Remove unwanted map in SERP
-
My company is based in Brighton.
We run courses in London.
If you search 'london business writing' in Google UK, you get this:
http://i39.tinypic.com/35me3qs.jpg
Lolwut. Google is placing a link for a map to our Brighton offices beneath the second result.
For a London-related keyword that links to a page for our London courses that contains an address for our London venue.
We are registered on Google maps as being based in Brighton; we also have a map of our Brighton office on our contact page. But obviously, this is not relevant to this search.
How do I get rid of this map for this keyword?
-
Bix, really appreciate you coming back to update this thread. Great that you had success! And, while we mustn't mix up correlation with causation, I'd say the effort you made is a very strong candidate for the causation of this. Well done! Again, thanks for taking the time to share your results. Could be very useful to others in the future who run into a problem like this. Miriam
-
I actually solved this problem with a very similar solution - using the address markup at schema.org
Thanks for putting me on the right track!
-
It worked! The map is gone. Looks like Google really does pay attention to those schemas.
-
It's worth trying, Bix. Hope it works out for you!
-
Hi Miriam
Thanks so much for taking the time to look so thoroughly into this!
If it's something I'm stuck with, I'll just accept it - for very similar relevant 'london [keyword]' searches I don't get the map.
That said, I'm hoping that specifiying the London address on that page with schema.org tags will prevent Google from displaying the map.
-
Hi Again Bix,
As I suspected, this may be difficult/impossible to have remove. My only good suggestion on this is to try using the Google Maps Troubleshooter to see if you can get some help that way, but I think you may be stuck with that link being generated by the algo:
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps
Too bad there isn't a simple solution for this. Just one of those things where I wish there was more support!
Miriam
-
Hi Bix,
Thanks for the further info. You are very lucky to be showing up for that London search, given that you are not in London (i.e. you don't have a dedicated physical address there). The reason Google is associating that map with your business is because that is you company's real, registered physical address. Your screenshot is not of a set of local results, nor would you qualify for a real local result because of the lack of a dedicated address in that city. So, I'm afraid you are stuck with the map link to Brighton. I agree...that might confuse some users, but frankly, I would think that your awesome ranking outside of your city of location totally outweighs the downside of having that mapped link.
Sorry I can't tell you how to change this. Google displays what they feel is relevant, and for that search, they feel it's relevant to display your address.
I want you to know that I put a little feeler out amongst a couple of colleagues in Local to see if they have a different opinion on this. I didn't use your name or anything; just described the situation in general terms. If I get any differing opinions, I will certainly return to this thread, but I'm pretty positive any Local SEO will agree with my take on this.
Your site must have good traditional SEO and Local SEO factors to be doing so well for that term. You might like to read Linda Buquet's recent article on the Venice update...wonder if this could be the reason for your prominences in organic outside your true, physical location:
http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-venice-update-local-seo.html
Cheers!
Miriam
-
Just in case anyone finds this in future: I've tried adding the address markup here http://www.schema.org/PostalAddress
There's an unusually clear explanation of how to use this here: http://www.schema.org/docs/gs.html
If you have a basic understanding of HTML (esp div and span tags) you can learn how to do this fairly quickly.
-
I didn't know about rich snippets; thanks.
-
Hi Miriam
Thanks!
Our actual physical office is in Brighton. In London, we rent out a room. This room belongs to SOAS, a university.
-
Hi Bix,
Can you clarify for me whether you actually have a physical office dedicated to just your business in London - or are you sharing a building or something along those lines? That would be a start. Thanks, and by the way, love your screen name. I'm a big Bix fan.
Miriam
-
Perhaps you could add the London based address to all of the pages which Google is showing the map beneath the listing in the SERPs and mark the London address with rich snippets.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
If I get spammy backlinks removed is it still necessary to disavow?
Now there is some conflicting beliefs here and I want to know what you think. If I got a high spam website to remove my backlink, is a disavow through search console still necessary ? Keep in mind if it helps even in the slightest to improve rankings im for it!
Technical SEO | | Colemckeon1 -
Best practice around removing large section of the website
We are looking at removing a large section of our website that is getting low/no traffic. My current thought of removing this would be to delete the pages and add 301 redirects to a similar page within the site that is not being deleted. This will be removing 400+ pages, does it this make sense? Or should we point them to the homepage? Finally should we do this in one batch or should we slowly remove the pages over the course of a couple weeks. Thanks - appreciate the help in understanding the best practice in terms of SEO.
Technical SEO | | webactive0 -
Giving a final nudge to lead the serps
hi
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy
might be a weird one to ask. working on an ecommerce site, using all new inbound marketing best practices the site positioned on many keywords on the second page of results. the site started to generate income. Assuming budget is not an issue here, do you have any suggestions on how to give it the final push. any ideas will be considered.0 -
Will a google map loaded "on scroll" be ignored by the crawler?
One of my pages has two Google maps on it. This leads to a fairly high keyword density for words like "data", "map data" etc. Since one of the maps is basically at the bottom of the page I thought of loading it "on scroll" as soon as its container becomes visible (before loading the map div should be empty). Will the map then still be craweld by google (can they execute the JS in a way that the map is loaded anyways?) or would this help to reduce the keywords introduced by the maps?
Technical SEO | | ddspg0 -
How to remove the duplicate page title
Hi everyone, I saw many posts related to this query.But i couldnt find a solution for my error.. Here is my question I got 575 Duplicate page title & 600 duplicate page content errors. My site is related to realestate. I created a page title like same sentence differs with locality name Eg: Land for sale - kandy property Land for sale - Galle property Likewise Locality name only differs..I have created meta title & Content like this. Can anyone let me know how to solve this error ASAP ?
Technical SEO | | Rajesh.Chandran0 -
Would removing or making non relevant links no follow boost a site?
Hi, I have just been checking out the backlinks for a prospective new client. It appears they have a number of links that are totally irrelevant to their nature of business and I was wondering if they would improve in the rankings etc if I removed them or made them no follow instead? Or would I simply just be throwing away crucial link juice? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Benjamin3790 -
Should a 301 from a penalised domain to a new domain be removed?
A business traded on a domain let's say example.COM which was heavily penalised due to non-removable spammy back links. Their previous SEO advised them to set up on example.CO.UK but redirected example.COM to example.CO.UK. Example.CO.UK ranks very poorly, presumably due to being 'tarred with the same brush' i.e. attributed with the ills of example.COM. Will it do any good to remove the redirect or is example.CO.UK now doomed as well?
Technical SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy1 -
Content loc and player log tags for XML video site maps
I need a little help understanding how to create two of the required tags for a XML video site map for Google. 1. video:content_loc2.<video:player_loc< p=""></video:player_loc<></video:content_loc> Google explains their Video XML Site map requirements here:
Technical SEO | | dsexton10
www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472
Using the example on this Google Web Master Help page (where they explain all six of the required tags) , here are examples of the two tags I need help with: video:content_locwww.example.com/video123.flv</video:content_loc> <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=12...video:player_loc></video:player_loc> The video I am trying to optimize is located on a page on my site:
www.mountainbikingmaine.com/races/bradbury_hawk.html
This page has an embedded Vimeo video. So I don't have the video file on my domain. It is on Vimeo. Here is source code from my page that I think provides the information I need to create the two tags that Google requires. <iframe src="<a rel=" nofollow"="" href="http://player.vimeo.com/video/24580638?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0"" target="_blank">player.vimeo.com/video/24580638?title=0&...amp;portrait=0"</a> width="400" height="533" frameborder="0"></iframe> [vimeo.com/24580638">Bradbury](<a rel=) Mountain Maine Hawk Migration Count from [vimeo.com/user3219915">dan](<a rel=) sexton Using this source from my site, can you suggest what to put in the two tags? Thanks! Dan0