Should I omit the street address for a delivery based business?
-
I have a client who has a small ready mix concrete delivery business. A couple months ago the client payed another agency to add their business to google places/business—whatever their calling it these days, and to bing places.
So instead of the agency submitting the full address, and the full NAP, they just submitted the Name, City, State, and phone (left off the street address). I guess their rational was that by doing it this way, my client would show up for a more broad region instead of a small specific region for local search.
It's been about 2-3 months now since the agency completed the work and I noticed that my client just started showing up on the maps today.
When my client first hired me, I advised them to let me submit their full NAP, with the street address to Moz Local, and add the NAP micro-data to the footer of their website, with the hopes that google would start paying attention to their location and begin indexing and ranking their website. But after seeing their website begin to show up on the maps, I'm wondering if that's the right decision.
So my question is: Should I submit the _full NAP—_with street address—to moz local, or should I submit the NAP without the street address?
And depending on which of those I should do, how should I proceed with the google+ business page and the bing for places page?
-
That makes sense. The address that the previous agency submitted was his home address. He has a small commercial business address in a neighbor city, but the majority of his business comes from around his home address. He told me his thinking was that by submitting his home address, his website would be more likely to show for potential customers due to google map proximity, which makes sense to me.
-
I'm betting dollars to doughnuts that's probably the case with the NAP. It's likely in the dashboard but hidden. You should absolutely include the full NAP on the website (typically in the footer and on the contact page and preferably in Schema markup) and use it in your citation building. It's extremely important to do so
-
I'm with Miriam on this!
If the listing was set up properly in the Google My Business dashboard then the full address is listed but the address is not shown live because it's a violation for the address to show if they only do business at the client's locations.
However citations should still have full address and NAP should match exactly as it is in the dashboard. Because Google matches citations to the address field even if address is suppressed.
Only exception would be if it's a home address and the client is adamant about having it not listed anywhere. If so, then Phil Rozek has a good post about citation sources that allow submission without a street address.
-
Hi Miriam,
That could very well be the case. We're still waiting on the google+ login credentials from the previous agency. If that is the case, I should still include the full NAP on the website and Moz Local, right? Would moz local complain at all about the full NAP not showing up on google+ if I submit the full NAP to moz local?
-
Hi Scott,
I'm a wee bit puzzled by this - could it be that the client did submit their complete NAP but then marked the address so that it would be hidden? This would be quite common for a service area business. I would not have believed that you could create a Google+ Local Page/Google My Business Page without at least submitting the complete NAP. I could be wrong about this, but just to be sure, have you taken a logged-in look at the client's Google My Business dashboard to see if the NAP is, in fact, missing?
-
YES...you do need to include the full NAP!
Check here at moz.com for the local search ranking factors survey - we're still working on this years, but last years shows too the vast importance of the full NAP on every page....
-
No sure why you would not include the street address. If this is because the business does not have an office or place for customers to visit then they should make this clear elsewhere on their site..in the contact us section or about us section, stating that the address is a Depot only and does not have a customer service department at this location and to call xxxxxxxxxx for sales etc, will help solve this.
Search engines like complete data, therefore if the full address is ambiguous, then the business might be perceived as ambiguous.
Hope this is useful
Bruce
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
-
Mapping the Google My Business locations I manage?
Is there a way to see all of the business locations I manage on a map, so it's easy to visualize and check? Like a Google Custom map, but I don't want to create a custom map because then I'd be updating information in two places. I thought this would be a built-in feature of Google My Business but I can't seem to find any information about this. Thanks! -Ryan
Local Listings | | RyanD.0 -
NAP-safe way to display second address (P.O. box) on website?
I understand that only listing one address on a company website helps maintain NAP consistency, but is there a way to safely have a second address listed? A client of ours recently asked us if we could put their P.O. box address up on their website, so that THEIR clients would be able to conveniently look it up when mailing in documents, paperwork, checks, etc. They presently have their physical office address listed on their site, as well as in local listings. One idea we had would be to have the P.O. box address listed only on an image, so the crawler won't see the address, but there are potential accessibility issues with that solution. Would any specific kinds of markup or meta tags prevent the P.O. box from getting picked up and causing NAP confusion in local listings? Or am I simply overthinking this one? Thanks!
Local Listings | | BrianAlpert780 -
Having two GMB listings at same address
We currently have two verified GMB listings at the same address - I "inherited" these when I joined the company, and was considering merging them, as I am aware it is generally not recommended to have more than one listing per company per location. However, the two listings highlight two different sectors of our company so I decided to keep both and optimised them as best as possible by completing the information, adding pictures etc. One of the listings uses our legal company name, one uses our name that we trade under as an e-commerce business. The listing with our legal company name links to our corporate website and focuses on installations we do, while the listing with our e-commerce business name links to our ecommerce website and focuses on products we sell through there so they differ a bit from each other. Both serve the entire country, so they are not targeted specifically toward local searches. The following differ: Business name, sector, website
Local Listings | | ViviCa1
The following are the same: Address, phone number, opening hours So far we haven't had any issues, both are verified and show up in Google, but recently, we have had the following notification pop up: Fix locations with duplicate addresses__Use shop codes to differentiate locations that have the same address. Click each location and give it a unique address or shop code, or remove it. I'd appreciate some advice as to what would be best in this situation. Should I just add shop codes to differentiate the two listings in order to be able to keep them both? If so, what purpose do these shop codes have, how should I format these and will these be publicly visible within our listings? If you would suggest merging them, how could I ensure that it shows up whether people search for our e-commerce business name or for our legal business name as these are different? Thanks in advance!0 -
Getting your business name on a Google Map?
How do you get your business name to appear on Google Maps? See attachment. What's the process to get this to happen? I have a Google Local listing, but that doesn't seem to be enough. ZzFnwBj
Local Listings | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Does Google Penalize for Hiding Address?
I have a situation where a client is working out of their home. I know that Google does not like when you list a business with a home address so we have hidden the address on Google, but are wondering if Google penalizes businesses for hiding it? When listing them to other directories we do our best to find ones that we can hide the first line of the address. But does that matter? Should we just be listing to our normal directories with the address visible? Does a mix of hidden addresses and visible ones hurt your rankings? Thanks in advance for your help!
Local Listings | | JohnWeb120 -
Google keeps updating/tweaking my Local business branch addresses ? to whats different in my citations and on page. how can I stop it?
Hi All, I have a number of branches as we have separate branch pages and separate google local listings for these. I have been trying to keep them in consistent for citation purposes but google keeps trying to tweak the address in the local listings. Sometimes for example , google is trying to remove the premises number from the Road e.g 78 Doncaster Road is the actual branch address but google local business wants it as Doncaster Road, I also see Google is wanting to sometimes remove the locality name etc?.. Also If the local listing has a county ( in America - you would have State) , google is sometimes wanting to remove this add United Kingdom in Country instead ?. Is this a problem and how to deal with it as I think this is obviously impacting my local rankings?. If i approve all these changes then do I need update all my citations and page addresses all the time ? Or can I just leave the suggested "Update" or overwrite googles suggestion with what I had originally. Does anyone else have this problem ? thanks pete
Local Listings | | PeteC120 -
Google Places for Business was removed after 6 months
Hello Everyone, After 6 Months, Google has removed us from Google Places for Business and Maps. We did everything properly and we where serving on the 3rd position. Now it seems that the listing is back in Pending? 1. Does anybody have any suggestions how to proceed or how to handle this?
Local Listings | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
2. Can we use places listings again using the same Address?
3. How long will it take to process again?
4. We also heard that some one might of complained?? Your help is much needed. Thanks0 -
How to remove a former business location from Google Places?
I've received a strange response from Google Places on local listings for a home builder. Google's rep suggested that we not list the new home sales center (a model home) since at some point it will change from being a business listing to a residential listing. That is just wrong. It will be a place of business for the next 3 years and then will flip to being a private residence. These days it is uncommon, but not that rare to turn over ownership from public to private or vice versa (A residence becoming a law or other commercial establishment. Or a whole office building becoming condos.) The issue is, when it does happen, how do we get Google and others to recognize that a business is no longer a business location? I've had trouble bringing down the address of former former model home sales centers on Google Places much to the chagrin of the residents.
Local Listings | | BlairKuhnen0