Merged +Local Page - About Section Formatting?
-
Hi All,
I'm having an issue: I recently merged my Google+ business page and +Local page, and I'm happy it's verified for local search purposes.
However, I am having a supremely difficult time getting the formatting and anchor text links I inserted in the "Edit Business Section to apply; It's just one large chunk of unformatted text. Of note is the fact that the text content did actually change when approved.
I made a post on Mike Blumenthal's blog about this, and he said that he generally does not recommend merging at all.
Any ideas how to get my formatting and text links approved by the Google+ team?
Any thoughts on the pros and cons of merging Local+ in general?
-
Hey David,
Yes, it will be exciting when the new dash is fully rolled out! I do wonder if the upgrade from local to social will be as easy as they say. With Google, few things are easy, right?
-
Hey Miriam,
I did know that they were adding enhanced capabilities to the new Places, although I did not know it was going to now be that easy to verify.
Traditionally, I've found it a real pain to verify, especially when a PO Box is involved. I did recently realize that I could simply call the Google Local team, though, and things have proceeded much more smoothly from there.
I'm keen to get switched over to the new Places dashboard myself, although when I asked if I could be switched early, they said I'd have to wait until my account was randomly updated (not surprised, I wasn't really expecting them to.)
-
Hi David,
Yep, Mike is pretty much 'the man'
What I am so interested in seeing is the ultimate effects the rollout of the new Places for Business dashboard will have. For new businesses, verifying the listing in order to acquire full social features and such is supposed to be just a click a way (so they say) but I haven't gotten to experiment with this with a new listing yet. Mike got to create a test listing. We'll see what happens. Good you know about Mike's blog as he has written a ton over the past couple of weeks about the new dashboard.
-
Thanks, Miriam.
I had kind of figured Mike was probably right, since he's a very reliable Local SEO guy. It's pretty bothersome that Google would release a product for public use with so many bugs, but I guess it's not really that surprising.
At this point, I am beginning to wish that I had never combined these pages, and am glad I only did it on my own personal account and not for a client.
I think in the future I may just let Places be Places and Plus be Plus until the kinks are all ironed out.
-
Hi David,
Unfortunately, Mike's reply is right on the money. The rich text feature of merged pages is really unreliable and I don't know of any solution to this. For some time now, none of the Local SEOs I know have recommended merging to clients, because the whole thing is so wonky. Sorry to hear you're having trouble with this, but I'm not surprised. The ball is in Google's court now to improve their product so that the things they offer actually work.
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
-
Gateway Pages
I have read that gateway pages are frowned upon by the search engines? If you have multiple domain names that are related to your main website what is the best way to get the greatest use from those related domain names? Thank-you.
Branding | | Road0 -
Local branding messed up - advice needed
Note: not real names, services, locations used: So we are a single health clinic in Vancouver. Our natural name is GSF Health Clinic. As the most important search term is Health Vancouver by far, we decided to kind of change our brand name to 'GSF Health Vancouver' years ago. Our main competitors name is Health in Vancouver and had had a hard time getting above them in local SERP. But actually, since the change in name, we haven't really improved. As there are also searches for Health Clinic Vancouver, some of our citations are actually GSF Health Clinic Vancouver just to get that keyword in. This variation even happens on our site. Now, looking back, we should have just kept our natural sounding brand name and more importantly, kept the same exact one everywhere. However I'd like advice going forward. So the decision is whether we need city in the brand name - does it make much difference? The options are: GSF Health Clinic Vancouver ("Health Vancouver" is not together, but we still have city name. Current citation on G+ and a few other places. A bit of a mouthful) GSF Health Clinic (Sounds nice, but poor SEO and also no exact citation matches currently so this is a major name change) GSF Health Vancouver (very targeted SEO, sounds okay but not amazing when in a sentence) BTW our domain name is health-vancouver.ca
Branding | | Cooper10 -
Google +1's and Google+ Local
Hi fellow Mozers, I manage 5 brands at the national level, each with their own Google+ profile and then under each brand, there are several hundred physical locations, each with their own Google+ Local page. My question is, should we be encouraging visitors of each location's Google+ Local profile page to +1 the page? Does it have an influence on local rankings and overall SERP results? Our goal is to ultimately get our local websites to rank better than our less targeted brand sites and have our Google+ Local pages show in search results as much as possible. Our local businesses convert to leads, where our brand sites are one step out from that and are used to feed into a "find a location" result that takes the visitor to the local site.
Branding | | dsinger0 -
What Other Local Listing Aggragator are like Localeze, UBL, Yext?
Hey guys what do you all use for listing your sites? Current I use UBL, Yext, and Localeze. Would it benefit me to use more? Also what other companies or services are like these three?
Branding | | qlkasdjfw0 -
How to Force Merge 2 Place Listings (Both Incorrect & Different) for Same Business
Hi,
Branding | | emerald
I'm not sure what action to follow as nothing online seems to describe my Google Place situation - trying to merge 2 completely incorrect business listings for our company, that are also not identical. We have 2 listings on Google Places for our 1 company but a recent address number change has added further complication to already incorrect and different listings. our first/oldest listing was created by google but with incomplete business name, wrong map pin, completely wrong address, but shows our trip advisor reviews. created by us a year ago (we didn't realize the dupe issues) with full business name, correct address at the time (now incorrect since address number change), correct map pin, full description photos and info. This does not link to our trip advisor reviews. How to merge these when they aren't curently identical or correct? All online help seems to explain identical dupes but not this situation. What updates I tried recently: After some research, I changed all citations on the web to no.2 business name (except trip advisor who would not change), our new address number and then updated our no.2 address listing. But has stayed pending for months. It seems to be live, but still with the old incorrect address that does not match citations or our website. When I tried claiming both places with same account it showed the same pending new info I updated for no.2 in dashboard (so I can't edit no.1), but this data is not is not live on either. Last week I decided to do something radical, so logged in with a different account to reclaim no.1 and copied all information pending in no.2 to no.1 so that they should be exact same and hopefully force to merge. Both are pending and 2 different accounts now. What else can I do? We can rank locally while the 2 listings are like this. Should I call Google helpline and explain?0 -
Facebook Like of Root Domain Linked To Facebook Page
If I install a Facebook Like Button on my Root Domain, How can I have the likes accumulated from that button augment those already on my brand's page? Thank you fellow knowledgenies of the Book of Face.
Branding | | Blobe0 -
Has anyone had problems with thier google maps page after the google plus intergration?
About a month ago Google contacted one of my clients to inform them that the Google places is discontinued and their Google plus page will be the new Google places. They gave my client an $100 adwards credit for adwords express so their location will still show up for their business name during the change from Google places to Google plus.. When you type in the business in a local area or on a GPS now.. It is no where to be found. You have to know the address to get directions or go there on a mobile devices. The Google plus page for all of these locations is not currently showing up either. I have contacted Google and Once again something has been released without implementing it correctly. No one seems to know what is going on... after talking to three people. Does anybody know what is going on ???? This is a huge deal when being a local company.
Branding | | JohnParker27920
