Travel agents are creating Google Place pages for our properties - is this a bad thing?

[seoec]

I'm currently trying to develop a clear understanding and policy for my company on how we deal with Google place pages, specifically where we stand on places pages being created by our agents.

We run a business in the travel industry with a number of locations around the world.  Our services are sold via travel agents.  Naturally, we set up places pages for each of our locations but recently we've noticed agents setting up places pages for these locations with different titles & their own contact details (same address though). In one case we've received verification postcards which we've been asked to pass on.

The pages are set up in 'good faith' to promote business in the agents respective countries and languages but i'm concerned that we are ending up with multiple pages for the same location, hurting our brand, losing our own pages through being buried and ending up with our account being suspended at some point down the line.

There are a number of terms on Google guideline page, in particular, this one:

"Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts."

I contacted my Adwords account manager but didn't get a very clear response on this.

What i'm looking for is some 3rd party, definitive advice/opinions on this scenario.  Should we be asking agents not to create place pages? Why should they list.. could it end up hurting both of us? Are there pros and cons to this or is it a clear cut case?

[seoec]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for this! Apologies, i'm being a little cautious about saying too much about the industry as this is a delicate situation at the moment!  Essentially a travel agent and hotel chain might be a close comparison where the travel agents are creating places pages claiming the hotels more or less as their own. As you say, merging pages might become a real problem.  I guess managing pages for each agent is a huge amount of work but would be the only real way of keeping any sort of control - it would still leave us with the issue of merging and in any case, i don't think our agents would actually subscribe to this.

Anyway, many thanks for your help, it's given me a lot more to think about for sure, especially your interpretation of that particular guideline.

[MiriamEllis]

Greetings, Cane,

Not understanding exactly what the service is that your company and its agents provide, I'll use an example from another industry: the real estate industry. You will know from my example whether what I'm describing applies to your business model.

Let's start with Google's Places Guidelines. The language in the guidelines applicable to the real estate agency (and I'm hoping your own business) 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 office.

(emphasis mine)

So, a real estate office with 10 realtors working with in can have 1 listing for the business itself, and one for each agent.

These are the official guidelines.

That being said, due to weaknesses and bugs in Google Places, there has been a historic problem with multiple listings sharing the same address but having different data in areas like the business title, phone number field, etc. Merging of the listings can happen so that you might end up with the main listing having the phone number for Agent #6 instead of the direct office number. Reviews for Agent #3 may end up on Agent #4's Place Page. And, yes, you might encounter your main office being outranked by the individual agents' listings.

Your task is to develop a company policy regarding how to handle this, knowing that merging is indeed a real danger, but that the benefits of each agent having his/her own Place Page can also mean increased overall visibility for your whole business. You need to determine whether you will allow agents to have their own Place Pages and whether these will be controlled by you (within your own Places account) or whether every agent will be given the keys to create their own listing under their own steam). Both routes have potential benefits and pitfalls. For example, if you control the listings, you control their data and will also be able to realize if anything becomes penalized or problematic. On the other hand, managing a large number of listings (especially for an International business) is a very big job, indeed. Do you have the time to do this, or would it be better to make it company policy that each agent control his own listing?

I can't make the decision for you, but these are the issues you need to consider in coming to a final decision as to how you want to handle this complex scenario.

Hope this helps!

[seoec]

Thanks for the input Dejan! My issue though is that we already have an official (or canonical - at least we'd hope it is) place page set up for each of our locations using one account. Our agents are setting duplicate pages up in different languages. Potentially, there could be  20 plus pages with different descriptions but all for the same location/business.  This would only happen of course if we passed the postcards on to them.  In some cases, though, the page was validated through a different phone number, so we have no control in this case.

[Dan-Petrovic]

I always go for centralised option and manage all listings via one account, usually set up in batch if it's hundreds of locations. Having it all in one place provides a single point of control and performance monitoring. Alternative would be to provide guidelines for your agents on how to set up quality listings that maximise their presence through content and completeness.