Citation building for service area businesses?

[TechWyse]

Hi Mozzers,

Just recently came up with a situation where a business has a service area, but no address that would be displayed.

Can you do citation building for a service area business like this, and if so, how? Would you just use the (otherwise hidden in Places) address?

Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi TechWyse,

You're very welcome, and I'm sorry you experienced a glitch in the reporting system. If it happens again, please comment on that fact on the thread in question.

[TechWyse]

A much belated thanks Miriam,

That's what I thought might be the case. So the citation is still the address, even though it's hidden. Thanks for the thorough response!

(As a side note, I didn't seem to get a notification that a reply was posted, thought I'd get one.)

[MiriamEllis]

Hi TechWyse,

I want to be sure I am understanding your question correctly. Are you saying that the business has no usable address whatsoever? Not even a home address? Please clarify.

It is totally possible to build citations for service area businesses (like carpet cleaners, landscapers, contractors, etc.), but they do need to have a physical address in order to participate. This work typically goes like this:

1. You create a Google Places Listing for the business and be sure to pick the 'hide address' function during creation. Google does not want service radius businesses to display their addresses on their Google Places/Google+ Local pages.

2. You can then build a variety of citations in other local business indexes. There are two approaches here. Even though Google doesn't want service radius businesses to show their address on Google's products, there is nothing to prevent you from listing that address on other listings, like Yelp, Merchant Circle, Best of the Web, etc. Alternatively, if the client does not want his street address to appear anywhere on these directories, he can stick to publishing his listing only at those directories which allow you to hide your address. Here is Phil Rozek's helpful list of such resources:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/08/13/can-you-rank-well-in-local-google-without-revealing-your-street-address-anywhere/

Important To Understand

It is perfectly fine, at this point, for service radius businesses to use their home address as their physical address, provided that the address is not being used by any other business. For example, if a husband had an accounting business and a wife had a pet grooming business, both operating out of the home, they could not both use the same address nor the same telephone number. So, both phone and address must be dedicated and unique to avoid problems.

Also, at this point, it is a violation of Google's guidelines to use anything other than a real physical address as a business location. No P.O. boxes, no virtual offices. Despite the fact that Google requires the hiding of the physical address in their system, the address is still entered in the back end dashboard and must be a real location.

Hope these pointers help, and if I've in any way misunderstood your client's business model, please feel free to provide further details.

[MarketingOfAmerica]

Citations need to be for address specific, because they should all match up.  So just area specific no, because if it was possible it would allow others to rank up for local terms in any city they would like around the world.  So I highly suggest you get an address in some way.  Maybe a friends address, a home address of your own, or something in that area you could possibly use as an address.  It has to be a location that has never been used with Google local before though.

How did you signup with Google local or place page with no address?

Have a nice day.

MB