Google+ Local Listing - No Physical Address
-
Hi everyone,
I have a client who won't be renewing his lease for where he conducts his business. Instead he will be working from home. That being said, he does not wish to have his personal address details showing within his local listing.
Is there any other way to still show for Google Local without a personal or business address? Is a PO box possible, other there any other alternatives?
Thanks in advance.
Leo
-
That's great to hear, Leo, and we are so glad to have you here!
-
Thanks Miriam for the additional resource.
I'm new to the community but seeing the level or responses I received I must say you all are fantastic and incredibly helpful.
Thanks again and all the best.
Leo
-
Hi Leo,
Tom has linked to a very important piece from Local Visibility System regarding directories that allow you to hide your address. The author, Phil Rozek, actually wrote a more recent follow-up piece to this, so do check this out here:
So, start with the article Tom linked to and then follow up with the one I've linked to, as it provides further citations sources that enable one to hide the address.
If the client does want to explore options other than his home as his location, then P.O. Boxes and Virtual offices must be avoided. Instead, he would need to rent a real office - perhaps from a company like Activspace.com, which gives you a real front door and phone hookup. But, honestly, countless businesses are run out of the home and Google gets this. Fortunately, many of the top directories support the hide-address feature, and while there are some directories your client won't be able to be listed in, putting him at something of a disadvantage in comparison to competitors who don't need to hide their address, there are still many place he can be listed.
Do be prepared, of course, to follow up this change of address with a great big citation cleanup campaign so that you can bring all mentions of his old address into compliance with his new location.
Good question! Glad you asked it!
-
Thanks for your thorough response Tom. Much appreciated.
-
Hi Dana,
Thank you that means a lot to me.
Your friend,
Thomas
-
Excellent answer Tom. I tuned in because I didn't know the answer to this one and yours was superb.
-
You must do fase to face business at the address
-
Hi Leo,
No google no longer use just a po box for google
Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.
- Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.
- If you need to specify a mail box or suite number within your physical location, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2.
- Use the precise address for the business in place of broad city names or cross-streets.
- Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.
- Individual practitioners may be listed individually as long as those practitioners are public-facing within their parent organization. Common examples of such practitioners are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and real estate agents. The practitioner should be directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours. A practitioner should not have multiple listings to cover all of his or her specializations.
- Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.
- Businesses that operate in a service area, as opposed to a single location, should not create a listing for every city they service. Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas. Learn how to add service areas to your listing.
- If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option.
- Do not include information in address lines that does not pertain to your business’s physical location (e.g. URLs, keywords).
- Anytime the address for your business changes, you’ll have to verify again. You also won’t be able to update the business’s name until the verification process is complete.
https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en
http://searchengineland.com/investigating-google-places-hypocrisy-for-address-less-businesses-59998
Hop this was of help,
Tom
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
-
Local SEO Question: Domain Wide Vs Specific Page
Hey Moz Community, Question about Local SEO authority and how it applies to a domain vs. landing page. Let me elaborate... Company is launching a new local out reach sales channel and merging it with our inbound sales channel under one brand. The plan thus far is to create a targeted landing page for local customers/leads. I have been tasked with creating the written content and making sure we are optimized as much as possible for this landing page to show up for our city. Funny enough for a lot of relevant terms we are already in the top 10 with little optimization (Also due to low competition for most of these terms) Two questions: 1. Should the whole site be optimized for local - appropriate schema markup, G+ business local set up, contact page with correct address formatting, building citations/local links etc.? To accompany our targeted page? 2. Will taking a local first initiative hurt reaching our non-local target market? If so will a very targeted landing page for local customers do the trick minus rest of local optimizations ? I guess what the question really boils down to is will optimizing for local hurt our broader inbound search reach/ranks in the long run? I want to be sure we are competitive to our broader audience and local audience on the same site with trying to get into sub-domains or considering re branding what is essentially the same department but for local purposes. Responses and sharing previous experience would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Image & Video Optimization | | paul-bold0 -
Good Example of Local Pages With Multiple Services
Can I get a site that is well optimized and has a good landing page for a business that serves multiple regions with multiple services. For example they may have construction and mold removal services and serve Indianapolis, Columbus Ohio, Louisville Ky.
Image & Video Optimization | | Atomicx0 -
Local SEO, hard time ranking a keyword
Hello. Im working with beauty salon client, i do rank them for top services, but there a term that i can't rank for, my page it optimized for this keywords (url,h1,h2) i have this keyword in Google places, as a category, and in description. i have build many citations with this term, BUT still cant rank it. If anyone can help me on that, ill be really appreciated, as i'm still learning this. Thanks You!
Image & Video Optimization | | Davidmez0 -
Local SEO Agency Recomendations
Hi Mozzers, I'm looking for recommendations for well known, reputable agencies, who have a strong background in Local SEO. I have a US based client I want to refer.
Image & Video Optimization | | PerchDigital0 -
Google Image Search?
We get very little search traffic from the images on our site & I can't necessarily figure out why? We post a ton & tag them correctly, we've got to be missing something? We are a Wordpress blog, can anyone provide some quality articles on Image search or have suggestions that should help to get more traffic? Our site does fairly well, as we get over 100k/visits a month, so we'd really like to get more traffic from our images.
Image & Video Optimization | | seointern0 -
Our site is showing up #1 for most terms with a blended local listing, but no longer in the organic listings
...after some SEO updates were made. While I am ecstatic about a #1 local listing, I am concerned that we aren't getting that second organic listing on even the top 50 results! Besides improving the content and SEO on the inner pages with the hopes to get them to rank, does anyone have any suggestions for what we are doing wrong? We (dm-remodel.com) are ranking well for things like "ann arbor kitchen remodeling" and "ann arbor bathroom remodeling" Thank you very much for any help!!
Image & Video Optimization | | MeganCough0 -
Does adding the city to your business name in a Places page help or harm Local SEO?
Hi, All! Another local SEO question... For one of our clients, the title on their Place page is <official business="" name=""><city>. Example: John's Sporting Goods Detroit. Now, most citations will say "John's Sporting Goods." Is having "Detroit" as part of the business name in Places problematic (NAP inconsistency) and we should remove it, or is it helpful for ranking for "sporting goods detroit" or is it neither?</city></official> Thanks! Aviva
Image & Video Optimization | | debi_zyx0