Managing Google Map Location for a remote wilderness lodge
-
Hi all, I’m working on a Google Maps and Google Plus issue for a client who runs a unique, very remote wilderness lodge. The lodge isn’t located near any road -- you have to fly 100+ miles on a small plane.
Their mailing address is a PO Box in a dingy little town 100+ miles from their actual mountain location. Therefore, Google maps and Google Plus think the lodge itself is located in this little town, and it shows them there on maps. That’s bad, because the kind of guests who come to this remote lodge wouldn’t want to stay in that little town.
We would like Google to understand that the lodge’s location is not the same as its mailing address. We have the GPS coordinates for the actual location.
My question is: how do I get Google Plus and Google Maps to correctly show the lodge pin at its GPS location on the map, rather than in the town that hosts its remote PO box?
Thanks for reading! Any insights?
-
Hi Bzmark,
Thanks for the clarification. The reason I asked is that it isn't permitted to create a Google+ Local page for a non-staffed vacation rental. Sounds like you're in the clear, as far as that's concerned, with this lodge.
I feel that Tim has correctly assessed this situation. There are multiple issues here.
-
P.O. boxes are not allowable addresses, so at some point, someone created a Google+ Local page (and likely other citations) for a location that is in violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines.
-
Google's local product is mailing address-based - meaning that it is intended to feature data about businesses with physical addresses at which mail is received and to which humans come. While humans do come to this lodge, mail apparently doesn't come to it, taking it outside of Google's definition of a true local business and making it an unlikely candidate for local inclusion.
-
Since the lodge doesn't receive mail at its remote location, it would be impossible for it to receive a postcard for the purposes of verification, again, making it ineligible.
So, I think where you are at right now is that your client's business name exists within in Google's local product when it should never have been included in the first place, lacking a mailing address that would be legitimate in the eyes of Google. The client's location is being misrepresented by Google, and there isn't a clear path for cleaning this up, because there is no genuine mailing address to substitute in a cleanup campaign.
If the wrong location is misrepresenting the business and misleading customers, you could try to get the page deleted, but I think the best thing to do here would be to go through the Google MapMaker and Google And Your Business fora to see if you can make direct contact with Google staff for guidance with this matter. Typically, I would be sending you through a troubleshooter like this one (https://support.google.com/places/) but as you don't have a legit mailing address, it won't get you very far.
I think your only hope is direct contact with Google staff, who may either help you remove the listing or may allow you to edit it in some way. They won't be happy about the P.O. box, of course, but they may have some solution for you that will ameliorate the fact that the business is currently being misrepresented and is potentially misleading customers.
In the meantime, I do like Tim's suggestion of creating a custom Google map to embed on your website so that, at least, the website is properly directing guests to the location.
In sum, the business model is not appropriate for inclusion in Google's local products and your task is to do all you can to prevent potential guests from being misdirected.
-
-
Thanks for your suggestions! I have a feeling this is the way I'm going to end up going. If so, I will post back re: what works.
-
Hi Miriam, thanks for asking. It's a hotel.
-
Hi Bzmark,
May I ask for a little clarification on the business model. By 'lodge' do you mean a hotel (i.e. a staffed location to which guests come) or is this a one-off vacation rental (i.e. a single, un-staffed cabin out in the woods)? Please clarify.
-
Hey there,
That's a tough situation and to be honest I don't know exactly what you should do. Technically, you shouldn't be able to create a Google Places page for a business that only has a PO Box. They do this because they only want to list businesses with physical locations, but you do have a physical location - it's just somewhere else.
Anyway, I have a couple ideas. One is to edit the pin drop on your listing. If you edit the address for your listing, there should also be an option to edit the marker location (see attached). Just drag it to the appropriate spot.
If that doesn't work, you could try logging into Google Map Maker, requesting an edit to your location information and then leaving an explanation for the reviewers.
And if that doesn't work, you could just create your own custom map. This wouldn't change the information Google has about the business but at least you would be able to link to it from your website and show customers the actual location.
Hope this helps!
Tim
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
-
Google image search
How does google decide which image show up in the image search section ? Is is based on the alt tag of the image or is google able to detect what is image is about using neural nets ? If it is using neural nets are the images you put on your website taken into account to rank a page ? Let's say I do walking tours in Italy and put a picture of the leaning tower of pisa as a top image while I be penalised because even though the picture is in italy, you don't see anyone walking ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Did Google Ignore My Links?
Hello, I'm a little new to SEO, but I recently was featured (around 2 yrs ago) on some MAJOR tech blogs. For some reason however, my links aren't getting picked up for over 2 years - not even in MOZ, or other link checker services. - By now I should have had amazing boost from this natural building, but not sure what happened? This was completely white hat and natural links. The links were after the article was created though, would this effect things? - Please let me know if you have any advice! - Maybe I need to ping these some how or something? - Are these worthless? Thanks so much for your help! Here's some samples of the links that were naturally given to http://VaultFeed.com http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/09/13/microsoft-posts-cringe-worthy-windows-phone-video-ads-mocking-apple/ http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/15/4733176/microsoft-says-pulled-iphone-parody-ads-were-off-the-mark http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/16/microsoft_mocks_apple_in_vids_it_quickly_pulls/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2420710/Microsoft-forced-delete-cringe-worthy-spoof-videos-mocking-new-range-iPhones.html And a LOT more... Not sure if these links will never be valid, or maybe I'm doing something completely wrong? - Is there any way for Google to recognize these now, and then they'll be seen by MOZ and other sites too? I've done a LOT of searching and there's no definitive advice I've seen for links that were added after the URL was first indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DByers0 -
Google News sitemap keywords
My company is a Theater news and reviews site. We're building a google news sitemap and Google suggests some recommended keywords we can use with their <keywords>tag: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/116037</keywords> Our writers also tag their stories with relevant keywords. What should we populate the <keywords>tag with?</keywords> We were thinking we'd automatically populate it with author-added tags, in addition to one or more of the recommended ones suggested by Google, such as Theater, Arts, and Culture (all of our articles are related to these topics). Finally, many of our articles are about say, celebrities. An author may tag an article with 'Bryan Cranston,' and when this is the case we're considering also tagging it with the 'Celebrities' tag. Are all or any of these worthwhile?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
How to get the 'show map of' tag/link in Google search results
I have 2 clients that have apparently random examples of the 'show map of' link in Google search results. The maps/addresses are accurate and for airports. They are both aggregators, they service the airports e.g. lax airport shuttle (not actual example) BUT DO NOT have Google Place listings for these pages either manually OR auto populated from Google, DO NOT have the map or address info on the pages that are returned in the search results with the map link. Does anyone know how this is the case? Its great that this happens for them but id like to know how/why so I can replicate across all their appropriate pages. My understanding was that for this to happen you HAD to have Google Place pages for the appropriate pages (which they cant do as they are aggregators). Thanks in advance, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Do Google use HTTPS as a trust indicator?
Scenario: Two sites, exactly the same with a form to capture customer details on the home page (e.g. name, address). Would Google rank a site that uses HTTPS over a site that uses HTTP? From what I've heard, they would trust the HTTPS site more than HTTP and therefore rank it higher. Forum opinions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
Can google read ajax
Looking to load a one page product view instead of 10 pages of pagination. Does google read ajax and see all 10 pages as 1 page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Archers1 -
Google Places not appearing
is it possible to be sandboxed for a google places page? one of our clinics has a places page, and it was doing fine (http://www.google.com/maps/place?cid=5542269234389030356) but now whenever we set our location to trinity,fl and try to search for weight loss, weight loss trinity, etc.. it doesnt come up. it only comes up if we search medi weight loss trinity. also, when we go into our google places dashboard and try to edit the pictures, it doesnt show the same pictures on the actual locations page. for example, in our dashboard we have 5 pictures, but on the actual places page, 3 pictures are showing (none of which are in our dashboard). any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AustinBarton0 -
Getting rid of a site in Google
Hi, I have two sites, lets call them site A and site B, both are sub domains of the same root domain. Because of a server config error, both got indexed by Google. Google reports millions of inbound links from Site B to Site A I want to get rid of Site B, because its duplicate content. First I tried to remove the site from webmaster tools, and blocking all content in the robots.txt for site B, this removed all content from the search results, but the links from site B to site A still stayed in place, and increased (even after 2 months) I also tried to change all the pages on Site B to 404 pages, but this did not work either I then removed the blocks, cleaned up the robots.txt and changed the server config on Site B so that everything redirects (301) to a landing page for Site B. But still the links in Webmaster Tools to site A from Site B is on the increase. What do you think is the best way to delete a site from google and to delete all the links it had to other sites so that there is NO history of this site? It seems that when you block it with robots.txt, the links and juice does not disappear, but only the blocked by robots.txt report on WMT increases Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JacoRoux0