Would duplicate listings effect a client's ranking if they used same address?
-
Lots of duplication on directory listings using similar or same address, just different company names... like so-and-so carpet cleaning; and another listing with so-and-so janitorial services.
Now my client went from a rank around 3 - 4 to not even in the top 50 within a week.
-- -- -- Would duplication cause this sudden drop?
Not a lot of competition for a client using keyword (janitorial services nh);
-- -- -- would a competitor that recently optimized a site cause this sudden drop?
Client does need to optimize for this keyword, and they do need to clean up this duplication. (Unfortunately this drop happened first of March -- I provided the audit, recommendations/implementation and still awaiting the thumbs up to continue with implementation).
--- --- --- Did Google make a change and possibly find these discrepancies within listings and suddenly drop this client's ranking?
And they there's Google Places:
Client usually ranks #1 for Google Places with up to 12 excellent reviews, so they are still getting a good spot on the first page.The very odd thing though is that Google is still saying that need to re-verify their Google places.
I really would like to know for my how this knowledge how a Google Places account could still need verification and yet still rank so well within Google places on page results? because of great reviews? --- Any ideas here, too?
_Cindy
-
Glad to be of help, Cindy. Good luck!
Miriam
-
Miriam,
Thank you very much. I believe I am starting to see the whole picture of possibilities for this drop in rank. And excellent info about Google Places.
I do need to visit the Places help forum and add it to the list of resources!
Much appreciated.
_Cindy
-
Hi Cindy,
I would definitely suspect either a penalty or a bug of some sort in regards to the drop from #1 to not in top 50.
What happens when you do a direct business name or phone number search within maps.google.com for the business? Are you able to find their Place Page, or, possibly, getting a 'Do Not Support' message.
Check out this thread at the Google Places Help Forum to see if you recognize your problem in it:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/technical-issue/9JszqkewMVU
Regardless of this, you have clearly identified problems with the business that need to be fixed ASAP. There is no question in my mind that the data confusion could be precisely what has caused the ranking drop. Data consistency is the number one requirement of a good Places record, but, a business can get by for months or years with high rankings and bad data. Then, one day, it all goes away. This is something I see being reported constantly in the Google Places Help Forum, and the major lesson is that if you find problems, make every effort to clean them up as swiftly as possible. Then, once you've cleaned up the record to the best of your ability, you need to wait for the effects of what you've done to settle in. So, it becomes about patience.
Hopefully, the client will give you the go-ahead to get cracking on this. Good luck!
-
Perfect, thanks Cody, helps a lot.
And thank you for advice on matching contact page and Google Places!
_Cindy
-
In the local search realm, you want to have every directory listing exactly the same as it appears on your contact page. This allows search engines to associate those listings with your business without a doubt. As a good practice, I'd go ahead and make sure they all match, especially Google Places vs. your client's Contact Us page on their website.
Also, Penguin hit directories pretty hard. There is no penalization going on from what I have read, but there has been some major devaluation in links. It's likely the case that your client is not getting nearly as much weight from the directory links as they once were. Check out the link profile and see how many of these there are. I would imagine more reputable links now need to be acquired.
About the places listing, I'm not sure why that would occur, but it really doesn't matter for the end result here. If the Big G says you need to re-verify I would do it. It's a quick thing to do and that can't be helping their rankings.
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
-
A new client has image urls showing above their page rankings for the same key phrase.
New client website https://yorkshirefoodguide.co.uk/ has for some key phrase searches the URL for an image showing above or as well as the url for the landing page. I'd be happy for it to show in the image pack but I want to url to rank in the main serp. The site is in WordPress and I'm sure this is just a setting I need to manage. Can you help please?
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Optimist0 -
Should you use the canonicalization tag when the content isn't exactly a duplicate?
We have a site that pull data from different sources with unique urls onto a main page and we are thinking about using the canonicalization tag to keep those source pages from being indexed and to give any authority to the main page. But this isn’t really what canonicalization is supposed to be used for so I’m unsure of if this is the right move.
Technical SEO | | Fuel
To give some more detail: We manage a site that has pages for individual golf courses. On the golf course page in addition to other general information we have sections on that page that show “related articles” and “course reviews”.
We may only show 4 or 5 on each of those courses pages per page, but we have hundreds of related articles and reviews for each course. So below “related articles” on the course page we have a link to “see more articles” that would take the user to a new page that is simply a aggregate page that houses all the article or review content related to that course.
Since we would rather have the overall course page rank in SERPs rather than the page that lists these articles, we are considering canonicalizing the aggregate news page up to the course page.
But, as I said earlier, this isn’t really what the canonicalization tag is intended for so I’m hesitant.
Has anyone else run across something like this before? What do you think?0 -
Why Custom Post Types Don't Get Ranked Well
So I have started to use custom post types and have noticed that they don't get ranked very well in Google. On the other hand a post will rank almost immediately. Does anyone know any tricks for making custom post types rank as well as posts in wordpress? Sincerely, Garret
Technical SEO | | eWebify0 -
Does using data-href="" work more effectively than href="" rel="nofollow"?
I've been looking at some bigger enterprise sites and noticed some of them used HTML like this: <a <="" span="">data-href="http://www.otherodmain.com/" class="nofollow" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a <="" span="">Instead of a regular href="" Does using data-href and some javascript help with shaping internal links, rather than just using a strict nofollow?</a>
Technical SEO | | JDatSB0 -
Cantags within links affect Google's perception of them?
Hi, All! This might be really obvious, but I have little coding experience, so when in doubt - ask... One of our client site's has navigation that looks (in part) like this: <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="http://www.mysite.com/section1"></a> <a <span="">src="images/arrow6.gif" width="13" height="7" alt="Section 1">Section 1</a><a <span=""></a> WC3 told us the tags invalidate, and while I ignored most of their comments because I didn't think it would impact on what search engines saw, because thesetags are right in the links, it raised a question. Anyone know if this is for sure a problem/not a problem? Thanks in advance! Aviva B
Technical SEO | | debi_zyx0 -
Have you used the Addthis Widget and had your rankings drop
Just wondering what experience people have of this widget? I added it to a site I look after late last week and we took an noise dive over the weekend. Any thoughts / comments are appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RodneyRiley0 -
How to use Schema.org for product listings
Hi Guys, Maybe a weird question but how would you advise using Schema.org for product listings or if you prefer a sub category page with products listed in it. Thanks, Walid
Technical SEO | | walidalsaqqaf0