Location in business name for listings
-
A while back, I changed 26 of our business listings on Google so that the business name included the city, for example: "Business Name Sheffield", "Business Name York", "Business Name Doncaster".
It looked consistent, it was easier to read in Google Maps when searching for Eden Mobility and even better - it may have been the cause of positive impacts in our local rankings. Using the Moz Local tool, I'm now looking at rolling out this change out throughout ALL of our business listings on the web, including Factual, Yelp etc etc... Does anybody have thoughts on this? At the back of my mind I can't help but think that I should be consistently using ONLY the business name throughout all of my online business listings. Will Google consider each of these locations as separate business entities? Here's something I found in Google's guidelines:
Adding unnecessary information to your name (e.g. "Google Inc. – Mountain View Corporate Headquarters" instead of "Google") by including marketing taglines, shop codes, special characters, hours or closed/open status, phone numbers, website URLs, service/product information, location/address or directions or containment information (e.g. "Chase ATM in Duane Reade") is not permitted.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I've seen some big businesses such as ASDA doing the same thing I'm doing - but I'm undecided!
-
Holiday Inn actually names those businesses by location though. So that's their "real name."
Even on their own site, it's "holiday inn sydney" etc. It's not "Holiday Inn" with a location. It's a slight but important difference.
-
That's exactly how we feel. We don't want to get hammered on the next update with it being against their terms. The example of "Holiday Inn Salem" is an interesting one. If I search for "Holiday Inn" around my location, I get various results including "Holiday Inn York" and "Holiday Inn Lincoln".
Acceptable: "Starbucks", "Macy’s", "Holiday Inn Salem", "U.S. Bank ATM", "University of California Berkeley"
It looks to me that they're essentially trying to achieve the same thing we are.
-
As you have already found, the guidelines are fairly clear. Unless the location is part of the name (their example is Holiday Inn Salem) then I wouldn't do it. Your competitors and others may be "getting away with it" but that's exactly what they're doing - it's not right and they'll eventually get pulled up on that.
I guess the question is a question of winning now vs winning long term. You may be able to keep it in there and win for a while then change and no issues. But you may have to change later on and take a bit of a knock for not doing it right the first time. It's hard to predict but if you feel confident in beating the system, keep it. I wouldn't - I'd go with strict business name per the guidelines.
It's one thing to mess with Google in SEO (offsite, etc.) but it's another to use one of their own products incorrectly. Highly likely to get 'caught' on it.
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
-
Adding Multiple Country Locations for Google Business Listings
Hi Moz community, I hope everyone is well. I would like to ask for your advice on how to show a Google Business listing in both the UK and US for our brand. I understand that you can add multiple locations to your Google listing under the 'Manage Locations' tab but I wasn't quite sure how it worked in practice. I have a couple of questions below: If we have 2 registered locations/offices (one in the UK and one in the US) are we able to create 2 separate locations that will show our business listing correctly in the right-hand margin when people search for our brand in the US and UK respectively? If so, when a user finds our business listing in the US, are we able to serve them our US website version when they click the 'Website' button, as opposed to showing them our UK website? Our US website has been created as a sub-directory from our main UK site and can be seen as: www.example.com/us/ I hope someone is able to help, and thank you in advance.
Local Listings | | Katarina-Borovska
Katarina0 -
Business Split into 2 Businesses - Residential and Commercial Site - 2 different URLs and both have the same address! Can we create 2 separate Google My Business Accounts?
Business Split into 2 Businesses - Residential and Commercial Site - 2 different URLs and both have the same address! Can we create 2 separate Google My Business Accounts?
Local Listings | | 9thCO0 -
Call forwarding phone number from a satellite location?
Should I be cautious about using a local number that is forwarded on to my main office? I have 2 "satellite" offices. 1 has an actual phone number and line that is active at the location, and the other has a "local" number that is forwarded. The location with the actual phone number and line that is active at the location is performing much better, and I am trying to isolate the cause. Ben
Local Listings | | BSessions0 -
"Duplicate" on Google Local - Attorney and Business Listing
For our law firm, we have a Google Local listing for the firm (Riddell Law LLC). Google also created a local listing for one of the attorneys (Riddell) (we didn't create it, but are in the process of verifying it). Both listings are at the same address. Moz Local says these are "duplicates" - is that true? Would Google penalize us for this? I am not sure how to fix it - both the individual attorney and the business are in fact at the same address. If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you!!
Local Listings | | bpurdue0 -
Local Business Registered at not a real Address
Hi, I am working on local SEO for a client of mine and was interested to hear what will be recommended in this case: My client registered his business in a NYC address, for his own business needs. Can I use this address as a second location for the business? There is a secretary taking care of ALL the businesses listed there, but is not a location that services customers. We don't service customers on site at any location because it's a pickup business to begin with, but we do have a fully functional office in NJ Please don't dismiss this right away, it was registered in NYC and not in NJ and all our information on the web cites this address over our NJ one (obviously i'm working on promoting our NJ one, but that's nowhere to be found on the web).
Local Listings | | Rachel_J0 -
What is the ideal length of a business description for citations?
I am trying to write a business description for building citations. What is the ideal length or word count for this? I am using Yext to help get them listed, did a lot of searching for an answer and was unable to come up with a definite answer. Any help would be great! The business I am working on for this is James River Church, they have 2 locations. So I am trying to write a unique description for both locations.
Local Listings | | chris.oursbourn0 -
Is there any data about how user interact with the local 7 pack listing, do they scroll past it or use it like a normal SERP ?
Does any one have any data about how users interact with the local 7 pack listings in regards to position to CTR ratios, do everyday users tend to scroll past it to the normal SERPs as they might do with adwords ads (as the local pack is formatted slightly different to normal SERPs) ? bMvtUSe.png
Local Listings | | Sam-P0 -
Help with Google Places, local listings & Google+ please!
Hi all, I work for enterprise app development & mobile consultancy, Mubaloo. I recently asked a question around getting better rankings for London-based search results. One answer was to set up a local listing for Mubaloo's London office. I thought I had done by setting up our London office up on Places for Business - is this the same as a local listing? In addition to this, I can't connect our existing Google+ page to our local Mubaloo Bristol & London listings as Google has created separate pages for each! Is anyone else having this issue? Can it be resolved?
Local Listings | | donaldsze0