Why does Google Claimed Local Listing Ranking Drop?
-
I have two local google places listinggs unlaimed. Both listings were ranking in the blended search in 7 pack.
Once I claimed the local listings for the business both listings rankings have dropped. And one has totally vanished from the search rankings.
Is this normal as it appears local places that are not claimed are ranking higher than local places claimed?
-
Hi Arthur,
Unfortunately, no, if you can't receive mail at the old address and are being offered a postcard only option, that won't work for you. Because of this, instead of claiming the incorrect listing, I would recommend that you use the report a problem link at the bottom of the Place Page (if it still exists and is available to you). Since this morning, though, everything is upside down in the whole Google Localsphere. I'm not totally sure what has happened in Australia, but I believe the migration from Places to Plus is global. In case you haven't read about it, here's a good overview from Search Engine Land:
At this point, Google is saying that you can still managed existent listings from the Places Dashboard, so if you do have the ability to report a problem, do so. Let Google know you have a correct listing and point to it and that this other listing is old and the business doesn't exist there.
Today has been the craziest day in Local in recent memory. Lots of changes in the works.
-
Thanks Miriam,
You have been a great help.
the places with the address 22 Market St, South Yarra VIC 3141 only offers to be be verified by postcard, the issue is that is the incorrect address so how do I then get the listing verified and then merged if I cannot receive the verification postcard? Are you aware of another way to obtain verification if you can only use the address?
-
Hi Arthur,
I am seeing 3 listings when I perform your suggested search:
Flawless Flowers 22 Market St, South Yarra VIC 3141(03) 9827 7656 1 review "Best florist in Melbourne, thanks again for your help." - Flawless Flowers Melbourne VIC 30000409 518 822 · flawlessflowers.com.auFlawless Flowers 22/163 Commercial Road, South Yarra VIC 31411300 606 000 · flawlessflowers.comIt sounds as if you are trying to rectify the South Yarra dupes, but you are right, the Melbourne address is incomplete. If you've got all of the details correct in the dashboard, it might be a good idea to go through the troubleshooter process to signal to Google that your information isn't being fully displayed:http://support.google.com/places/?hl=en-US&rd=1However, before you do that, if you've just claimed this listing, you might want to wait a couple of weeks to see if the situation rectifies itself. It's definitely important to clear up the dupe, as Google's total trust in your whole record takes all things into account. You want them to trust that your Melbourne and South Yarra locations are both real.
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for your reply
The following are the details, if you go the http://www.google.com.au/maps and search for "flawless flowers"
The listing flawless flowers in Melbourne is the listing that has vanished from the places rankings
There is a duplicate listing for this company at 22 market street (these details are wrong) but this is in a different location. Will merge this listing once verified with the address at 22/163 commercial road
I just noticed that my full address does not show for the melbourne listing but the complete address is completed in the local listings page. The complete address for the shop location is Flinders street station, shop 5 melbourne victoria 3000
This could be the issue?
-
Hi Arthur,
While claiming the listing is an unlikely candidate for causing a drop in rankings, is there a chance that your activity has drawn Google's attention to a situation involving 2 duplicate listings, and, potentially, other problems with your Places record? Why do you have 2 listings? Are they for separate businesses, same business but unique physical location? Could there also be other unclaimed listings out there dragging down your rank (do a search for your business name and phone number in Maps)? Can you provide some more details? Thanks!
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
-
My website is my name. Overnight it went from being the number one google search to not showing up at all when you google my name. Why would this happen?
I built my website via square space. It is my name. If you google my name it was the number one hit. Suddenly 2 weeks ago it doesn't show up AT ALL. I went through square spaces SEO check list, secured my site etc. Still doesn't show up. Why would this happen all of the sudden and What can I do? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jbark0 -
HTTPS sitewide move has resulted in huge rankings drop...
Hi all, An e-commerce site has recently moved protocol to https sitewide. The site ranked page one for some great terms and now appear to be page 2 or below. Brand terms seem unphased and are still very strong, on both Google and Bing. The following has been done; Everything 301'd from http to https Sitemap Edited Updated Webmaster Tools Robots.txt edited Crawled and Fetched all pages daily. Checked Paged are all follow,index. PPC Ads mass updated to new url's. Most terms were ranked 1 - 9 on Bing, and Page 1/2 on Google. HTTPS upgrade was done less than one week ago. The site is not payday loan related, nor was it hit by latest panda escapades. Everything on the site is relevant to the content. Has anybody else been in this position, what else can be done? I'd appreciate any help and advice. Thank You K9gB7hz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie0 -
To list or not to list? Products that contain basic info only, yet show off product depth...
Some of our products on our site only have 40 characters of description... each item/category is it's own unique web page with basic info like Brand, Model, What it is, Price, & Quantity in stock. For searchers knowing what they want, they can quickly find us via the basic info & see that we have it in stock. But for someone surfing our site, it's not all that attractive or informative as you are scrolling down the category list. Collecting the picture & info can be a slow and time consuming process, but something we'd love to be all caught up on one day. Would it be wiser to take these pages off, or keep them on until they are fully updated with pic & more detail? (My thought is that even though they don't contain a lot of individual detail depth, they still add a substantial quantity of basic related content to the category page that they reside in. This basic info on these items are also given a chance to burn into the web search engines over a longer period of time. As time goes by and their content is improved, they will get re-crawled/re-indexed with their new information depth. Also, even though they don't look all that pretty, it shows off our product depth... if we only listed the items that looked spectacular, then a lot of our categories would only contain a wimpy 3 out of 30 items that we actually have for sale. That feels like a huge misrepresentation of how much selection we actually have to offer. But perhaps this is wrong thinking?) Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_McLeish0 -
Infographic Google’s 200 Ranking Factors by Backlinko
Wow, I just found this awesome Infographic created by Brian Dean of Backlinko. It's really nice share by him, putting all efforts together into creating this Top 200 Ranking Factors what everybody wants to know now. I am just right now seeing and observing the whole things and points mentioned in this infographic and like to want you all of Moz members to discuss over this. 069581c30c35cb5a6294cfc6e3799db4.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Futura1 -
Rankings dropped - Why?
At the end of November a client site dropped significantly in the rankings. The drop effected almost all the keyphrases we monitor. Historically the homepage has always ranked higher than the sub-pages - however now it seems Google is no longer ranking the home page, and instead ranking the sub-pages, just far far lower down. Any ideas what could cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg0 -
Google Places & Multiple Listings
Our client used to have a listing in each city, but after updating the addresses they were forever under review. Google said that businesses serving customers at their locations can only list their primary office. Back when this client had multiple city listings, all addresses but one were UPS boxes. If they are to change back to "No, all customers come to the business location," can they once again submit a listing for each city using these addresses? Yes, I realize they are UPS boxes, but they insist on being listed for each city.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elcrazyhorse0 -
Can you explain why the site is dropping off Google every other week?
Can anyone offer any insight into why since the Google Panda update www.bedandbreakfastsguide.com has been fluctuating on Google so much? One week it's ranked as it used to be, the next it's nowhere to be seen? If you take a look at the screenshot of our traffic, this is the traffic after 75% loss (dropped in two stages) you'll see we get traffic for a week and then nothing. This has been happening for months. Some points that might be involved: Around the same time the SEO guys suggested setting the canonical url to www.bedandbreakfastsguide.com (before there wasn't one so traffic was coming from www. and non-www). A lot of the original urls have been consolidated and rel="canonical" added throughout The "pages" of results all have had a rel="canonical" set to page 1 Could it be that the www is competing with the non-www despite the 301 redirects. We're doing everything we can to help this client (and have reduced their site errors from the millions to low tens-of-thousands) so it's not filling them with confidence when their site just keeps plumetting! What's also irritating/odd is that some of their competitors -who used to be ranked lower and have sites which contradict every rulebook still rank high. Hopefully you can spot something we've missed. Tim I8PNL
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimGaunt0 -
Rankings for keyword variations dropped over weekend?
One of our clients has seen significant decreases over the weekend for a number of keyword variations. There have been no significant site changes, no crawl errors reported and our competitors don't seem to have been affected. The decrease has coincided with the launch of a display campaign, but surely this is just coincidental? Any thoughts would be appreciated...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zealmedia0