Findings · 2026-09-25 · By VSNARY | Emmanuel Orta · 1 view

Google's Maps stack names two US business-data suppliers. You can check one of them in a minute.

The recovered 793-name provider list has no Yelp. It has Data Axle, under two old names, and Acxiom. What that list is, why a server cannot read Data Axle's search, how to check and fix your own record, and what nine businesses showed.

Corrections, 2026-09-25: Acxiom is also a named US supplier (our 2026-09-23 guide said Data Axle was the only one). The add route is now stated as observed, not as policy. This post merges and replaces the 2026-09-23 guide and findings post; both old addresses redirect here.

The recovered provider list has 793 names and no Yelp. It has Data Axle, under two old names, and Acxiom. This is what that list is, what Data Axle's search returns, why a server cannot read it, how to check and fix your own record, and what nine businesses showed when we did.

What the list is, and what it is not #

In August 2026 RESONEO recovered a Google binary carrying a non-public scope of Geostore, the repository behind every place in Google Maps, and published 10,936 declarations as a searchable archive (think.resoneo.com). One of them, DataSourceProvider.Provider, lists every source a fact about a place can come from. We extracted all 793 entries. Every name below can be searched verbatim in the public archive.

enum DataSourceProvider.Provider   // 793 values, 72 deprecated
  ...
  INFOUSA
  INFOGROUP
  ACXIOM
  ...
  PARTNER_FRONT_END             // the owner's own profile
  GOOGLE_LOCAL_WEB_EXTRACTION   // Google reading your site
  ...

Excerpt, not contiguous: the names are verbatim, the order and comments are ours.

It is vocabulary, not a weight table. Names were recovered; the fields holding weights were not. Seventy-two entries are marked deprecated, and an entry being present does not prove it is populated today. Absence is a string search, so a name spelled in a way we did not search for would be missed.

"Other" is the remainder after the named groups; we did not classify it entry by entry. Searched and absent: Yelp, Foursquare, Yext, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Facebook, BBB, TripAdvisor, Angi, Thumbtack, Houzz, Nextdoor. The full extraction is in the post that extracted it.

The commercial feeds on it #

Eight names are commercial business-data feeds. Two of them are the same US company: INFOUSA and INFOGROUP, the names Data Axle traded under from 1998 and 2008 before rebranding in 2020 (Wikipedia). A second US supplier is also there: ACXIOM. Our earlier guide said Data Axle was the only one. That was wrong, and this replaces it.

So the defensible sentence is narrower than the one we first wrote: of the two US business-data suppliers Google's schema names, Data Axle is the one a business owner can check themselves, free, from a browser.

Why a scanner cannot read it #

Data Axle answers every datacenter address with HTTP 403 and a ten-byte body: Forbidden. It is address reputation, not the user-agent: from one clean address, a Chrome string and an Apps Script string both got the page; from a datacenter address the same Chrome string got the 403. A relay on Google's own infrastructure did not help, because Google's egress is datacenter too.

Refusals took 1.2 s when quick and 8,214 ms at worst; the browser got its answer in about a second.

FROM A DATACENTER
GET /search?phone=3035550100
Host: local-listings.data-axle.com

HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Content-Length: 10

Forbidden

FROM A RESIDENTIAL BROWSER
GET /search?phone=3035550100
Host: local-listings.data-axle.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

<!-- the search page: a listing card, or the no-match page -->

Simplified: path and phone are illustrative (a 555 number); the status and the ten-byte body are as recorded; other headers omitted.

A scanner that reports "not listed" after a 403 is reporting its own limit as your absence. Ours records three outcomes, never two: found, absent (the directory's own no-match page), and unreached (our limit). The CrawlCheck extension closes the gap by fetching the page from your browser and handing us the raw bytes; we parse them ourselves, mark the row owner-browser with the date, and keep it seven days. The browser is never asked whether you are listed.

Check your record #

Search by phone, not name. Names drift between legal, trading and abbreviated forms; ten digits do not. Use the number your site declares in its structured data, because that is the one Google has already read from you.

Or use the listing check: type the phone your site declares, and it strips it to ten digits and opens Data Axle's search in your own browser.

Claim, correct, or add #

Claim and correct need a record that exists. Create the free account from the listing card, verify, and edit. One to ten locations cost nothing; updates are unlimited (Data Axle).

Adding a missing record is where our first guide contradicted itself, so here is exactly what we know. Data Axle's site links "List your business" to the same search, and its bulk product defines an Add submission type (Data Axle docs). When we emailed on 2026-09-23 asking to add eight businesses at once, the content team replied that multi-business requests are not accepted from a free email address, that new records go through (888) 274-5478 one location per call, and that this route adds storefronts only. That was a bulk request from an agency; a single owner may be offered the self-serve add.

1. Create the account and look for an add option first.
2. If there is none, call (888) 274-5478 for one location.
3. A service-area business with no public address should expect a no. That is the rule their content team stated.
4. New records go through phone and manual verification; allow up to two weeks (Data Axle docs).

From Data Axle's documentation. We have not measured when a change first shows in the public search.

Nine businesses, and the method #

The first run was the portfolio the scanner was built against: nine service and retail businesses in the Denver area, each declaring a phone in structured data. Data Axle held one. The one was correct, name and street address both matching the site. The other eight got the no-match page. None was unreached.

Method. Phone read from each site's JSON-LD. Search page fetched from the owner's residential Chrome via the extension. Raw HTML stored and parsed server-side with the same reader used for every directory. Found requires a name and address on the card; absent requires Data Axle's own no-match string. Anything else is unreached.

Limits. Nine sites, one agency, one metro, one day. That is a finding about this portfolio, not a rate for US businesses. It is why the row is reported, not scored: it moves no grade until owner-browser readings from other portfolios give a base rate. Every new filing extends the sample; we will publish the count with its date when it passes 100.

The other aggregators #

The local-SEO trade calls four companies the major aggregators. Two are in Google's enum. None of that makes the other two worthless; they feed Apple, Bing and apps. It makes the first two checkable against Google's own vocabulary.

What to keep consistent #

The recovered schema keeps provenance per field and merges by priority: the first admissible value wins. Sources do not vote. A stale feed with priority can beat yesterday's edit, which is why one wrong supplier record keeps coming back. The fix is the same facts in every place a supplier reads.

The scanner checks the first two columns against each other on every scan. The share of scans that find a directory listing the site under details it never declared (NAP_UNDECLARED_LISTING), read when this page loaded:

What this does not prove #

• That a Data Axle listing ranks you. Nothing recovered shows a weight.
• That Google reads the Data Axle feed today. The entry is not marked deprecated; that is all.
• That the eight absent businesses are invisible. Google also reads their sites and their own profiles.
• That Yelp or Foursquare do nothing. They are pages people read, and pages Google crawls. They are not named as providers.

Not yet measured:

• Whether an owner can check or correct a record through Acxiom.
• Whether a single owner with a free account is offered a self-serve add.
• How often a rotating cloud address gets through.
• Any portfolio beyond the first nine sites.
• How long a change takes to show in the public search.

What it does prove is narrow and checkable: a supplier Google's own schema names either has your record, has it wrong, or does not have it, and you can find out which in a minute.

Changelog and sources #

Primary archive: RESONEO, Google Map dissected. Data Axle: Local Listings, Premium FAQ. Google: how Business Profile information is sourced. Aggregators: BrightLocal, LocalRankUp.

Questions this post answers

Is Data Axle the only aggregator in Google's provider list?

No. Two US suppliers are named: Data Axle (as INFOUSA and INFOGROUP) and Acxiom. Data Axle is the one with a free self-serve search.

How do I check whether my business is in Data Axle?

Search local-listings.data-axle.com by your ten-digit phone from a normal browser. A card means a record exists; the no-match page means none does.

Is it free?

Yes, for one to ten locations: search, claim and unlimited updates. Paid tiers start above ten.

Can I add a missing listing myself?

Try the free account first. For our bulk request Data Axle said to call (888) 274-5478, one storefront per call.

Why did the search return a 403?

You were on a datacenter address: a VPN, a cloud desktop, a server. Data Axle refuses those. Use a home or office connection.

Does being in Data Axle improve rankings?

No measurement shows that. It closes one checkable gap in a named supplier's record.

Related findings

Comments

Comments are read before they appear. Nothing is published automatically, and no account is needed.

Writing about this? Facts, live figures and marks — every number on that page is dated and traceable to a scan.

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