Will two numbers on a local listing affect me?
-
The reason I'm asking this question is. I was on the phone with a Google Rep yesterday for one of my google places. It was in reference to map maker and the fact that I only wanted one number on the listing. About a month ago I had it, so I deleted the listing's local number and than had an 877 number. The problem is when I checked on Friday the Local number was then added back by a Google moderator in Map Maker. So, now there's two numbers on the listing. He told me that would not affect my NAP info, which I don't believe.
He also went on to say that Google goes through listings and if they have an 800 number they may delete it and replace place it with a local number.Has anyone delt with this and can Verify what he says to be true? Additionally, will my NAP be affected if this is the case? Thanks.
-
Great! So glad to be of help.
-
Yes Miriam, this is crystal clear. I really appreciate your help.
-
Hi Peter,
You should not be using a toll free number as part of your NAP. Your Local number is the 'P' in NAP. Anything else is a supplementary number. Different Local SEOs may have a different approach than mine, but when I am doing local SEO, I do not include toll free numbers in crawl-able text on the website - I put them in image text in the masthead, if required. I put the complete NAP (name-address-phone) in the footer and on the contact page, encoded in Schema markup. I list the local phone number on all local citations. If it is necessary to list a supplementary number like a toll free number, I do that in the additional phone number field offered by some of the indexes/directories. Google understands which number is local if you've put in in the primary number field and it matches what they find on your website and elsewhere. But, should you decide to put toll free numbers as though they were the primary number in some of your citations, then, yes, there is a concern that Google will not trust their data about the business.
Does this make sense, Peter? I want to be sure I'm explaining this well to you.
-
So then the question is, If I do have two numbers on each NAP for local listing citations and Directories. How does Google know which is the preferred number and which number will come up when someone searches for my website?
-
Hi Peter,
Yes, it would affect your citation consistency. You should always list your primary local number first on all local listings, and be sure it is in crawl-able text on the website. I do not recommend creating any local listing with only your toll free number.
-
Okay, so my question is, if I list my Google Listing with a toll free and local phone. Then, I list other listings(Yellow pages, Yelp, Insider pages etc) with just purely a toll free number. Would that affect the rest of my citations? Thanks for your help Miriam.
-
Hi Peter,
All local listings hang on NAP (name, address and phone number) and the phone number aspect must be a local area code phone number. You should not be listing a toll free number as your main number - not on your local business listings, website or anyplace else. I have not personally run across a report before of Google manually changing a toll free number to a local one, but number changes can definitely take place because Google is scraping data from a variety of sources. If they find instances of the web of your NAP with the local phone number, then they would certainly prefer to use that, as toll free numbers aren't viewed as local.
The Google Places dashboard provides you with an option to list an alternate, secondary number, so if you want to put your toll free number there, that's acceptable, but don't list it as your core number. That's not what Google wants.
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
-
I'm changing title tags and meta tags, url, will i loose my ranking?
Hi Guys QUESTION: I'm currently going through a re-design for my new website that was published in November 2014 - since launching we found there were many things we needed to change, our pages were content thin being one of the biggest. I had industry experts that came in and made comments on the title tags lacking relevance for eg: our title tag for our home page is currently "Psychic Advice" most ideal customers don't search "Psychic Advice" they search more like "Online Psychic Reading" or Psychic Readings" I noticed alot of my competitors also were using title tags such as Online Psychic Readings, Free Psychic Readings etc so it brings me to my question of "changing the title tags around. The issue is, im ranking for two keywords in my industry, online psychics and online psychic readings in NZ. 1. Our home page and category pages are content thin.... so hoping that adding the changes will create perhaps some consistency also with the added unique and quality content. Here is the current website: zenory. co.nz and the new one is www.ew-zenory.herokuapp.com which is currently in development I have 3 top level domains com,com.au, and co.nz Is there anyone that can give me an idea if I were to change my home page title tag to **ZENORY | Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Phone and Chat ** If this will push my rankings down though this page will have alot more valuable content etc? For obvious reasons im going to guess it will make drop, I'm wondering though if it is worth changing the title tags and meta descriptions around or leaving it as is if its already doing well? How much of a difference do title tags and meta descriptions really make? Any insight into this would be great! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may1 -
I have 4012 links from one blog - will Google penalise?
My website (http://www.gardenbeet.com) has 4012 links from http://cocomale.com/blog/ to my home page -a banner advert links from the blog - I also have 3,776 from another website to 6 pages of my website 1,832 from pinterest to 183 pages etc etc overall there are 627 domains linking to my website I have been advised by a SEO company that I was penalised in about may to july 2012 due to a large number of links coming from one domain or two domains is that true? should I ask the blog owner to remove my link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GardenBeet0 -
Will blank category pages automatically get updated
Hello, We've got old category pages that are blank like domain/shoes.html (blank white page not in menu anymore) domain/newshoesurl.html (working URL with link in menu) Will the blank pages be automatically deindexed and updated by Google?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
A Branded Local Search Strategy utilizing Microsites?
Howdy Moz, Over and over we hear of folks using microsites in addition to their main brand for targeting keyword specific niches. The main point of concern most folks have is either in duplicate content or being penalized by Google, which is also our concern. However, in one of our niches we notice a lot of competitors have set up secondary websites to rank in addition to the main website (basically take up more room on the SERPS). They are currently utilizing different domains, on different IPs, on different servers, etc. We verified because we called and they all rang to the same competitors. So our thought was why not take the fight to them (so to speak) but with a branding and content strategy. The company has many good content pieces that we can utilize, like company mottos, missions statements, special projects, community outreach that can be turned into microsites with unique content. Our strategy idea is the take a company called "ACME Plumbing" and brand for specific keywords with locations like sacramentoplumberwarranty.com where the site's content revolves around plumber warranty info, measures of a good warranty, plumbing warranty news (newsworthy issues), blogs, RCS - you get the idea...and send both referral traffic and link to the main site. The ideal is to then repeat the process with another company aspect like napaplumbingprojects.com where the content of the site is focused on cool projects, images, RCS, etc. Again, referring traffic and link juice to the main site. We realize that this adds the amount of RCS that needs to be done, but that's exactly why we're here. Also, any thoughts of intentionally tying in the brand to the location so you get urls like acmeplumbingsacarmento.com?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AaronHenry1 -
Learn Local SEO
What are best local SEO practices 2013 ?? to get website on top of all major keywords ???
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mnkpso0 -
Will my association's network of sites get penalized for link farming?
Before beginning I found these similar topics here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-domains-on-same-ip-address-same-niche-but-different-locations http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-domains-on-1-ip-address We manage over two dozen dental sites that are individually owned through out the US. All these dentists are in a dental association which we also run and are featured on (http://www.acedentalresource.com/). Part of the dental associations core is sharing information to make them better dentists and to help their patients which in addition to their education, is why they are considered to be some of the best dentists in the world. As such, we build links from what we consider to be valuable content between the sites. Some sites are on different IPs and C-Blocks, some are not. Given the fact that each site is only promoting the dentist at that brick and mortar location but also has "follow" links to other dentists' content in the network we fear that we are in the grey area of link building practices. Questions are: Is there an effective way to utilize the power of the network if quality content is being shared? What risks are we facing given our network? Should each site be on a different IP? Would having some of our sites on different servers make our backlinks more valuable than having all of our sites under the same server? If it is decided that having unique IPs is best practice, would it be obvious that we made the switch? Keep in mind that ALL sites are involved in the association, so naturally they would be linking to each other, and the main resource website mentioned above. Thanks for your input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DigitalElevator0 -
Is it possible that since the Google Farmer's Update, that people practicing Google Bowling can negatively affect your site?
We have hundreds of random bad links that have been added to our sites across the board that nobody in our company paid for. Two of our domains have been penalized and three of our sites have pages that have been penalized. Our sites are established with quality content. One was built in 2007, the other in 2008. We pay writers to contribute quality and unique content. We just can't figure out a) Why the sites were pulled out of Google indexing suddenly after operating well for years b) Where the spike in links came from. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dahnyogaworks0 -
Can you set up a Google Local account under a PO Box?
I have a client that wants a Google local listing in a town he serves but does not have a physical location. Is it an issue to share an address with an existing company? Is is it better to use a P.O. Box? or is there a forwarding address company? Is this considered a black hat Local SEO tactic?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BonsaiMediaGroup0
