Most local SEO statistics pages repeat the same consumer surveys. This one reports what happened to real submissions, taken from the delivery reports we send to customers. It answers questions nobody else publishes numbers for. How many business directory submissions are live when the work is delivered? Does that change with the size of the order? Which directories make you wait, and why do some submissions fail?
We build 25,000 to 40,000 citations a month, for local businesses and for the agencies that outsource their citation work to us. Agency orders go through the same team, the same process and the same report. This page draws on our delivery reports from October 2025 to October 2026.
Three things are easy to mix up, so they’re worth separating before the numbers:
- Submitted is not live. A directory can accept a submission and still hold it for review, verification or moderation.
- Pending is not rejected. A pending listing is waiting on the directory. Directories that review listings do it to every listing, not just yours.
- Live is not ranked. This data shows whether a listing page exists. It says nothing about search rankings, and we don’t make claims about them.
Key figures
- 90% of submissions to the business directories on our current list were live when the report was delivered. 2.5% were still pending and 7.5% failed. (In the reports that also record failures.)
- 92% to 97% were live at delivery at every order size, from orders of up to 160 submissions to orders of 451 or more.
- 75 business directories in the reports had nothing live at delivery, because they review every listing first. BBB, D&B and Hoovers are among them. 74 of the 75 are no longer in our standard list.
- 32% of failures were a directory website that was down. 15% were an old listing that couldn’t be claimed, 14% a directory that had stopped taking new listings and 13% a directory that had become paid-only.
Contents
- How many submissions are live at delivery
- The live rate at every order size
- Directories that review every listing
- Why submissions fail
- How our current directory list is built
- What this means when you order citations
- What “pending” means, and how long it lasts
- What this data doesn’t measure
- How we counted
- Download the data and cite this page
- FAQ
How many submissions are live at delivery
When we deliver an order, every submission in the report has one of three statuses: live (the listing page is public), pending (submitted and waiting on the directory), or failed (the directory couldn’t take the listing).
The figures below cover the business directories on our current standard list.
| Reports counted | Submissions | Live | Pending | Failed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reports that also record failures | 1,126 | 90.0% | 2.5% | 7.5% |
| All reports | 5,479 | 95.6% | 2.8% | see note |
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
Most of our reports list only live and pending listings, so failures are counted only in the reports that also list failed submissions. That’s why the first row is the one to quote: 90% live, 2.5% pending and 7.5% failed.
The live rate at every order size
A common worry is that bigger orders reach into slower or weaker directories. For the directories on our current list, the live rate at delivery barely moves with order size.
Live and pending at delivery, by order size
The small remainder of each bar is failed submissions.
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
| Order size (submissions in the report) | Business directory submissions | Live | Pending |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 160 | 337 | 96.1% | 2.1% |
| 161 to 260 | 1,293 | 95.7% | 2.6% |
| 261 to 450 | 2,960 | 96.7% | 2.3% |
| 451 or more | 889 | 91.9% | 5.1% |
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
The largest orders show a little more pending, because they include a few directories that review listings first. Everywhere else, more than 95% of submissions to these directories were live by delivery day.
Directories that review every listing
Across all the business directories in the reports with enough submissions to measure, 144 in all, directories behaved in one of two ways, with very few in between.
144 business directories, grouped by status at delivery
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
| Group | Directories | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Usually live at delivery | 61 | 90% or more of submissions were live by the time we delivered the report. |
| Usually pending at delivery | 75 | 5% or fewer were live. Nearly every submission was still waiting on the directory. |
| Mixed | 8 | Somewhere in between, usually because of occasional failures or a review step on some listings. |
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
The second group includes some of the best-known names. Being pending at delivery doesn’t make a directory worse. It means it reviews listings before publishing them, and that review takes longer than an order does. Because a report full of pending listings tells a customer very little on delivery day, 74 of these 75 directories are no longer in our standard list.
Examples: usually pending at delivery
| Directory | Submissions | Pending at delivery |
|---|---|---|
| D&B (dnb.com) | 128 | 100% |
| Hoovers | 124 | 100% |
| GoLocal247 | 113 | 98.2% |
| 411.info | 110 | 100% |
| Opendi | 104 | 96.2% |
| BBB | 103 | 100% |
| MisterWhat | 93 | 100% |
| Three Best Rated | 82 | 100% |
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
Examples: usually live at delivery, and on our current list
| Directory | Submissions | Live at delivery |
|---|---|---|
| Hotfrog | 150 | 100% |
| Brownbook | 172 | 98.8% |
| MerchantCircle | 129 | 97.7% |
| EZlocal | 107 | 95.3% |
| Manta | 115 | 94.8% |
| Storeboard | 87 | 94.3% |
| Cybo | 119 | 94.1% |
| Hubbiz | 73 | 100% |
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
On our list, but not always live on day one
Five directories on our current list sit in the mixed group. Either they hold some listings for review, or they fail often enough to pull the live rate down.
| Directory | Submissions | Live | Pending | Failed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local-Biz.Directory | 44 | 88.6% | 0% | 11.4% |
| n49 | 78 | 85.9% | 2.6% | 11.5% |
| CitySquares | 140 | 83.6% | 13.6% | 2.9% |
| Bizidex | 148 | 79.7% | 20.3% | 0% |
| Foursquare | 79 | 65.8% | 26.6% | 7.6% |
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
Why submissions fail
Failures at the directories on our current list were uncommon: 87 recorded failures in the reports that track them. Here is why they happened.
| Reason | Share of failures |
|---|---|
| Directory website down or domain expired | 32.2% |
| An existing listing couldn’t be claimed or edited | 14.9% |
| Directory not taking new listings (registration closed or unavailable) | 13.8% |
| Directory became paid-only, or takes listings only through a paid data network | 12.6% |
| Confirmation email or code never arrived | 8.0% |
| No reason recorded | 8.0% |
| Business details, category or location not accepted | 4.6% |
| Other (verification required, listing removed, other) | 5.7% |
Source: LocalCitationServices.com delivery reports, Oct 2025 to Oct 2026. See How we counted.
More than half of failures (website down, registration closed, paid-only) had nothing to do with the business being listed. Directories go offline, stop taking listings, or start charging. That’s why we keep changing the list, and why a directory list from even two years ago is partly out of date.
The failure a business can do something about is the old listing that can’t be claimed. That usually means a listing under a previous owner’s account or an old email. Finding and dealing with those is the job of a citation cleanup, before new listings go in.
How our current directory list is built
The numbers above are measured. This section describes the list itself, so it’s our design, not a result.
- Our current standard US list has 688 sites. 582 normally publish a listing without a review step. 106 review listings first.
- Packages up to 200 citations use only sites that normally publish without review. The 350 package includes a handful that review first, and the 600 package includes more.
- The list is reviewed as directories close, stop taking listings or become paid-only, which is what the failure table above shows happening.
What this means when you order citations
- Expect most of the report to be live on delivery day. On our current list, more than 9 in 10 submissions were live by delivery at every order size.
- Read the pending lines, and check them again later. Pending listings are waiting on the directory. Our team’s estimate is that a typical directory takes about 60 days to publish one. Your report lists every pending submission, so it doubles as a checklist.
- Watch for verification that only you can finish. Some directories send a code by phone call, text or postcard to the business itself. If nobody completes it, the listing stays pending.
- Deal with old listings before adding new ones. An old listing that can’t be claimed was the second most common reason a submission failed. A cleanup first finds those, so the new listings don’t end up next to old ones.
- Don’t judge a directory by day one. BBB, D&B and Hoovers had nothing live at delivery in our data, because they review every listing. Day-one status says how a directory works, not whether it’s worth being on.
What “pending” means, and how long it lasts
A pending listing has been submitted and is waiting on the directory. Depending on the directory, it’s waiting for one of these:
- a moderator to review it
- a verification step that only the business can complete, such as a phone call, a text or a postcard
- an email confirmation
Our reports don’t record the date a listing went live, so this data can’t measure how long pending lasts. Our team’s estimate is that a typical directory takes about 60 days to publish a listing. Treat that as an estimate, not a measured figure.
What this data doesn’t measure
- Rankings. Nothing here says whether a listing affects how a business shows up in search.
- Indexing. A live listing page is public. Whether a search engine has indexed it is a separate question.
- What happens after delivery. Each status is a snapshot on the day the report was delivered.
- All businesses. These are our customers’ orders, mostly US businesses. They aren’t a random sample of every local business.
How we counted
- Why a sample: every delivery report holds client logins and contact details, which had to be removed by hand before counting. For this edition we took 195 recent reports, about 1 in every 12 to 25 orders from the period. The next edition will use more.
- Source: the delivery reports for those 195 orders, with all business names, addresses, phone numbers, logins and URLs removed before counting.
- Period: 193 of the 195 reports are dated October 2025 to October 2026.
- Directories: a business directory here means a site whose main purpose is listing businesses. Orders also include other kinds of listing sites, which aren’t covered here.
- Why these directories: a live rate based on a handful of submissions isn’t reliable, so a directory needed 30 or more submissions in the sample to be counted. 144 business directories met that. The live-rate, order-size and failure figures use the 59 of them on our current standard list. The rest of the list is newer or used less often, and will be counted as the sample grows. The “review every listing” section uses all 144.
- Counts: 5,479 submissions to the 59 directories on our current list, across all reports. 1,126 of them are in the 34 reports that also record failures.
- Statuses: taken as written in each report. “Live”, “Lives”, “Active” and “Listing approved” count as live. “Pending” and “Listing pending” count as pending. Failed submissions come from the separate Failed sheets.
- Failures: 34 of the 195 reports include a Failed sheet. Failure rates and reasons come only from those. Reasons were grouped from the notes in those sheets.
- Order size: the number of submissions in the report.
- Groups: “usually live” means 90% or more of a directory’s submissions were live at delivery. “Usually pending” means 5% or fewer were.
- Country: at least 129 reports are for US businesses and at least 13 for Canadian ones. The rest can’t be told apart from the reports.
- Who counted: the LocalCitationServices.com team. We sell citation building and cleanup, so we have an interest in this topic. That’s why the raw counts are published for anyone to check.
Download the data and cite this page
Download the data (CSV): one row per directory (144 rows), with submissions, live, pending and failed counts and percentages, and whether the directory is on our current standard list. Free to use with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0).
Cite this page
LocalCitationServices.com, “Local Citation Statistics: What Happens After You Submit to a Business Directory,” updated October 2026, https://localcitationservices.com/local-citation-statistics
Update log: October 2026: first edition.
Local citation statistics FAQ
What percentage of directory submissions go live?
For the business directories on our current list, 90% of submissions were live when the order was delivered, 2.5% were still pending and 7.5% had failed, in the reports that record failures. Pending listings are waiting on the directory, and many go live afterward. The data doesn’t follow them past delivery.
Do bigger citation orders have a lower live rate?
Not much, on our current list. Between 92% and 97% of submissions were live at delivery at every order size. The largest orders show a little more pending, because they include a few directories that review listings first.
Why are some listings pending for so long?
Because some directories review every listing before publishing it. In our data, 75 business directories had essentially every submission still pending at delivery, including BBB, D&B and Hoovers. That’s the directory’s process, not a problem with the listing.
Why do directory submissions fail?
Mostly for reasons outside the business’s control. Of 87 failures at the directories on our current list, 32% were a website that was down, 14% a directory that had stopped taking new listings and 13% a directory that had become paid-only. The one common fixable cause is an old listing that can’t be claimed, which is a cleanup job.
Want these numbers for your own business?
Find out which of your listings are wrong or missing with a citation audit, or let us build your listings by hand, from 15 to 600 citations.