Data Cleansing

In this guide you will learn more about the Data Cleansing process in Moz Local, what triggers it to restart, and what it means if you’re seeing a note that cleansing failed. For more information on how to update your location’s Profile, please see our Profile guide.

Quick Links

• Introduction to Data Cleansing in Moz Local
• What can I expect from the cleansing process?
• What causes the Data Cleansing process to be restarted?
• Why did my data cleanse fail?

When you purchase or update data for your Moz Local location we automatically perform an additional quality check. This process includes checking your business name, address, and phone number are properly formatted to be accepted by our partners. This is called data cleansing and it takes place to ensure your business information can be successfully submitted to our partner network. You’ll know if your location is being cleansed from the Cleansing in Progress panel on the Profile tab.

The data cleansing service is both an automated and manual review process to ensure that your location data is accurate and properly formatted to ensure successful submission to our data partner network. Cleansing starts automatically once your location has been purchased or updated, regardless of whether your location has been synced.

There is no need for you to take any action during the cleansing process. However, you can continue to add additional profile information, like photos and rich data, as prompted by the action items on the Dashboard tab. Please be aware that if you change your location's mandatory information, like location address, this can start the cleansing process again.

We do push data to the majority our partners while data cleansing is in progress so your location data will start updating right away. However, please note, some partners do not accept new/updated data until it has completed the cleansing process at which time we will push that data to them to process.

When your data is cleansed, you may see formatting changes made to your business name or address. This is expected behavior and helps to ensure that your location data is accepted and updated by our partners.

Please note: That if you're updating your address in the Moz Local Profile tab, the tool will automatically perform a preliminary data cleansing/validation check. This process is in place to ensure that the most accurate address format is entered for maximal acceptance by each of our data partners. If the tool reverts your changes and/or updates the address format to something different when you save your edits, this means that our tool’s data cleansing process found a more optimal address format for that location.

Additionally, when certain fields in your location data are updated or changed, it can retrigger the data cleansing process. If you’ve had your Moz Local location for awhile and you’re now seeing a cleansing notice, this means you’ve updated one of the triggering fields.

If you update any of these triggering fields before the cleansing process is initially completed, this will also restart the cleansing process.

When cleansing is complete, you will see this noted in your profile just below Profile Completeness.

There are certain data fields available in Moz Local which, when updated or changed, relaunch the data cleansing process. If any of the fields below are updated, your location may show that it now has a cleansing in progress.

• Display Name
• House Number
• Street
• City
• Postal Code
• Country Code
• Website
• Short Description
• Long Description
• Brand Name
• Latitude
• Longitude

If you are seeing a notice in your location Profile that data cleansing has failed for your location, it means we were unable to recognize and/or verify details in your listing. Some common issues that can cause a location’s data cleanse to fail are:

• The incorrect latitude and longitude are associated with your location’s address
• The pin placement for your location is incorrect
• Address components which should be in the address line 2 are in address line 1 (like the suite number)
• There are unsupported characters in your business name or address.

You can read more about optimal location data formatting here.

If you’re still receiving an Unsuccessful Cleansing error and you’ve verified that the map pin is in the correct location and the address entered is correct, you can check the box stating I have verified the name and address details, the pin is correctly placed on the rooftop and then Save changes.

If you are still having trouble, please email help@moz.com with the following information:

• Full name, address, and phone number for the location that has failed cleansing
• A link to the Google Maps page (if applicable)
• A screenshot of the expected pin placement for your location