Basic digital business information should be easy to manage, but 71% of survey respondents report seeing inaccurate business information when searching for details about a retail store.

But retailers are not the only businesses facing this challenge. The study also analyzes restaurants, banks and more.

It may be a change in behavior, but people judge, share and select to purchase from businesses based on the information they share with consumers. The business profile provides information such as hours of operation, products sold, location and more. It also highlights reviews.  

The report, The State Of Retail 2019, analyzes a series of businesses. The study of 837 consumers and 288 retail businesses conducted by SurveyMonkey for marketing cloud company Synup found that more than 90% rely on content found in digital profiles on sites like Google Business, Yelp, Waze, and others to share information about the business and make purchases.

It also highlights an analysis of 165,000 U.S. businesses that identified five times the amount of direct consumer visits to a business’s digital profile compared to its website.

The challenge is that many consumers might not like what they find once they get there. About 77% place significant emphasis on a business’s visibility and accuracy across search media channels.

The analysis of nearly 560 stores across four major U.S. retail brands showed that half of their digital profiles were missing from the 50 media channels people use most, such as Google, Facebook, Bing, Foursquare, and Yelp.

When local stores did appear on Google, which owns the majority of online searches, they had a 52% error rate.

When consumers were asked whether they trust the accuracy when searching for information, 2% said the information is not at all accurate, while 3% said they think the information is extremely accurate, 12% said not it is not very accurate, about 35% think the information in very accurate, and 47% said it is moderately accurate.

An analysis by Synup of 17,000 retail bands in the U.S. found inaccurate information 69% of the time in business profiles on Google. Nearly 73% of retail bank profiles were missing from the 50 media channels that people use most. An analysis of more than 1,000 restaurants found a similar trend, with nearly 60% of their business information inaccurate on Google and 50% of their business profiles missing.

Some 71% also consider digital maps like Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps and Bing Maps to be important. About 35% also think voice search is critical, and more than 80% won’t choose a business with a rating of fewer than three stars on a review platform.