Are Foursquare listings important for local businesses?

• I'm working with a small shopping center where most of the shops have very little web presence. While updating the shopping center's Foursquare page, I noticed that most of the shops within the center either don't have a listing or else it hasn't been updated in years.

  I also did a Google search for the main categories in the shopping center and never found a Foursquare result.

  My question is, should I suggest to the shops that they claim and update their listings or is this a waste of time?

Answer:

Foursquare is actually repositioning themselves as a data aggregator that provides business and company info to directories and websites that, in turn, publish the data for consumer access.

As such it won't provide a boost in rankings per se, but it's worthwhile to make sure the listing is accurate. On the grand scale of things that move the needle, you can rate it a medium-to-low priority.

...