Google+ Local Listing - No Physical Address
-
Hi everyone,
I have a client who won't be renewing his lease for where he conducts his business. Instead he will be working from home. That being said, he does not wish to have his personal address details showing within his local listing.
Is there any other way to still show for Google Local without a personal or business address? Is a PO box possible, other there any other alternatives?
Thanks in advance.
Leo
-
That's great to hear, Leo, and we are so glad to have you here!
-
Thanks Miriam for the additional resource.
I'm new to the community but seeing the level or responses I received I must say you all are fantastic and incredibly helpful.
Thanks again and all the best.
Leo
-
Hi Leo,
Tom has linked to a very important piece from Local Visibility System regarding directories that allow you to hide your address. The author, Phil Rozek, actually wrote a more recent follow-up piece to this, so do check this out here:
So, start with the article Tom linked to and then follow up with the one I've linked to, as it provides further citations sources that enable one to hide the address.
If the client does want to explore options other than his home as his location, then P.O. Boxes and Virtual offices must be avoided. Instead, he would need to rent a real office - perhaps from a company like Activspace.com, which gives you a real front door and phone hookup. But, honestly, countless businesses are run out of the home and Google gets this. Fortunately, many of the top directories support the hide-address feature, and while there are some directories your client won't be able to be listed in, putting him at something of a disadvantage in comparison to competitors who don't need to hide their address, there are still many place he can be listed.
Do be prepared, of course, to follow up this change of address with a great big citation cleanup campaign so that you can bring all mentions of his old address into compliance with his new location.
Good question! Glad you asked it!
-
Thanks for your thorough response Tom. Much appreciated.
-
Hi Dana,
Thank you that means a lot to me.
Your friend,
Thomas
-
Excellent answer Tom. I tuned in because I didn't know the answer to this one and yours was superb.
-
You must do fase to face business at the address
-
Hi Leo,
No google no longer use just a po box for google
Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.
- Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.
- If you need to specify a mail box or suite number within your physical location, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2.
- Use the precise address for the business in place of broad city names or cross-streets.
- Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.
- Individual practitioners may be listed individually as long as those practitioners are public-facing within their parent organization. Common examples of such practitioners are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and real estate agents. The practitioner should be directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours. A practitioner should not have multiple listings to cover all of his or her specializations.
- Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.
- Businesses that operate in a service area, as opposed to a single location, should not create a listing for every city they service. Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas. Learn how to add service areas to your listing.
- If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option.
- Do not include information in address lines that does not pertain to your business’s physical location (e.g. URLs, keywords).
- Anytime the address for your business changes, you’ll have to verify again. You also won’t be able to update the business’s name until the verification process is complete.
https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en
http://searchengineland.com/investigating-google-places-hypocrisy-for-address-less-businesses-59998
Hop this was of help,
Tom
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
-
How businesses get local citations without submitting them?
How do some businesses get listed in directories like YellowBook, SuperPages, MerchantCircle, etc. without submitting their information. For example, my dad's company listed themselves in YellowPages and Google Places years ago, but also show up in the ones listed above without having submitted the information to them or having paid anyone else to do it...
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
Local SEO: Can you add citations too fast?
Should you spread adding citations out over several weeks or can you add them all at once?
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Off-Page Local SEO for a Home-Based Businesses?
What are some ideas for optimizing for off-page local SEO when you're working with home-based businesses that don't necessarily want to share their physical address, and using a PO box is not an option for major local SEO directories?
Image & Video Optimization | | Inturact0 -
Issues claiming businesses via Google+ places?
Is anyone else dealing with issues claiming a business location on Google places? After already going through the process of claiming our business locations and verifying ownership. It seems that we have to do it again for google+ places. I don't want to create a duplicate of the business, and i'm not sure If I should delete it from my places account, before trying to claim it again on google places. Have you dealt with this issue, or is it new to you as well?
Image & Video Optimization | | Nola5040 -
Multiple Businesses at the Same Address - Avoiding Google Places Trouble
I'm trying to avoid problems with Google Places; this is like "address confusion", but is rather "business confusion". We have a gym at a street address with a suite number, and a number of personal trainers who work out of the gym. Several of them have their own websites and their own Google Places pages. 1 trainer has a Yelp account that lists the gym's street address including the suite number, and a Places page with the gym's street address. 2 trainers have the gym's street address on their personal/individual business websites, 1 with and 1 without the suite number. Is any of this going reduce Google's confidence in the accuracy of which business is really at the street address and suite number? What should we tell/require of our trainers in relation to this, if anything? Is there a chance Google will merge the Places pages? Am I paranoid? (Google Places sometimes does at it wishes, to the dismay of several of my clients.....) I do know that there are often many businesses in a building, each with their own suite numbers, and nothing bad happens. But ours is a case of multiple personal training businesses (including the gym: a small personal training studio) all at the same address And suite number. Thanks for any insight or ideas!
Image & Video Optimization | | TheSEOWiz0 -
Google places: how to deal when competitors spam?
My competitors are spamming in google places, how do I report them? following are a few examples of how they are spamming: Some of them are not local businesses, they somehow managed to get a number and some random address. Some of them have keywords as company names, their exact company name doesn't have any keywords. Some of them have multiple places pages with keywords as company names. how does one deal with it?
Image & Video Optimization | | virtualhandshake0 -
Google Places - Local Search - Not ranking when 100% complete?
Hi I have followed the examples set by David Mihm and fully completed a Google Places listing - with the geographical area covering the area that it serves along with lots of local citations but when searching on google for 'accountants swansea' it is way down on page 4 of the places results. Does it take time for Google to recognise these changes to Places listings or is my listing incorrect to attract a high listing for the search phrase. Looking at the competition many of them have not optimised or done anything with their listings pages so I am at a loss to explain why the listing is doing so badly. The places listing is at http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/place?hl=en&prmd=imvns&biw=1280&bih=829&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=accountants+swansea&fb=1&gl=uk&hq=accountants&hnear=0x486e45555a4e97b1:0x3d77128e2fe7cb74,Swansea,+Neath+Port+Talbot&cid=9815784575213492240&ei=UN6WTt7UJ8rasga-ocTrAw&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=placepage-link&resnum=7&ved=0CFcQ4gkwBjge
Image & Video Optimization | | idv0 -
Will linking to my citation sources help google recognize them / credit my places account?
Or does google treat this behavior the same way as a reciprocal link and discount any credibility of the citation?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0