Remove unwanted map in SERP
-
My company is based in Brighton.
We run courses in London.
If you search 'london business writing' in Google UK, you get this:
http://i39.tinypic.com/35me3qs.jpg
Lolwut. Google is placing a link for a map to our Brighton offices beneath the second result.
For a London-related keyword that links to a page for our London courses that contains an address for our London venue.
We are registered on Google maps as being based in Brighton; we also have a map of our Brighton office on our contact page. But obviously, this is not relevant to this search.
How do I get rid of this map for this keyword?
-
Bix, really appreciate you coming back to update this thread. Great that you had success! And, while we mustn't mix up correlation with causation, I'd say the effort you made is a very strong candidate for the causation of this. Well done! Again, thanks for taking the time to share your results. Could be very useful to others in the future who run into a problem like this. Miriam
-
I actually solved this problem with a very similar solution - using the address markup at schema.org
Thanks for putting me on the right track!
-
It worked! The map is gone. Looks like Google really does pay attention to those schemas.
-
It's worth trying, Bix. Hope it works out for you!
-
Hi Miriam
Thanks so much for taking the time to look so thoroughly into this!
If it's something I'm stuck with, I'll just accept it - for very similar relevant 'london [keyword]' searches I don't get the map.
That said, I'm hoping that specifiying the London address on that page with schema.org tags will prevent Google from displaying the map.
-
Hi Again Bix,
As I suspected, this may be difficult/impossible to have remove. My only good suggestion on this is to try using the Google Maps Troubleshooter to see if you can get some help that way, but I think you may be stuck with that link being generated by the algo:
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps
Too bad there isn't a simple solution for this. Just one of those things where I wish there was more support!
Miriam
-
Hi Bix,
Thanks for the further info. You are very lucky to be showing up for that London search, given that you are not in London (i.e. you don't have a dedicated physical address there). The reason Google is associating that map with your business is because that is you company's real, registered physical address. Your screenshot is not of a set of local results, nor would you qualify for a real local result because of the lack of a dedicated address in that city. So, I'm afraid you are stuck with the map link to Brighton. I agree...that might confuse some users, but frankly, I would think that your awesome ranking outside of your city of location totally outweighs the downside of having that mapped link.
Sorry I can't tell you how to change this. Google displays what they feel is relevant, and for that search, they feel it's relevant to display your address.
I want you to know that I put a little feeler out amongst a couple of colleagues in Local to see if they have a different opinion on this. I didn't use your name or anything; just described the situation in general terms. If I get any differing opinions, I will certainly return to this thread, but I'm pretty positive any Local SEO will agree with my take on this.
Your site must have good traditional SEO and Local SEO factors to be doing so well for that term. You might like to read Linda Buquet's recent article on the Venice update...wonder if this could be the reason for your prominences in organic outside your true, physical location:
http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-venice-update-local-seo.html
Cheers!
Miriam
-
Just in case anyone finds this in future: I've tried adding the address markup here http://www.schema.org/PostalAddress
There's an unusually clear explanation of how to use this here: http://www.schema.org/docs/gs.html
If you have a basic understanding of HTML (esp div and span tags) you can learn how to do this fairly quickly.
-
I didn't know about rich snippets; thanks.
-
Hi Miriam
Thanks!
Our actual physical office is in Brighton. In London, we rent out a room. This room belongs to SOAS, a university.
-
Hi Bix,
Can you clarify for me whether you actually have a physical office dedicated to just your business in London - or are you sharing a building or something along those lines? That would be a start. Thanks, and by the way, love your screen name. I'm a big Bix fan.
Miriam
-
Perhaps you could add the London based address to all of the pages which Google is showing the map beneath the listing in the SERPs and mark the London address with rich snippets.
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
-
How to handle SEO redirection after remove www
Recently our https://bestclassifiedsusa.com free classifieds USA website we move from www to non www format. Now old urls still showing in Google SERP. When click they show 404 error pages due to removed old ads.
Technical SEO | | bcuclassifieds
We redirect www to non www version for main domain but still old cache pages affected.
How to dynamically handle this case, all old www version ads pages auto redirect to relevant category pages?0 -
Redirects and site map isn't showing
We had a malware hack and spent 3 days trying to get Bluehost to fix things. Since they have made changes 2 things are happening: 1. Our .xml sitemap cannot be created https://www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk/sitmap.xml we have tried external tools 2. We had 301 redirects from the http (www and non www versions) nad the https;// (non www version) throughout the whole website to https://www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk/ and subsequent pages Whilst the redirects seem to be happening, when you go into the tools such as https://httpstatus.io every version of every page is a 200 code only whereas before ther were showing the 301 redirects Have Bluehost messed things up? Hope you can help thanks
Technical SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
International architecture: Country specific subfolders > domain mapping to tld
Hi Ive got a clients dev saying they are setting up with country/language specific subfolders (as i recommended) BUT now they are saying they want to set up on network.domain.com (for example) and then each language will have its own sub-folder BUT will be domain mapped to the TLD as and when they get them. I have asked them to clarify since sounds a bit strange since thought best to have domain.com then /uk and /us etc etc and sure ok to forward country specific TLD's to these subfolders. Its this new subdomain (network.) thats concerning me and mapping rather than forwarding (or is it the same thing) but anyone know off hand if above sounds ok or also thinks a bit strange or know issues with such a set up ? many thanks dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Suddenly disappear from google SERP : Pls Help
I am facing too much problems with my all sites and i am afraid with google SERP result. I was penalize by google in previous yea and again Today too. i have a website name is removalinmelbourne.com.au i was happy with my seo because it was coming on the first page and 2nd page with most of the keywords like removalists melbourne, removals melbourne, movers in melbourne, removalists in melbourne and today i was shocked with my result this not showing anywhere on google . Please someone help me . How can i get back .
Technical SEO | | Tufail0 -
Yahoo Local SERPs Index Issue
I recently updated all my website page Titles and was checking to see how many have been crawled so far. On Yahoo/Bing I noticed something very strange when entering site:bandpages.ie in the search field. Selection Buttons (top of SERPs): 'Web' search shows all my pages indexed 'UK' has has most pages 'Only In Ireland' has just 1 page indexed - which is the site RSS Feed and nothing else! The site has been live for 2 years now. Considering we don't trade with the UK and our main focus is here in Ireland - what is going wrong? Why doesn't Yahoo/Bing index list the site pages in the Ireland index? Any insights or solutions appreciated...
Technical SEO | | Ubique0 -
Homepage disappeared from Google Serp
I redirected my domain using this code in .htaccess : RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xxxx.com
Technical SEO | | digitalkiddie
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.xxxx.com/$1 [R=301,L]
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]/)index.(html?|php)(?[^\ ])?\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]/)*)index.(html?|php)$ http://www.xxxx.com/$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule> A day after I did it, got an error in GWMT "Google can't find your site's robots.txt" and my homepage disappeared from the result pages. When I try to open Google cache of the homepage I got an error 404. I generated new robots.txt, uploaded it , now the error doesnt show but still my homepage is not in the serps. Its been 3 days. What should I do ? Thanks in advance "Google can't find your site's robots.txt" error? - Pro ...0 -
Wrong listing in SERP
For one of the keyword of my website wrong URL appearing in SERP.I wanted to remove that listing in SERPs.How can i remove that listing in SERP?
Technical SEO | | Alick3000 -
Remove Site from Google
How can I get my website out of google? I want all pages completely gone. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0