Google Places, Plus, and National Service
-
I'm attempting to dive into the Google Places and Google + Local mess.
First off, we are a company that services nationally. Our installer manager travels worldwide however in 15+ areas we have local sales and/or installers that service customers locally. There is no business storefront, rather they work out of their home and travel around their local area (100+ miles). Our main office is a storefront and we do service clients at our store, plus travel locally and nationally, as I mentioned.
#1) Can I (should I) create separate listings for each of these installers? They are independent contractors... Use their local phone number and residential home address? Put somehow put our main 800 number as the secondary number along with our main website address?
Or, should we try the bulk upload feature of 'stores' and attach them to our name and website address?
#2) Our Places address is under our Marketing Director's login through Google. We have most everything else under another email address which includes our Google Plus Business page, AdWords, Merchant account, etc.
Should I go back and claim the Places page through our main email account, and then merge the Places account with our Google Plus page?
#3) Currently our Places page says we serve all 50 states. Should I try to keep that the same (I don't think you can select 'states' for the areas you service anymore, or can you?) or should I move to our local installers in our 15+ and growing areas?
I've been reading through past Google Places discussions here and I've been trying to find out more about the bulk upload feature to see if it would work but I'm getting stumped.
-
Hi Kristi,
-
If you choose to create local listings for each of your installers, then, yes, you would have to use their home address and local area code phone number (I do not recommend putting your 800 number on your listing even as the second phone number). You would then need to choose the hide address feature in creating each of the listings, because employees are going to customers rather than customers coming to the employees' home. Do not overlook this step, or the listings are likely to be yanked. Honestly, if you can avoid the bulk upload feature, I would. I'd do this individually.
-
Google will eventually merge the + and Place pages. Recommend you study this article regarding the category selected when you created the + page to see if you are eligible for a manual merge request or if you need to wait (http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/06/08/google-for-business-places-forums-wrapup/). Also recommend you read: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/08/03/google-business-and-local-merge-process-is-now-live/. Because you are dealing with what is essentially a multi-location business (like a franchise) Google has not yet announced a solution/intentions regarding how it will handle this type of business.
-
Where does your Place Page say you serve all 50 states? The description? Can you please provide a little more detail.
Don't feel badly about being stumped. The changes have made everybody's head spin! Mine, too!
Miriam
-
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
-
Favicon not showing in google serps
Hi, I have a website where the favicon is not showing in the google mobile serps. It's appearing the default icon instead (world icon). This is the tag I have place in the head section of the website: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" /> The size of the favicon is 48x48 and it's appearing correctly in the browser tag. I've checked that the google robot can crawl it and in the server logs I can see requests from the "Google Favicon" user-agent. Has anyone had this same problem? Any advice?
Technical SEO | | dMaLasp0 -
Why would Google not index all submitted pages?
On Google Search console we see that many of our submitted pages weren't indexed. What could be the reasons? | Web pages |
Technical SEO | | Leagoldberger
| 130,030 Submitted |
| 87,462 Indexed |0 -
Is the Google results serp broken?
Hi everyone! We've been trying to decipher how many of our pages are indexed by google at the moment. If we do the usual "site:https://www.hobbydb.com" search term, the serp says that we have more than 740,000 pages indexed. However, when I do a deep dive and click through to the last page of results, I can only get to page 54, and then there are no more results. This would mean that I only have 540 pages indexed, not 740,000. We have also done other queries for other sub-sections of our website, and the results also truncate at 50 pages. Has anyone run into this problem? Any suggestions are appreciated! Best, Alex
Technical SEO | | mpchobbydb0 -
Homepage is deindexed in Google
Happened sometime on the 12th or 13th of Feb (is there a way to tell exactly besides referring to GA?).
Technical SEO | | Shinosky
I've been on the Google Webmasters Tools forums trying to nail this down - https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/webmasters/OgpmNCc3IFA/mmtgUilyXUUJ I can only think that Google is viewing this as duplicate content from an internal page for example: http://mudlifeled.com/shop Very frustrating because we were moving up on the first page for some good brand key words and traffic was climbing. Now I've got my hands up and am at a loss to what I can do.0 -
Does Google index has expiration?
Hi, I have this in mind and I think you can help me. Suppose that I have a pagin something like this: www.mysite.com/politics where I have a list of the current month news. Great, everytime the bot check this url, index the links that are there. What happens next month, all that link are not visible anymore by the user unless he search in a search box or google. Does google keep those links? The current month google check that those links are there, but next month are not, but they are alive. So, my question is, Does google keep this links for ever if they are alive but nowhere in the site (the bot not find them anymore but they work)? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Google sitemap just for a part of site?
Hi, I am about reorganize (content and seo-wise) a part of a larger site and I wondered if it is possible to use a Google sitemap just for some but not all pages of a site? Does anyone know if this has any impact on pages that are not included in the sitemap? Thanks
Technical SEO | | haest0 -
Google Fresh Update
Here's a question, if you put the date in your url (often a wordpress format) would that be seen by Google now as 'fresh' content? - part of their new update.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
How can I improve my google places ranking?
I am currently registered with google places for 'video conferencing in Melbourne australia' however I don't show up on page 1 of the places sesrch results for this search term. How can I improve it. I do note that my office address is in a residential area and not Melbourne CBD. Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | dantmurphy0