We need your help on Yahoo!

Do a search on Yahoo! (or even Google) for “jackson, mi credit unions” and, surprisingly, American 1 is pretty hard to find. Even though we’re the largest credit union in the area, we get little search engine respect.

Take the Yahoo! search results. The top result for American 1 comes up as our drive-thru, not our Home Office (that ranks #20). Even our popular Parnall and Argyle Branches are low on the search engine totem pole (Battle Creek is #20, while Hillsdale is #3).

Part of those results come from the goofy way the phone book lists American 1. Look us up in the Yellow Pages, and you’ll find a bunch of random numbers and addresses that don’t correspond to our branches. That’s because our ATMs run on phone lines, and so the phone books take those phone numbers and list them as branches. Weird, huh? Yahoo! must use the same information the phone books do.

So here’s where you come in. Head to the search results above and look for your favorite American 1 branch. If you have a Yahoo! account, go ahead and write a little review of the branch you visit the most. Our hope is that the branches will rise to the top, ahead of those silly ATM listings, so that we’ll be easier to find for people who are looking for a local credit union.

If you don’t have a Yahoo! account, it’s easy to get one. Then you can use Yahoo! mail or a Flickr account (we have one, and we love it), or any number of the many services Yahoo! provides.

Google is another story. A lot of their search results come from what’s listed on your webpage – so we’re looking to post our address more prominently on the homepage, just to see if it helps.