Multiple Businesses at the Same Address - Avoiding Google Places Trouble
-
I'm trying to avoid problems with Google Places; this is like "address confusion", but is rather "business confusion".
We have a gym at a street address with a suite number, and a number of personal trainers who work out of the gym. Several of them have their own websites and their own Google Places pages.
1 trainer has a Yelp account that lists the gym's street address including the suite number, and a Places page with the gym's street address.
2 trainers have the gym's street address on their personal/individual business websites, 1 with and 1 without the suite number.
Is any of this going reduce Google's confidence in the accuracy of which business is really at the street address and suite number?
What should we tell/require of our trainers in relation to this, if anything?
Is there a chance Google will merge the Places pages?
Am I paranoid? (Google Places sometimes does at it wishes, to the dismay of several of my clients.....)
I do know that there are often many businesses in a building, each with their own suite numbers, and nothing bad happens. But ours is a case of multiple personal training businesses (including the gym: a small personal training studio) all at the same address And suite number.
Thanks for any insight or ideas!
-
You're very welcome. Thanks for participating in Q&A!
Miriam
-
I appreciate the answer and detailed feedback.
I can understand why having the gym's street address Without the suite number on a trainer's website could actually be worse; hadn't considered that.
Yes, duplicated categories in Places....No good. Luckily no merge yet.
We're going to add a term in the contract with the gym's trainers about use of the street address: Not allowed on any online account (Places, Yelp, etc.).
Fortunately the gym owner is supportive of getting this taken care of and is dealing with the trainers. Your feedback helped. Thanks!
Thank you for your time and insight.
-
Thank you for the answer and confirmation.
Our Google Places account is all filled out. Yes, we certainly want to avoid any Places merging.
-
Hi The SEO Wiz, You are definitely not paranoid, and there are several real dangers here. I'm thinking hard about the best advice to give here. Let me start jotting down some notes for you.
1. The part of the Google Places Quality Guidelines that allows multiple practitioners within a practice to have unique Place Pages is this:
"Businesses with multiple specializations, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties. You may create one listing per practitioner, and one listing for the hospital or clinic at large"
So, a typical scenario for this would be a law firm with 3 lawyers. The law firm can choose to have 1 Place Page for the practice and 1 for each lawyer. But, typically, all Place Pages are going to be pointing either to the domain name or to the lawyer's landing page (ie: goodlawfirm.com/brandon-jones-attorney-at-law). What is complicating your scenario is the fact that some of your trainers have their own websites. So, not only are they linking to different websites while using the same street address, they are being inconsistent in their publication of the address.
2. The address MUST be the same across all citations. So, for starters, you need to send a memo to every trainer at your gym telling them that they have X amount of time to insure that all Internet references to them, including their own site, review sites, and directories, are correctly displaying the address of the gym, suite number and all.
3. Another point of serious concern is that I would bet that your trainers have duplicated categories. It's a little known fact that in the scenario described in point #1, none of the lawyers can use the same Place Page categories as one another or as the the main office Place Page. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that your trainers are using at least some of the same categories.
So, one guideline would need to be that they cannot duplicate categories on their Place Page and this is where this gets really hairy. How are you going to organize this? If you've got, let's say, 10 trainers, do you get them all together for a meeting a plan out who gets what categories, while being certain that the gym's main Place Page gets to use the main categories that are important to the business. You can use a category tool like Mike Blumenthals at:
http://blumenthals.com/index.php?Google_LBC_Categories
...but this is really going to be tough because of the fact that... It's a best practice to use at least 2-3 of Google's pre-set categories on any Place Page. So, if the main office gets to use 'gym', 'health club' and 'sports club', what do your trainers get to use? If 4 of them teach yoga, only one of them can be allowed to use 'Yoga Studio' and 'Aerobics Instructor'. Great potential for unhappiness between them, and in fact, if Yoga happened to be one of your gym's biggest draws (it's so big right now) you might want to use that 'Yoga Studio' category for yourself. So, you can see that this is messy. You could run every search you can think of in the category tool and figure out if there is are any pre-set categories that could be uniquely used by each instructor without taking anything away from the gym's ability to take advantage of the 5 most important categories, but it's going to be tough to organize an implement. The balance can be made up with non-pre-set categories, but be sure they adhere to the guidelines about this...categories describe what a business IS, not what it DOES. So, trainers can't use things like 'pilates instruction'. They'd have to use 'pilates instructor'.
4. And this still leaves us with the initial problem of the multiple websites at the same address. If you could get point #3 sorted out, then this might be the solution:
-
Tell instructors that if they wish to use the gym's address, their Place Page must link to a landing page about them on the gym's main website. You would create a unique page for each instructor and link to it from the Place Page, ensure that the street address is consistent across all sources, assign available main categories for each instructor and allow them to upload their unique photos and videos to personalize the page. This would reduce your risk of merging and the risk or Google losing trust in your overall data and profile.
-
If the instructors do not find the above appealing, you must revoke their rights to use the street address of the gym on their Google Place Page or anywhere else on the web, including their website and their citations. They will need to be certain to remove all references to the gym's address from all possible sources. They can then, of course, go ahead with the promotion of their own websites, but not under the gym's name or address. They would need to have their own street address to qualify for inclusion in Google Places.
Unfortunately, neither route is going to be simple to organize or implement, but given the current competitiveness of the fitness industry, it's vital that you take serious steps towards protecting the gym's ability to be trusted and rank. I would actually be surprised if merging hasn't already occurred. I've done my best to define your potential options within the scope of Q&A, but this may be one of those areas where you're going to need to work with a Local SEO to hammer out all of the details, due to the complexity of the scenario. Hope I've gotten you into the right mindset about this. Good luck! Miriam
-
-
You are not pariniod, google may merge them.
Assuming your business is showing at the moment, make sure you fill in all areas, upload images, get some reviewsmake sure your listinfg looks the most valuable. you can contact google if the do merge, but you want to aviod it if you can
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
-
Site videos and rich snippets - where to place video
Hi all, we have product videos that we are putting on our (new) site. The video thumbnail for a product is displayed along with image thumbnails on the product details page i.e. see here: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/dvd/portable-dvd-player-car/twin-dvd-player/nextbase-sdv48ac/ Click on the video thumbnail and a lightbox pop up window displays the movie. We would like to markup the videos with rich snippet markup. Is this possible with the videos setup in this way (i.e. video displayed in Lightbox) or would we need to embed the video in the product description text on this page (rather than thumbnail with Lightbox popup as it is at the moment) so that we stood a chance of getting a rich snippet on Google SERPs for our product detail pages? Thanks for any help.
Image & Video Optimization | | jasef0 -
Ranking dance teaching company in multiple locations where they hold casses
Hi Guys, This is a question to all the pro local SEOs out there. I have a client that teaches dance classes at three different studios in Manhattan, New York City, and these studios already have their own local presence in Google Local, Yelp and so on. They basically sublet the space to hold their classes. How would I rank them for these locations? Their actual office is in Brooklyn and I don't want to target Brooklyn audience, but they can verify their listings at the class locations in Manhattan. all advice appreciated!
Image & Video Optimization | | Fhenrir0 -
Any tips for optimising for Local Search/Google Places
I have a client that used to come up on Google Places consistently for some very competitive keywords - when they ranked quite low for them through their normal website - places would see them above all the organic results in normally number 2 position - whereas they would rank between 16 - 26 normally We have optimised the site and have 'A' grade keywords for the ones we are interested in google placing for and just recently we are out of it all together, even though we have improved their optimisation for that word with SEO Someone said that their phone number on the website had to match perfectly with google places and so does their address. Is this true? Is there anything else that will help them keep their position in places ? ie. setting up a Google + page etc., Any advise would be appreciated thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | intermingle0 -
Google Places Multiple Locations Strategy
Hi, I have client who is a psychology college that has multiple locations across the United States. We currently have a Google places setup for their main location which is in Chicago. They also have multiple locations in California and Washington d.c. My question is what is the best strategy for setting up Google places for each one of their locations? can it all be done from the Chicago Google places account or do I have to build out individual Google places accounts for each location. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | MasonInteractive0 -
Appering in both Google Places and regular SERP at the same time
Hi all! My question is: if a search query gives 2 regular results, then the Google Places results, then 8 more results on the first page, is it possible for a website to appear in both in the regular listing, and in the Google Places listing at the same time? In other words: if I do everything well, can my website be the first result, and also be one of the results in the Places listing as well? Or does a website only either apper in the regular listing or in the Places listing? Thanks for the answers!
Image & Video Optimization | | Diginin1 -
Does each listing in Google plcaes need a seperate URL?
Hi We have a client who has several car dealership fracnhises located located across two suburbs - so we are creating a places listing for each (with a separate address and phone number). My questions is should each location also have a separate URL (the dealership only has one website covering all locations). The Google guidelines state that you must; Website & Phone: Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location. Use a local phone number instead of a call centre number whenever possible. Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or “refer” users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business. Really appreciate any feedback!
Image & Video Optimization | | E2E0 -
Placing video testimonials on website vs. YouTube
We have produced a number of video guest testimonials. Any SEO considerations or other hosting it on our website (what software to use?) vs. YouTube (and just embedding it on the webpage)? Are there certain situation or circumstances when YouTube is not the best choice for placing video on a website? Thanks.
Image & Video Optimization | | ahw0 -
How can I segment traffic in GA referred by my google places listing?
Apart from using a parameter in my url, how can i segment the traffic that comes from my google places listing from the google serp (not google maps). It'd be nice if you can specify a display url and destination url in places profiles like you can with adwords. cheers! marc
Image & Video Optimization | | lexnex0