Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Local SEO - two businesses at same address - best course of action?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Local SEO - two businesses at same address - best course of action?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    8
    2324
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • McTaggart
      McTaggart last edited by

      Hi Mozzers - I'm working with 2 businesses at the moment, at the same address - the only difference between the two is the phone number.

      I could ask to split the business addresses apart, so that NAP(name, address, phone number) is different for each businesses (only the postcode will be the same).

      Or simply carry on at the moment, with the N and Ps different, yet with the As the same - the same addresses for both businesses.

      I've never experienced this issue before, so I'd value your input.

      Many thanks, Luke

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • McTaggart
        McTaggart @MiriamEllis last edited by

        Thanks Miriam - that makes good sense - many thanks for your feedback 🙂 Luke

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • MiriamEllis
          MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by

          Hi Luke!

          Excellent additional details. This definitely should pass muster as two distinct businesses. And I do advise using the distinct addresses for each business as they genuinely do each have their own address. You want customers (and bots) to associate the right address with the right business. So you'll have a unique name, address, phone number and categories for these 2 businesses and should be a-okay!

          McTaggart 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • McTaggart
            McTaggart @MiriamEllis last edited by

            Hi Miriam and I'm very grateful for your input, as ever.

            Here's some clarification:

            One business is a cookery school offering educational services - the other business is a restaurant open to the public, run by the students of the cookery school (both are owned by the same company).

            The company in question has been using the same address for both - 24-27 Castle Mews - t**he business names and phone numbers are different. **

            So all seems OK at the moment. I could keep their shared address as it is, which is accurate.

            However, it is also clear that each business actually has a distinct address within Castle Mews, so if I wish to differentiate/split the addresses, so each business has a distinct address, I can:

            The restaurant is at 24-26 Castle Mews - the cookery school is at 27 Castle Mews, so does it make sense to split the addresses along these lines, or doesn't it really matter?

            Look forward to hearing from you, Luke

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • MiriamEllis
              MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by

              Hey Luke!

              Good conversation going on here. I'm going to respectfully disagree with the advice of adding a fictitious suite element to the address, as using your real-world address only is one of the guidelines about which Google is very clear. Using suite addresses in this scenario has, indeed, been something people have experimented with in the past, prompted by Google's past fiasco with large numbers of listings merging due to shared partial details. However, Google seems to have gotten much better at not merging listings, and, in fact, seems quite capable of discerning one business from another despite a shared address. However, I will make these provisos:

              1. Luke, I want to be sure I understand what you're saying about only the phone number being different? Aren't the names of the 2 businesses different? If not, and this is actually just one business, then they are only eligible for a single GMB listing - not two of them.

              2. Yes, the phone numbers must be unique.

              3. There can be trouble if the two businesses are in the same industry. In other words, if one business is Bill's Garage and the other business is Frank's Garage, you'll want to regularly monitor for any signs of merging.

              4. It's a good idea not to share Google categories between the two businesses, if it can be helped.

              5. Always make sure (as the Local SEO) that you really are marketing two separate businesses that adhere to Google's definition of that. For example, you may encounter clients who want to market their air conditioning repairs as a separate business from their heater repairs, when in fact this is actually just a single business. You'll do more harm than good by helping the client try to market themselves as though they were two. Point to the guidelines and explain the disaster that can come from getting on Google's bad side and you'll be doing the client a world of good 🙂

              Hope this helps!

              McTaggart 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • MichaelGregory
                MichaelGregory last edited by

                There are tons of businesses that share a street address with others (like at a shopping mall). I've never seen a problem where having 2 addresses the same affected anything. The suite A/B thing is fine though, even if it's only a placebo effect.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • McTaggart
                  McTaggart @LoganRay last edited by

                  Ah, so varying all elements - the Name, Address and Phone number - that seems logical - thanks for your feedback.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • LoganRay
                    LoganRay last edited by

                    Hi Luke,

                    I've had many clients in the same situation. The approach I typically take is to split up the street address between a Suite A and Suite B (or some similar variation of that). Google is still able to pinpoint the geographic location of the business, but also recognizes that they're not identical.

                    McTaggart 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Got a burning SEO question?

                    Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                    Start my free trial


                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • HimalayanInstitute

                      WordPress Sub-directory for SEO

                      wordpress subdirectory domain authority

                      Hi There, I'm working on a WordPress site that includes a premium content blog with approx 900 posts. As part of the project, those 900 posts and other membership functionality will be moved from the main site to another site built specifically for content/membership. Ideally, we want the existing posts to remain on the root domain to avoid a loss in link juice/domain authority. We initially began setting up a WordPress Multisite using the sub-directory option. This allows for the main site to be at www.website.com and the secondary site to be at www.website.com/secondary. Unfortunately, the themes and plugins we need for the platform do not play nicely with WordPress Multisite, so we started seeking a new solution, and, discovered that a second instance of WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory on the server. This would give us the same subdirectory structure while bypassing WordPress Multisite and instead, having two separate single-site installs. Do you foresee any issues with this WordPress subdirectory install? Does Google care/know these are two separate WordPress installs and do we risk losing any link juice/domain authority?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HimalayanInstitute
                      0
                    • seopack.org.ofici3

                      I need help in doing Local SEO

                      Hey guys I hope everyone is doing well. I am new to SEO world and I want to do local SEO for one of my clients. The issue is I do not know how to do Local SEO at all or where to even start. I would appreciate it if anyone could help me or give me an article or a course to learn how to do it. Main question The thing that I want to do is that, I want my website to show up in top 3 google map results for different locations(which there is one actual location). For example I want to show up for
                      online clothing store in new york
                      online clothing store in los angeles or... Let's assume that we can ship our product to every other cities. So I hope I could deliver what I mean. I'd appreciate it if you could answer me with practical solutions.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopack.org.ofici3
                      0
                    • bedynamic

                      SEO on dynamic website

                      Hi. I am hoping you can advise. I have a client in one of my training groups and their site is a golf booking engine where all pages are dynamically created based on parameters used in their website search. They want to know what is the best thing to do for SEO. They have some landing pages that Google can see but there is only a small bit of text at the top and the rest of the page is dynamically created. I have advised that they should create landing pages for each of their locations and clubs and use canonicals to handle what Google indexes.Is this the right advice or should they noindex? Thanks S

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bedynamic
                      0
                    • kirin44355

                      Mass URL changes and redirecting those old URLS to the new. What is SEO Risk and best practices?

                      Hello good people of the MOZ community, I am looking to do a mass edit of URLS on content pages within our sites. The way these were initially setup was to be unique by having the date in the URL which was a few years ago and can make evergreen content now seem dated. The new URLS would follow a better folder path style naming convention and would be way better URLS overall. Some examples of the **old **URLS would be https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-9-17-2012,default,pg.html
                      https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-11-13-2012,default,pg.html
                      https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates/buying-guide-9-3-2012,default,pg.html
                      https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates/buying-guide-7-19-2012,default,pg.html The new URLS would look like this which would be a great improvement https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
                      https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
                      https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates,default,pg.html
                      https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates,default,pg.html My worry is that we do rank fairly well organically for some of the content and don't want to anger the google machine. The way I would be doing the process would be to edit the URLS to the new layout, then do the redirect for them and push live. Is there a great SEO risk to doing this? 
                      Is there a way to do a mass "Fetch as googlebot" to reindex these if I do say 50 a day? I only see the ability to do 1 URL at a time in the webmaster backend. 
                      Is there anything else I am missing? I believe this change would overall be good in the long run but do not want to take a huge hit initially by doing something incorrectly. This would be done on 5- to a couple hundred links across various sites I manage. Thanks in advance,
                      Chris Gorski

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin44355
                      0
                    • seoman10

                      CDN for SEO (or not)?

                      Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman10
                      1
                    • AlexanderWhite

                      Can we have 2 websites with same business name and same business address?

                      I have 2 websites with same business name and same business address, and obvious 2 different domain names.  I am providing the same services from 2 websites. Is this is a problem?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite
                      0
                    • Peter264

                      Does font size affect SEO?

                      In the eyes of Google, would the font text size of say a news article affect SEO?  For example, a slightly larger font being easier to read by those with bad eyes?  Accessibility?  If so, what size would be ideal? 10, 12, 14? Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
                      0
                    • scanlin

                      Does capitalization matter for SEO?

                      Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?

                      Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin
                      1

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.