Can I use a fake email address for Moz Local submission? This is for a medical practice, that has been advised not to publish an email address due to HIPAA concerns.
-
I work with medical practices, who due to HIPAA do not want to publish an email address in listings.
Would it cause a problem if I just submitted a non-working address (like noreply@client.com) that is not set up at all, so any email sent there would just bounce?
Obviously, one option is to use a HIPAA compliant email account, but there are other considerations (timeliness of responses related to clinical issues, for example) that make it less than ideal for a many medical practices to publish a public email address of any sort.
I'm interested in any options or solutions that could allow me to use Moz Local (which requires an email address) for businesses with HIPAA concerns.
Ira
-
Thanks. I submitted a feature request:
https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/49105990-Make-email-address-an-optional-field-for-Moz-Local
-
What if someone emails this phony address and does not get a prompt reply? Is that a problem?
-
Hi Ira,
I've chatted with the team and learned that we will not reject a listing with a fake address, but I do share the above concerns about a poor user experience, because that address will be published on your listings. I think the idea of setting up an autoresponder is as good as any, here, so you'd likely want to implement this.
I'd also like to suggest that you make a feature request here https://seomoz.zendesk.com/forums/293194-Moz-Feature-Requests regarding the possibility of Moz Local not making the email a required feature of the .CSV. I think you've raised an important point about medical practices!
Hope this helps!
-
Thanks for your help. While we are on the topic, any idea why it is required? I'd love it if there was a "Moz Local Light" that submitted to only the sites that do not require an email. That would be helpful for medical practices, as well as for any other business that prefers not to use (or at least publish) an email address.
-
Hi Ira,
While I know that an email address is a required field of our .CSV template you'll be filling out, I'm not actually sure if there would be negative outcomes of using a non-working address in that field, in terms of updating your listings on our partners' platforms or otherwise. Let me bring this up with the rest of the Local team to get a consensus of opinion. I'll come back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for asking a smart question!
-
I agree, they should. But you might be surprised at the number of medical practices that simply do not have a knowledgeable security advisor.
-
Agreed, this is precisely the option I recommend... at the same time, I'm trying to be creative about alternatives. In some cases, the issue is NOT keeping the email secure, as required by HIPAA, but the ability to respond in a timely fashion. The autoresponder should handle this issue, but not all clients understand.
-
This medical practice should have a security advisor who they can go to for answers on this type of question. They are who you should be asking.
-
I think if it was me and my client, what I would recommend is getting a HIPPA compliant email hosting account and making a submission email with it. Then setting an auto responder to the email account telling them that it is not checked. Also I might try to put a disclaimer some where in the listing as well not to email medical issues.
You can only hurt your business so much by being compliant to peoples stupidities.
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
-
Best address to use on Google business listing for youth sports program
Hello, Moz Community! I'm helping a friend with some local marketing for his youth sports program. He trains his kids at a community center and a public park where court times are managed by the city. His address in his Google business listing is currently the community center, but that is shared with multiple businesses including the community center itself. I know he needs an address that is unique to his business, but he lives outside of the city in which his program is located. Our goal is to boost exposure in the city in which his program is located. Since 1) his business address is located outside of the city in which he conducts business and 2) the addresses at which he conducts his business is utilized by multiple businesses including the actual property owner, what options do I we have for an address that Google will recognize as valid and won't cause ranking issues? If there is nothing we can do in the current situation, what are steps we can take to address this issue for his business? Thanks a lot!
Local Listings | | Tony_GP0 -
Google My Business - What is the best way to remove "Duplicate Address"? Help!
Google can be such a pain with managing listings - especially when you are an agency managing a client's listing! I am hoping someone can help with this... How do I permanently delete a “duplicate address?” In the Google My Business dashboard (classic view), under account summary – I click duplicate locations. From here, I can easily remove a duplicate location - that is not the issue. The issue is for duplicate addresses. For this, we only have the option to resolve address, which directs you to the business’ location details. Our options are then to: 1. Change the business NAP 2. Permanently close location 3. Remove the listing from your dashboard (removing it from dashboard doesn’t delete it from Google). We edited the business’ name, phone number, address and website – to try and make it a duplicate location, because if we are able to make it a duplicate location then we know we will have the option to **Remove Duplicate. **Nothing has changed though. We don't want to mark this as a permanently closed location because if somebody does come across the listing down the road it is going to be misleading. The business is not actually closed! Any insight would be very much appreciated. Thank you!
Local Listings | | bcallegary0 -
Single Local Result on Google... Wut up with that?
I'm seeing, for several different locations, single businesses suddenly coming up for searches on local services, where there used to be 3-Pack results. Now it's like a knowledge panel result on the right. Anyone else seeing this? Any ideas as to what's going on... and if there's anything that can be done to revert it? (influence the type of local result). Thanks!
Local Listings | | WP-Pro1 -
Local Seo Service Url Best practices.
Hey Guys and Gals, What's the best format for service urls for local seo? http://www.example.com/basement-remodeling or http://www.example.com/basement-remodeling-ashburn-leesburg-sterling-va/
Local Listings | | hde0 -
Moz Local is saying a 800 is not okay...does it really negatively impact citations/rankings?
So I was considering using Moz Local to help improve the visibility of one of my clients who is trying to improve their local SEO (they only have one business location). When I submitted my existing client's listing there was an automated popup that read: Sorry, we're unable to update this listing right now Toll-free number detected Many of the partners to which Moz Local submits your data do not accept toll-free lines as primary phone numbers. Choosing a local phone number may also be better for rankings and increase the number of calls you get from local search customers. Is is true that having a "local phone number" can result in better rankings? Is there any articles/studies/evidence to support this? Also are there any discounts out there for first time Moz Local users?
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
A site is preforming well for 1 local term, but with a slight change to the term it dosnt rank.
Ive got a site thats currently ranking #2 in the local 7 pack listings for the search term : "garden design [city]" but is not ranking at all for "garden designer [city]" (note the "er" at the end of designer). The search traffic for these 2 terms is pretty much the same, and id like to get the site ranking for "garden designer [city]". The only thing i can think of is thats different is that in the <title>tag for the homepage of the site we have "Garden Design [City] - .....", is there any other way i can try and up the local 7 pack ranking for my site other than changing the title tag ?</p> <p>Im thinking of running a link building campaign for the phrase "garden designer [city]", but apart from that i cant think of anything else that could help up my rankings for this, any ideas ?</p></title>
Local Listings | | Sam-P0 -
Bright Local - Citation Burst. Winner or Loser?
Bright Local have a package called "Citation Burst." This looks great but, we all know directory submissions can have an extremely negative impact. Has anyone used Bright Local for Citation Burst, please let me know? Thanks Gary
Local Listings | | GaryVictory1 -
Local Subdomain vs. Local Subfolder
I know this is an issue that's been discussed here ad nauseum but I have, possibly, an interesting case. A third party company created our local search pages, and they perform very highly in SERPs, but are subdomains (local.website.com). But my problem comes down to two things, one of which isn't necessarily a subdomain vs. subfolder issue. 1.a. With the subdomain local.website.com we rank much higher for local search than we do for regular search on our main domain and it's respective keywords, would changing these subdomains to subfolders keep the link juice that the subdomain currently possesses and actually help our website rankings? b. And what strikes me as the most puzzling is that on local.website.com ALL of the content is identical (I can thank Copyscape for that) to the other local search pages on our own site and various other sites in our industry. I know the duplicate content is hurting our domain, which makes it even more confusing that our subdomain is ranking so highly for things like "diamonds by the yard florida". 2. We're an online only company, and I feel as though gaming the local search function isn't exactly something we should be doing, both from an ethical and an SEO standpoint. Is there any evidence that abusing the local search functions can have a negative affect on a domain's rankings? Hopefully this makes sense, if anyone needs clarification please let me know and I'll endlessly clarify. Thanks,
Local Listings | | allurez0