Shared location and phone number in Google Places...what now?

[NetvantageMarketing]

Interesting conundrum I've run into with a legal site we've recently started working on. The client didn't initially tell us that their law office shares an address and a phone number with another firm. It didn't take long for us to find this out, but interestingly, it didn't seem to be negatively impacting their rankings...at first. Then as we got into June we simply fell out of the map listings. We occasionally resurface back to a 1-3 position and then disappear again. My presumption is that Google is having trouble deciding if either of our separate listings are legitimate as there are a lot of citations for each and the on site and off site SEO/link factors are fairly similar (with our site having a bit better link profile).

So my thought is get a unique phone number (if I can make the client agree) and add a unique suite number and try to reclaim/edit every existing citation we can get our hands on. Anyone else run into a similar problem and beat it?

[Ron_McCabe]

You know one thing you may consider if you have not already is using Google voice so you can track calls for lead generation stats.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam  (and Irving, too!)

Yes, at the very least, the two different firms should be differentiated by unique phone number and suite numbers, and citation cleanup will be extremely important. A proviso, though: you may continue to experience some problems with the situation, as Google can have difficulty with businesses that are too similar occupying a similar address. Mergings can happen, so you will want to check the listing regularly to be sure this isn't happening. Good luck to you both, guys. That's a tricky situation!

[irvingw]

I am right about to do this very same thing, also with laywers. I am suggesting they don't use the same phone number, adding a suite # is easy enough. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Ron_McCabe]

I believe this would resolve the issue.