Attendees also asked which data sources were the
most authoritative for local business listings -- be it their own submissions, third-party data feeds, user reviews, or other sources -- and Stein said the business owners' own verified data always
ranked first. "A business owner's verified listing trumps all other sources in terms of fields displayed," he said. "The least authoritative is a single reference on an unverified web page. Everything
else is in between those two ends of the spectrum."
Stein also answered questions about Google's efforts to fight local and map spam, the LBC's seeming affinity for 800-numbers over local numbers, as well as queries from business owners outside the U.S.