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
-
.com geotagging redirect to subdomains - will it affect SEO?
Hi guys, We have a .com domain and we've got geoIP on it, so UK goes to .co.uk and USA goes to .com/us We're just migrating over to another platform so we're thinking of keeping a "dummy" server just to do this geoIP pointing for us. Essentially .com will just point over to the right place and hold a specific .com/abc (which is generic for everyone worldwide) Current Scenario:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Infruition
.com (Magento + geoIP)
.com/us (US Magento)
.co.uk (UK - geoIP redirect to Shopify)
.com/abc (sits on Magento server) Wanted Scenario:
.com - used for GEOIP and a specific .com/abc (for all users)
.co.uk (UK) - Shopify eCom
.com/us -> migration to us.xx.com (USA) - Shopify eCom I just wanted to know if this will affect our rankings on google? Also, any advice as to the best practises here would be great. Thanks! Nitesh0 -
Will Removing My Keyword from Breadcrumb Title to Simplify UI Hurt Page SEO?
Working on the UI of a new site and I would like to simplify the breadcrumbs so they do not take up as much space. They will still communicate the same message to user. See example below: Before: Home > Widget Dealers > Tennessee > Nashville After: Home > Dealers > Tennessee > Nashville The page title and/or menu item would still be "Widget Dealers". So my question is, if I remove the keyword "Widget" only from the breadcrumb could that hurt me in any way?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | the-coopersmith1 -
I am tempted to purchase a listing on an industry specific website directory with high domain authority. Will that be frowned upon as buying links?
I am tempted to purchase a listing on an industry specific website directory (http://marketingresourcedirectory.ama.org/) with high domain authority. Will that be frowned upon as buying links?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SearchParty0 -
Is Best of the Web a good directory to pay to be listed on?
We are currently paying to have a listing in the directory Best of the Web. Should I be paying to renew our listing in this directory?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | djlittman0 -
Ethical question about setting up a local business directory...
I've just launched a local business directory that allows the small businesses in my local area to get noticed by a very targeted audience. People such as self-employed builders, painters and decorators and the like. As well as helping them out, they'll be helping me out by testing the waters of local keywords and seeing just how difficult and how much traffic they'll get. Kind of like spreading myself across 100's of keywords without the need for domains etc. All the links on there are nofollow, but what are the ethics behind letting my clients have a dofollow link from it? I wouldn't use this directory as a marketing tool for my self and my business, but if I acquired a client from my website or other source, but they would benefit from a dofollow link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
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 -
Canonicals affected traffic?
Dear Sir/Madam, We are white label classified platform providers and recently we marked canonicals on all the partner sites pointing to our home site as authority because we thought that Search Engines might penalize us for duplicate content as the classified ads are similar on all site, only theme and layout is different but now we are witnessing a huge decrease in our partner`s classifed section organic traffic. Can you please advise that is it because of canonicals , if yes than what should we do? like should we take canonicals off and if we take it off than how can we handle it legally.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | razasaeed0 -
What does Youtube Consider Duplicate content and will it effect my ranking/traffic?
What does youtube consider duplicated content? If I have a power point type video that I already have on youtube and I want to change the beginning and end call to action, would that be considered duplicate content? If yes then how would this effect my ranking/youtube page. Will it make a difference if I have it embedded on my blog?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | christinarule0
