This Help Page explains what happens to business listings and information after someone has elected to not renew their Localworks subscription, and provides additional information on how Localworks integrates with various publishers in the Knowledge Network.

How Localworks integrates

Localworks has developed direct integrations with numerous publishers. Generally, these integrations leverage a public or private API (Application Programming Interface) hosted by the publisher. These APIs give our platform methods to programmatically create, update, and suppress listings within the publisher’s system.

When our platform calls these methods, we also pass credentials that let the publisher know the request comes from Localworks. This allows requests we make on a client’s behalf to receive special treatment, which can vary from publisher to publisher (e.g., more generous rate limiting or the ability to receive publisher analytics).

Publishers leverage multiple data sources

For publishers, being comprehensive can be just as important as being accurate. They want to make sure they have data for as many locations as possible so they can surface the best information to customers. While Localworks is often the single largest direct source of data for a publisher, there are other data sources like data aggregators that help publishers fill in the gaps and cover locations not managed by Localworks. When we send listing information to a publisher via API this is also a signal to ignore those other data sources for that listing, since data from Localworks comes directly on behalf of the business.

Cancellation behavior

When a business owner cancels their subscription to Localworks, we simply stop calling the publisher APIs on the business owner's behalf. For some publishers we do need to make one final call to tell them the listings are no longer managed through Localworks. This is a signal to stop sending Localworks analytics for these listings, remove the “Owner Verified” attribution logo, and allow someone other than Localworks to manage the listings.

We never send old data or attempt to revert listings. Beyond being a terrible business practice, doing this would jeopardize our relationship with publishers. Hurting a publisher’s data quality hurts their business. In the absence of Localworks or another provider with API integrations actively managing a listing, the data for each listing may change over time as the publisher relies more heavily on other non-direct data sources, including aggregators and crowdsourced user-generated content. Since each publisher takes a different approach, this will happen at a varied pace and could lead to disparity of data points from publisher to publisher.

The situation described above is the default state of how data changes over time within many publishers. In the absence of someone, like Localworks, explicitly keeping the data updated and accurate via a direct API integration, most publishers will look to a combination of third-party data sources in an attempt to stay up to date. Unfortunately, there is no one-time permanent fix for a listing.

Publisher nuances

Based on our knowledge of their systems, we know a handful of publishers store Localworks data separately from their other data sources. In these isolated cases, if Localworks is canceled, these publishers will stop looking at Localworks data and rely on their other data sources.

To help with this, Localworks now actively encourages publishers to continue using the final snapshot of our data post-cancellation. All listing data including rich content like photos and even duplicate suppression records can be used by publishers even after cancellation. This does not guarantee that publishers will continue using that content, however. The decision about what data or content to display after Localworks is removed from the equation will always remain up to the publisher itself.