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
-
Incorrect Youtube metadescription in Google SERP
One of our client's Youtube video is showing a competitor's meta data on the Google search results page? It looks like it is pulling from videos in the right-hand rail of the Youtube page. Is there any way this can be controlled/changed? If so, how? The client is Deep South Crane. When you perform a search for "Deep South Heavy Hitters", the correct video appears in the search results. However, the meta-description is pulling from a competitor's Youtube. Any insight as to why this is happening and how I can change it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | JaredBroussard0 -
SERP result (URL) doesn't change after a 301
A couple of months ago there was a result in Google for our branded search term which wasn't the 'official' URL, actually the result shown in the SERP was www.mycompany-ip.nl. We've applied a 301 redirect of this URL to the 'official' URL which is a subdomain: department.mycompany.nl. From Google the redirect is obviously working, but up until now, I don't see Google replacing the incorrect URL by the correct URL. I am wondering what to do to make the result correct. André
Technical SEO | | ConclusionDigital0 -
Removed Subdomain Sites Still in Google Index
Hey guys, I've got kind of a strange situation going on and I can't seem to find it addressed anywhere. I have a site that at one point had several development sites set up at subdomains. Those sites have since launched on their own domains, but the subdomain sites are still showing up in the Google index. However, if you look at the cached version of pages on these non-existent subdomains, it lists the NEW url, not the dev one in the little blurb that says "This is Google's cached version of www.correcturl.com." Clearly Google recognizes that the content resides at the new location, so how come the old pages are still in the index? Attempting to visit one of them gives a "Server Not Found" error, so they are definitely gone. This is happening to a couple of sites, one that was launched over a year ago so it doesn't appear to be a "wait and see" solution. Any suggestions would be a huge help. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | SarahLK0 -
Is it good practice to update your disavow file after a penalty is removed.
I was wondering if you could use the disavow file by adding to it - even after your site has recovered from a partial site penalty. As a recurring SEO procedure, we are always looking at links pointing to our Website. We then ascertain those links that are clearly of no value. In order to clean these up, would it be good practice to update your disavow file with more of theses domains. Is the disavow file just used for penalty issues to alert google of the work you have done? (we have had penalty in the past but fine now) Would this method help in keeping high quality links to the fore and therefore removing low quality links from Googles eyes? I would welcome your comments.
Technical SEO | | podweb0 -
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 -
Internet Explorer and Chrome showing different SERP's
Well the title says it all really. Same query, different browsers, same computer and different search results. I thought at first it may have differed because I was logged into my google profile on chrome but I logged out and tested and still different results. Is this normal ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Removing robots.txt on WordPress site problem
Hi..am a little confused since I ticked the box in WordPress to allow search engines to now crawl my site (previously asked for them not to) but Google webmaster tools is telling me I still have robots.txt blocking them so am unable to submit the sitemap. Checked source code and the robots instruction has gone so a little lost. Any ideas please?
Technical SEO | | Wallander0 -
Removing inbound Spam Links
Hello, Last February one of my clients websites was delisted. It turns out that some time ago that had attempted to launch a social network along time lines of ning. The project had fallen apart of the was still up. At some point spammers found it and started using it as part of a link farm. Once it was discovered, the subdomain it was posted on was removed and the website returned to search within 2 weeks. Last week, the website disappeared again OSE shows that in the last 2 months the website has got 2000 (There are about 16,000 total spam links) additional spam links now pointing and the root domain. On top of that, Google Webmaster Tools is reporting about 15,000 404 errors. I have blocked Google from crawling the path where the path were the spam pages used to be. If there a way to block the 1000s of inbound spam links?
Technical SEO | | Simple_Machines0