Getting Listed in Google Places
-
How do I get listed in Google Places if I don't have a physical address?
EG: I am a medical health insurance company in Colo Springs, Colorado, but service 20 cities?
What is the best procedure? Getting a mailbox at Mailboxes, etc. or UPS Store?
-
Hi Greg,
As Edward has correctly stated, anything other than an actual, physical address is not what Google 'wants'. That being said, there are tons and tons of such listings in their index, but even a cursory glance at Google's spam fighting history over the past two years is a big indication, at least to me, that they are more committed than ever to upholding their guidelines and weeding out anything they consider to be violating them.
So, honestly, it might well be possible to get away with something like this for a month, a year, three years, etc., but taking such a risk means a day of reckoning would be looming over the business ever day and the business owner would never know when to expect their rankings to suddenly tank.
At present, Google is still very much allowing home-based businesses in their index, providing they hide their addresses, so this is probably the most common solution in what I'm assuming is your case. And if you feel concerned about publishing your home address anywhere, here is a list of directories that also allow you to hide your address, and this can help you with your citation building:
-
Not a good idea:
http://www.searchinfluence.com/2012/03/google-places-virtual-office/
-
Thank you for the information! Very helpful. Do you happen to know if getting a mailbox at a UPS Store would work. When you get a mailbox here, your address is not PO BOX XYZ, they actually give you a physical address (same as their location), and your mailbox number is a Ste. number.
Thanks for any insight!
-
Hi Greg,
In order to qualify for Google+ Local (which was called Google Places in the past), your business needs to meet the following criteria:-
Have a unique, dedicated physical street address (not a shared address, not a virtual address, not a P.O. box or any other type of box)
-
Have a unique local area code phone number (not a shared number or toll free number) that matches the city of location
-
Have in-person transactions with customers, either at your place of business (like a restaurant) or at their locations (like a plumber.
If your business doesn't meet all of these requirements, you do not qualify for inclusion and should not create a local account.
If you do have in-person transactions with clients and are operating out of your home, and no other businesses are operating out of the same address, you can use your home address and local phone number as your location. However, you must be absolutely sure that you comply with Google's rules regarding hiding your address. All home-based businesses and businesses that go to their clients' locales to serve must choose the hide address function when creating their page or they will be removed or penalized.
And, be sure you create only 1 Google+ Local page for your city of location - do not create other pages for the other cities you serve. That's not allowed.
I recommend that you study the Google's Places Quality Guidelines to be sure you know all the public rules:
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528In addition to this, there are 'unwritten' rules that apply to optimizing your Google+ Local Page that require study as well. For example, in writing your business description on the + page, do not put any geographic terms, your business name or any links in the copy. There are a number of little taboos like that that you'll need to be aware of in going into this in order to avoid penalties.
It's so critical to get this right. If Local SEO is all new to you, you might like to read this:
The Rudiments of Local SEO
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1344Hope this helps!
-
-
Sign up for Google+ Local using your residential address, and then make your business address private in the listing. This will still list your city and you can set your service area to include the surrounding areas.
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 appearing and disappearing from google serps.
Hi, My website is normally on page 2-3 on google consistently. Over the past month it has been appearing and then completely disappearing from the serps. One day it will be on page 2, then the next day completely missing from the serps. When i check the index it seems to be indexed correctly when doing site:mysite.com. I don't understand why this keeps happening, any experience with this issue? It doesn't seem to be a google dance as far as I can tell. When my other sites dance they typically just go up or down a few ranks for a couple weeks until they stabilize. Not completely fall off the search engine.
Algorithm Updates | | Chris_www0 -
Using Google to find a discontinued product.
Hi Guys. I mostly use this forum for business questions, but now it's a personal one! I'm trying to find a supplier that might still have discontinued product. It's the Behritone C5A speaker monitor. All my searches bring up a plethora of pages that appear to sell the product... but they have no stock. (Wouldn't removing these pages make for a better internet?) No 2nd hand ones on eBay 😞 Do you have any suggestion about how I can get more relevant results... i.e find supplier that might still have stock? Any tips or trick I may be able to use to help me with this? Many thanks in advance to an awesome community 🙂 Isaac.
Algorithm Updates | | isaac6631 -
SEO - Google Local Listing & Same Day Delivery
Hi We are looking to offer same day delivery if you're in a 20 mile radius to us. I'm trying to do some research on how to optimise this for Google organic listings. Would this be the same as optimising for a local business listing? I'm not sure where to start. Thanks! Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Is there any way to prevent Google from using structured data on specific pages?
I've noticed that Google is now serving what looks like host-specific video cards on mobile for our site. Is there any way to control which videos are included in these lists without removing the structured data on those clip pages or user pages? We don't want to noindex those pages but we don't want content from those pages to appear as video cards. 1kzPW
Algorithm Updates | | Garrett570 -
Should plural keyword variations get their own targeted pages?
I am in the middle of changing a website from targeting just a single keyword on all pages to instead having each page target its own keyword/phrase. However, I'm a little conflicted on whether or not plural forms and other suffix (-ing) variations are different enough to get their own pages. SERP show different results for each keyword searched. Also, relevancy reports for the keywords score some differently and some the same. Is it best to instead use these as secondary and third level keywords on the same page as the main keyword for a page? See example below: OPTION A (Use each for different pages): Page 1 - Construction Fence Page 2 - Construction Fences Page 3 - Construction Fencing Page 4 - Construction Site Fence Page 5 - Construction Site Fences Page 6 - Construction Site Fencing ... OPTION B (Use as variations on same page): Page 1 - Construction Fence, Construction Fences, Construction Fencing Page 2 - Construction Site Fence, Construction Site Fences, Site Construction Fencing ... Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | pac-cooper0 -
What happened on September 17 on Google?
According to mozcast: http://mozcast.com/ and to my own stats, Google had a pretty strong algorithm update on September 17. Personally I have experienced a drop of about 10% of traffic coming from Google on most of my main e-commerce site virtualsheetmusic.com. Anyone know more about that update? Any ideas about what changed? Thank you in advance for any thoughts! Best, Fab.
Algorithm Updates | | fablau1 -
Has there been a Google change in the last 24 hours?
We have come in this morning to find our site (paydayuk.co.uk) has suddenly disappeared from their SERPs, we have consistently been ranking in the top 5 for a wide range of search terms but now do not even appear for our brand name of Payday UK where we have been first for many months. Our site is still indexed and we have made no changes for a while as any SEO work is waiting on completion of a CMS system. Looking in https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!categories/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking and there seem to be a lot of people having the same issues but as of yet no answers. I'd also like to add we don’t use black hat techniques so we really don’t understand why we have been penalised. Can anyone help please?
Algorithm Updates | | Sarbs0 -
Related Searches in Google
Hello, We're helping a client remove/minimize some negative information about their brand in Google's search results. Just curious about your take on if the related searches that appear at the bottom of Google search results can in any way be influenced or if it is more a combination of so many factors that any one person or organization wouldn't be able to change very easily? I've heard the related results could be influenced if enough queries generated overtake the "negative" queries done initially but I feel like that is venturing into black hat land a bit. thanks -Mike
Algorithm Updates | | mattmainpath0