Question Regarding Multiple Google Places Pages
-
Hello,
One of my clients has about 20 different google places pages at locations that are not real. The previous SEO company thought that would help with local search. My problem is that several great reviews have been written on each page by real customers. I want to close the places pages for locations that don't exist, but I don't want to lose the reviews. Is anyone aware of a solution for this? I have searched Google's forums and have not found anything.
-
Hi Bjolley,
Thanks for coming to the forum to ask your question! I'm glad to see Members contributing their thoughts, but think a point needs to be clarified here.
This is not a case of claiming the 'best' profile and making it your client's authoritative Place Page - it is a case of claiming the CORRECT profile - the one for the business' legitimate location.
At this point, if this were my client, I would not be worrying about losing a few reviews on his phony Place Pages. I'd be sweating whether his account would be penalized before I could report the bogus listings through Google's report a problem link.
Now, that being said, I have seen cases where Google has accidentally displayed the reviews for one geographic location on another location's Place Page, but so far as I know, there is no way to save the reviews. Tell the client they are lucky you are trying to clean up the mess and that going forward, they will need to work on building up new reviews over time to replace what has been lost.
As a final thought, before you report the incorrect Place Pages, why not copy the good reviews and use them as testimonials on the client's website? You might even try doing this with hReview markup code to see if Google will eventually pick them back up again and display them on the authoritative Place Page. But first things first...tell the client you've got to get that record cleaned up as best you can, and fast!
Good luck to you!
Miriam
-
I don't think it would be a good idea to claim all of these profiles. Google will most likely just suspend your account. Claim only the best one with the most/best reviews on it. On all of the other duplicate profiles use the "report a problem" link and choose the "place has another listing" option. In the comments, give Google the direct URL to the claimed profile.
I am unsure how they will handle reviews for this, but at the very least you'll have a starting point with the best profile these previous "SEOs" did.
-
WOW an SEO firm that thought Quantity over Quality is important, NO!!!!!!
I am unaware of any solution for this, as I had a similar issue due to the company i work for has changed names a few times for Branding, so before i got here there were 3 -4 Place pages for each one of our 15 locations. It sucked to say the least especially since Google does not allow the use of extensions for authentication.
I would like to hear if anyone has any ideas, although I do not think it is possible. Especially since in most cases the comments are from 3rd party sources.
Hope you find an answer though!
w00t!
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 way to manage multiple Google My Business accounts as a marketing agency?
As marketing agency we have for each client a Google My Business account. This means that we have more than 100 Google My Business accounts. We know that GA has a limit of 100 analytics accounts (free version), but is there a limit in Google My Business too? For now, we have created multiple accounts that own different Google My Business accounts of our clients. Can I just change all the different e-mail accounts of our marketing agency and change it to one? So we can manage all the Google My Business accounts of our clients in one e-mail account?
Image & Video Optimization | | conversal0 -
Google + local Multiple Locations
My client has three offices and I have created three separate Google + local listings for them - I have listed the specific locations page as the website address for each - Google specifies to add the coding to the homepage to link Google + however what do we do with the three different codes - does each one go on the home page or at the bottom of the specific landing page for that particular office?
Image & Video Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
WordPress image file names SEO question
I’m using a plugin to upload images directly from Adobe Lightroom to WordPress and while the process is very convenient it adds “wpid-“ to the beginning of every image file name, so my “seo-friendly-image-title.jpg” becomes “wpid-seo-friendly-image-title.jpg”. The plugin author claims that it’s a WordPress thing and there isn’t anything he can do about it, yet it doesn’t happen when using the same plugin to upload to the NextGen Gallery Plugin instead of the built in WordPress media manager. I’m not really a fan of NextGen though so I’d rather use the built in WordPress media management. This is obviously an SEO forum not a WordPress troubleshooting forum, but I wanted to give a bit of background. My question is whether that “wpid-” at the beginning of all my image file names is going to cause any sort of SEO issue. If not, I won’t worry about it, but if it does I’ll have to either find another plugin or just go back to exporting from Lightroom to the desktop and then uploading through WordPress. Thanks in advance for any input.
Image & Video Optimization | | StephenWeigel0 -
Google Image Search?
We get very little search traffic from the images on our site & I can't necessarily figure out why? We post a ton & tag them correctly, we've got to be missing something? We are a Wordpress blog, can anyone provide some quality articles on Image search or have suggestions that should help to get more traffic? Our site does fairly well, as we get over 100k/visits a month, so we'd really like to get more traffic from our images.
Image & Video Optimization | | seointern0 -
Google+ Local/Places isn't displaying my suite #. Should I leave it out of NAP on other directories, too?
HI All, For some reason Google is not displaying the suite # for a client of mine in Google+ / Places. I've entered the suite # in the back-end of Google+ / Places and it shows there when I log in, but the public version of the listing omits it. So the question is, should the NAP in other directories omit it as well? Google knows it exists, but is choosing not to publish it... Thanks! Zack
Image & Video Optimization | | HammerandHand0 -
Local SEO address question - adding a suite number for shared address for office building
Hi, I have a client that has an address that is shared for a few different businesses in the holistic health field. My client is a chiropractor. There is an eye doctor, massage therapist and acupuncturist aslo sharing the same address. It's a subburban setting with two buildings all sharing one address. In the interest of preventing any merged listings down the road, I recently added un unofficial suite number to his website and Google places business listing. I also did this for all of his online directory listings, and for Bing and Yahoo as well. Did I do the right thing here? It seems to be having a positive impact on his local SEO as far as I can tell. Or at least there has not been any negative impact in the last 6 months Your thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | MozMan20 -
Issues with google places.
Hey there! A few weeks ago I made some changes to my client's "google places page". I am facing two issues there which I could not resolve on my own, they are: After I made changes and updated the page I could not see any activity on the analytics section whereas before I updated the page there was some metrics visible. The client had already claimed his places page before he came to me and entered some information. He just stuffed some keywords in the description section. I made necessary changes to the description based on the best practices for places page and according to Google's guideline for creating a great listing.The problem is the category did not update on the places page that show up in SERPs(it ranks top for four major keywords with geo indicators). However, the changes I made does appear when on the lower left side when I login into my places page. I don't see any link that will let me edit "description". Am I confusing some other section with category? I have tried to be as lucid as possible. I will appreciate any help. Thanks for your time. epMp kPWpf
Image & Video Optimization | | virtualhandshake0 -
Google Places Name Change - Duplicate Listings.
Need input on a Google Places change to avoid duplicate listing/phone number issue for a name change. Here is a summary: Company A has a Places listing and ranks week for key local terms. Company A has become a franchise and has a completely new name but same address. A New Franchise listing was created. It has same location but a different telephone (tracking) number. Both listings generally appear in Google Places but Company A (older listing) come up first. For branding purposes I would ideally like to eliminate (or edit) Company A listing and optimize new Franchise listing. We will need to eliminate the tracking phone number and add the old “Company A” phone number to the new Franchise listing. What is the best procedure to delete the Company A listing? I have access to both listings. Do I: -Strip Company A listing of most info…wait and then delete? Do I delete from my account or delete in total? -Just change the name of the “old” Company name to the new franchise name and delete the new franchise listing? An if so, in what order? -or do I just delete the old listing right away and edit the new franchise listing right away? -When do I add the old (and real phone number) to the new franchise listing? This same scenario has played out in other locations with disastrous results. Appears that Google looks at them as duplicate listings if the old Company name is still active and demotes both listings. Trying to avoid that problem that has been created by other companies. -Would adding Google Boost to the surviving listing help? Any input appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | AgileInt0