Google Local oddity
-
So I spotted something a little weird... one of my client's Google Local placements in blended results has the domain name - complete with the .com extension appearing where the business name typically appears:
www. businessxyz .com
of Google reviews
Has anyone seen this? I setup their Google Places account quite some time ago and used the business name - not the url. I also setup their Google+ and Local page - using the name. None of the page titles on the website contain the url. I simply can not pinpoint where G is pulling this from or why for that matter. All competitors are appearing with business name - only my client has the domain name visible for the particular local search query.
Any ideas?
-
Thanks for the kind compliment, Dino. Sounds like hunting down citations may be your smartest move. Google draws from so many sources and even a little confusion of data can lead to significant problems.
Good luck in the hunt!
Miriam
-
Hi Miriam,
Thank you for your insight. As a matter of fact, I took a quick look in OSE a short while ago to see if I could pinpoint a citation source formatted the same. I found only one utilizing the domain url (except it contained the http://www prefix and my client's listing does not). I plan to investigate a bit more with a different tool set later. If I find anything interesting, I will let you know.
Hey! Looks like we are neighbors! Fantastic website you have - nice job!
Dino
-
Hi SCW,
There are two options I can think of.
-
There is a citation source that Google is pulling the title from (a directory listing, maybe even an old one, that has the business listed this way).
-
It's a mistake on Google's part. Google does make mistakes.
If you cannot find any citations of the business with the .com used as the business title, and you would like to try to have this rectified, I would recommend reporting the problem through Google's troubleshooter, wait 7 days to see if you get a response, and if not, report it through the Google Business Help Forum.
It's definitely an oddity.
-
-
Thanks for the response.
Nope. Fortunately, my client doesn't touch the site and doesn't care to
It would appear that G's title crafting is applicable to situations where the title is malformed. Not the case here... I formed the titles on-topic, concise, no repetition of keywords and branding at the end.
In spite of the fact that it "looks" strange a midst the competitor's listings, it actually stands-out - especially being in the #1 position. Perhaps we are just one of the "lucky" experimental subjects
-
Other than the obvious reply of your client editing the listing to show that . It could have something to do with Google's effort to craft titles depending on what they think is the best fit ( it could be expanding in to Local too ? MY Speculation )
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
-
What is the fastest way to deindex content from Google?
Yesterday we had a client discover that our staging URLs were being indexed in Google. This was due to a technical oversight from our development team (forgot to upload meta robots tags). We are trying to remove this content as quickly as possible. Are there any methods in the Google Search Console to expedite this process? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Google search results
I have been doing some searches on google to see where my new site shows up, I started using the search words "graphic design firm st. louis" as a gauge, because my title is St. Louis Missouri Graphic Design Firm. I showed up on about page 5 to start , if I include the word "firm" and a few pages further back if I just search "graphic design st. louis", without the word firm. It seemed i was slowly moving up pages with both searches and then a few days ago I jumped to page 1 for search "graphic design firm st. louis" the thing is it doesnt show up at all now if i search "graphic design st. louis" without the word firm. what would cause the one search to jump so high while the other one dissapeared completely?? and what can i do? my keyword density is same for both , any ideas.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eric69660 -
Google Is Indexing The Wrong Page For My Keyword
For a long time (almost 3 mounth) google indexing the wrong page for my main keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
The problem is that each time google indexed another page each time for a period of 4-7 days, Sometimes i see the home page, sometimes a category page and sometimes a product page.
It seems though Google has not yet decided what his favorite / better page for this keyword. This is the pages google index: (In most cases you can find the site on the second or third page) Main Page: http://bit.ly/19fOqDh Category Page: http://bit.ly/1ebpiRn Another Category: http://bit.ly/K3MZl4 Product Page: http://bit.ly/1c73B1s All links I get to the website are natural links, therefore in most cases the anchor we got is the website name. In addition I have many links I get from bloggers that asked to do a review on one of my products, I'm very careful about that and so I'm always checking the blogger and their website only if it is something good, I allowed it. also i never ask for a link back (must of the time i receive without asking), and as I said, most of their links are anchor with my website name. Here some example of links that i received from bloggers: http://bit.ly/1hF0pQb http://bit.ly/1a8ogT1 http://bit.ly/1bqqRr8 http://bit.ly/1c5QeC7 http://bit.ly/1gXgzXJ Please Can I get a recommendation what should you do?
Should I try to change the anchor of the link?
Do I need to not allow bloggers to make a review on my products? I'd love to hear what you recommend,
Thanks for the help0 -
Google Ranking Wrong Page
The company I work for started with a website targeting one city. Soon after I started SEO for them, they expanded to two cities. Optimization was challenging, but we managed to rank highly in both cities for our keywords. A year or so later, the company expanded to two new locations, so now 4 total. At the time, we realized it was going to be tough to rank any one page for four different cities, so our new SEO strategy was to break the website into 5 sections or minisites consisting of 4 city-targeted sites, and our original site which will now be branded as more of a national website. Our URL structures now look something like this:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cpapciak
www.company.com
www.company.com/city-1
www.company.com/city-2
www.company.com/city-3
www.company.com.city-4 Now, in the present time, all is going well except for our original targeted city. The problem is that Google keeps ranking our original site (which is now national) instead of the new city-specific site we created. I realize that this is probably due to all of the past SEO we did optimizing for that city. My thoughts are that Google is confused as to which page to actually rank for this city's keyword terms and I was wondering if canonical tags would be a possible solution here, since the pages are about 95% identical. Anyone have any insight? I'd really appreciate it!0 -
Merging your google places page with google plus page.
I have a map listing showing for the keyword junk cars for cash nj. I recently created a new g+ page and requested a merge between the places and the + page. now when you do a search you see the following. Junk Cars For Cash NJ LLC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars
junkcarforcashnj.com/
Google+ page - Google+ page the first hyperlink takes me to the about page of the G+ and the second link takes me to the posts section within g+. Is this normal? should i delete the places account where the listing was originally created? Or do i leave it as is? Thanks0 -
Google+ Pages on Google SERP
Do you think that a Google+ Page (not profile) could appear on the Google SERP as a Rich Snippet Author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
Why my blog ranks poorly on Google ?
Hi 🙂 I need help for my blog, my blog http://www.dota2club.com/ for many keywords it is not in first 50 results on google. What am i doing wrong ? Can you tell me what errors / mistakes i have made and what can i do to improve my blog ? Thank you !!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wolfinjo0 -
Google Previews highlighting Promotions?
I came across this today when doing a Google search - a site that has a small promo code listed on their page shows a preview with that promo highlighted...I dug around their code a little bit, but couldn't find if it was something they were doing to manipulate their preview in the search results. Is Google automatically highlighting promotions in previews, or did getmarried.com/magazine/ somehow manipulate the page to make their promo highlighted? And if so, how? You can see the site at http://www.getmarried.com/magazine/ and you can see the preview with the promo highlighted attached. ZDY52.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | klars5240