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
-
Incorrect Youtube metadescription in Google SERP
One of our client's Youtube video is showing a competitor's meta data on the Google search results page? It looks like it is pulling from videos in the right-hand rail of the Youtube page. Is there any way this can be controlled/changed? If so, how? The client is Deep South Crane. When you perform a search for "Deep South Heavy Hitters", the correct video appears in the search results. However, the meta-description is pulling from a competitor's Youtube. Any insight as to why this is happening and how I can change it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | JaredBroussard0 -
Removed .html - Now Get Duplicate Content
Hi there, I run a wordpress website and have removed the .html from my links. Moz has done a crawl and now a bunch of duplicated are coming up. Is there anything I need to do in perhaps my htaccess to help it along? Google appears to still be indexing the .html versions of my links
Technical SEO | | MrPenguin0 -
Giving a final nudge to lead the serps
hi
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy
might be a weird one to ask. working on an ecommerce site, using all new inbound marketing best practices the site positioned on many keywords on the second page of results. the site started to generate income. Assuming budget is not an issue here, do you have any suggestions on how to give it the final push. any ideas will be considered.0 -
Broken Instant Preview on SERPS
When I check on my SERPS the preview is all mixed up. The images are over each other and it is all like broken. What could cause the problem? Thank you very much in advance for any help! The website is http://villasdiani.com
Technical SEO | | VillasDiani0 -
Redirects in site map
I have a site with the ace/sef ( creates friendly URLS) in a large data base site. It creates a site map dynamically. Yet I realize one issue which I am trying to think through. I recently changed my urls to include an ID number example: homepage/houses/1134-big-blue-house The prior url was: homepage/houses/big-blue-house the original url above redirects to the new one with the ID like I want. However the site map has both URLS in it which go to same page I am not sure but it seems rather stupid to have the new URL and OLD redirected URL in the site map. Yet beside stupid I am wondering if this is duplicate content and will cause a penalty from the google bot. What is your opinion ?
Technical SEO | | aimiyo0 -
Directory Indexed in Google, that I dont want, How to remove?
Hi One of my own websites, having a slight issue, Google have indexed over 500+ pages and files from a template directory from my eCommerce website. In google webmaster tools, getting over 580 crawl errors mostly these ones below I went into my robots text file and added Disallow: /skins*
Technical SEO | | rfksolutionsltd
Disallow: /skin1* Will this block Google from searching them again? and how do I go about getting the 500 pages that are already indexed taken out? Any help would be great | http://www.rfkprintsolutions.co.uk/skin1/modules/Subscriptions/subscription_priceincart.tpl | 403 error | Jan 15, 2012 |
| http://www.rfkprintsolutions.co.uk/skin1/modules/Subscriptions/subscription_info_inlist.tpl | 403 error | Jan 15, 2012 |
| http://www.rfkprintsolutions.co.uk/skin1/modules/Subscriptions/subscriptions_admin.tpl | 403 error | Jan 15, 2012 |0 -
Subdomain Removal in Robots.txt with Conditional Logic??
I would like to see if there is a way to add conditional logic to the robots.txt file so that when we push from DEV to PRODUCTION and the robots.txt file is pushed, we don't have to remember to NOT push the robots.txt file OR edit it when it goes live. My specific situation is this: I have www.website.com, dev.website.com and new.website.com and somehow google has indexed the DEV.website.com and NEW.website.com and I'd like these to be removed from google's index as they are causing duplicate content. Should I: a) add 2 new GWT entries for DEV.website.com and NEW.website.com and VERIFY ownership - if I do this, then when the files are pushed to LIVE won't the files contain the VERIFY META CODE for the DEV version even though it's now LIVE? (hope that makes sense) b) write a robots.txt file that specifies "DISALLOW: DEV.website.com/" is that possible? I have only seen examples of DISALLOW with a "/" in the beginning... Hope this makes sense, can really use the help! I'm on a Windows Server 2008 box running ColdFusion websites.
Technical SEO | | ErnieB0 -
Leaving Comments on blogs when html is removed
I found the following blog. It is pagerank 5 do follow http://www.unssc.org/web1/programmes/rcs/cca_undaf_training_material/teamrcs/forumdetail.asp?ID=32 If you attempt to leave a comment with html, the html is removed. There is a button which allows you to leave a comment but if you do it gets redirected to the domain of the blog not your site. However there are still people leaving links with the url of the intended site. As late as today. look at this comment
Technical SEO | | mickey11
Comment posted by : Alex on 09/09/2011 I love to se percorsi on this site very often How is this done, if anyone knows I got the code done to this your keywords The important part being mce_real_href0