Shared location and phone number in Google Places...what now?
-
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?
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
-
I believe this would resolve the issue.
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
-
Philosophical: Does Google know when a photo isn't what your meta data says it is? And could you be downgraded for that?
Not something I've ever heard discussed before, probably still a bit too esoteric for present day, but I've always been one to be guided by where I see Google headed rather than trying to game the system as it exists now. So think about it: Most stock and public domain photos are used repeatedly throughout the internet. Google's reverse image search proves that Google can recognize when the same photo is used across dozens of sites. Many of those photos will have alt and/or title text that Google also has crawled. If not it has the content of the page on which the photo exists to consider for context. So if Google has a TON of clues about what a photo is likely to be about, and can in theory aggregate those clues about a single photo from the dozens of sites using it, how might Google treat a site that mislabels it, old school "one of these things is not like the others" style? Would a single site hosting that photo be bolstered by the additional context that the known repeated photo brings in, essentially from other sites? If 10 sites about widgets are using the same widget photo, but the 11th uses an entirely new, never before published photo, would the 11th site then be rated better for bringing something new to the table? (I think this would be almost certainly true, drives home the importance of creating your own graphics content.) Anyway, like I said, all theoretical and philosophical and probably not currently in play, especially since an image can be used in so many different contexts, but it's New Years and things are slow and my brain is running, so I'm curious what other folks might think about that as the future of image optimization.
Image & Video Optimization | | BradsDeals1 -
Google Places categories
I work with a Local SEO company for troubleshooting our Google Places and optimization. They suggested that in order for us to rank for the keywords we provided them with they need to change the categories. Now, those categories do not exist in Google Places and I read on Seomoz and Google help forum that we should choose from the ones in the list provided by Google. I also know that Categories should not contain location-based information. Should I let them do that?
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Google Places Multiple Locations Strategy
Hi, I have client who is a psychology college that has multiple locations across the United States. We currently have a Google places setup for their main location which is in Chicago. They also have multiple locations in California and Washington d.c. My question is what is the best strategy for setting up Google places for each one of their locations? can it all be done from the Chicago Google places account or do I have to build out individual Google places accounts for each location. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | MasonInteractive0 -
Google local question - over optimization?
I run a law firm with multiple practice areas (bankruptcy, probate, estate planning, personal injury). I have a google places page with those categories listed. I recently spoke with an seo company (that cold called me...) that told me that it was "black hat" to try to optimize a local campaign for more than one of those practice areas. That doesn't seem right to me. Any thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | richardslaw0 -
Url in Google Places bulk upload
Hi, I'm preparing a bulk upload for Google Places and have a question about the url of every individual place. The website is structured this was: www.website.com/entrepreneur-X
Image & Video Optimization | | nvs.nim
www.website.com/entrepreneur-Y
... But you can reach every individual entrepreneur like this as well: www.entrepreneur-x.com
www.entrepreneur-y.com
...these URL's redirect to the pages listed above and they use the e-mail address info@entrepreneur-y.com Should I use www.website.com/entrepreneur-X or www.entrepreneur-x.com in the bulk upload? I think it's best using www.website.com/entrepreneur-x because the other url is a redirect. What do you guys think??1 -
Google Places: "this place is permanently closed" what next?
All, I'm working on a duplicate Google places listing issue. One of the listings is accurate, verified and has been reviewed by quite a few customers. However, we have a problem with an old address that still shows up in Google maps and seems to be the cause of poor performance for the accurate listing. The old address listing was deleted but may not have been removed using best practices based on what I've been able to read here at SEO Moz. The old address listing has been flagged by Google with a notation: “this place is permanently closed.” My question is what happens next? Do listings that have been flagged as permanently closed eventually drop out of the search results Or do I need to take additional action? It appears that once a listing has been flagged as permanently close you can no longer report a problem so that route seems to be unavailable.
Image & Video Optimization | | JSOC0 -
Can or should you use a residential address for Google places?
My first thought is no. But I am definitely looking for some loopholes. If there is any way to make this work, please share your thoughts.
Image & Video Optimization | | itrogers0 -
Google Shopping in SERPS - What % of clicks do they get?
Howdy, Looking for any data we can get on the % of click through the shopping results are getting in Google SERPs. There are tons of variables: how many products & which position the shopping feeds and images are shown in but any hard data would be helpful. The background is that we have a client who ranks #1 in Google for a shopping related term and their organic traffic is down in 2011 for this main keyword which has ranked #1 all year since the shopping feeds are continually showing above or below the 1st Google position vs sporadic or no display in years prior. I.e. They aren't happy the traffic is down & we are looking for some data we can provide them with beyond, "Google shopping is now eating part of your organic traffic for that term". Many thanks in advance!!
Image & Video Optimization | | WebpageFX0
