In Canada the federal government, in the form of Industry Canada, provides a relatively good business directory. It has a straight forward process with no sales people contacting to upsell you. Its free business directory has a many options to customize your listing, including website URL and product / service listings. While it may not use the latest CSS techniques, the site is functional. Most important, however, it servers as a primary source of business listings for many third parties. Therefore registering with Industry Canada can get you many downstream citations.

How to register

Go to https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/imbs/ccc/rgstrtn/lgn.pub?lang=eng and create an Industry Canada account. Once registered you can login to create and manage multiple businesses.

Choose your profile; basic, procurement or promotional.

Profile name and description

Time

Basic Profile   (Mandatory)

This is the quickest and easiest way to add your company to the Canadian Company Capabilities database and increase your company’s visibility.

  • It provides basic information on your company, its products and services.
 5 – 10 minutes

Procurement Profile   (Optional)

Include information to make your profile better attuned to the needs of procurement professionals.

  • Add information such as the size of your firm, year established, quality certifications and your company’s technology profile.
  • Provide industry codes that define your company’s products and services within standard industrial and product classification systems.
  • Identify your current and planned export markets.
  • Identify your interests in joint ventures, sharing expertise, product licensing, joint marketing, technology transfer, R&D and co-development.
 10 – 30 minutes

Promotional Profile

Market your company’s successes and capabilities.

  • Provide examples of your successes, your unique capabilities, your major clients and your experience on international projects.
  • Add your company logo to your profile.
 10 – 30 minutes

Fill out the forms by entering your company information. Be sure to include your website address!

The information then goes to Industry Canada for an approval. I assume they validate the business against CRA data. This part isn’t clear, however it hasn’t been a problem for us.

When its approved you get a profile, e.g. Hunch Manifest Inc

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Mark van Berkel
http://hunch.wpengine.com
Mark van Berkel is Founder and President of Hunch Manifest Inc. While managing business operations he also leads the team in designing semantic technology to provide personalized online presence and reputation management services. Prior to forming the company, he was consultant in enterprise software projects to companies including Panasonic, Shell, and General Electric and was an Architect for a world leading human capital management software-as-a-service. Mark holds a Bachelor of Information Systems from StFX University and did his graduate studies at University of Toronto, getting a MEng Industrial Information Engineering and an MBA, Strategy and Innovation from the Rotman School of Management. In 2006 he published a 170 page report as a researcher at the Semantic Technologies Lab at the University of Toronto and built a semantic technology prototype for SAP Research Labs. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn or Twitter. Mark is also certified in Google Analytics.
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