a logo or photo from their site without permission.
Never log in to anything to copy data out of it. If a site blocks automated visits or its terms forbid collecting, leave it alone.
Publish only the records that pass. Thin ones wait in the sheet until someone looks them up.

Done WhenTen looked up listings, each with a checked on date, a source link and two true sentences, and a hold list for the rest.

Reference List

Sources

Google spam policies

Optional Paid Shortcut

Bright Data can collect public web pages at a scale hand checking cannot reach. You would not need it for a few dozen listings, where opening each site yourself is faster and easier to explain.

Try Bright Data

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Not needed to finish this step.

Tips & Pitfalls

If a lookup turns up nothing, that is a result. Hold the record.
Hours and phone numbers change. Recheck old listings on a schedule.
Check each source's terms before you reuse anything. Save the date you read them.

Done with this step? Mark it complete to track your campaign progress.