Google Places listings showing for businesses in different states.

[Jon_bangonline]

Hi Moz Community

I have a client with 4 x active Google Place listings in different locations all within in the same state of Australia (Western Australia) and all with the business name 'Crawford Realty' as per Google place guidelines.

When searching for 'Crawford Realty' Google returns listings for real estate agents near a town called Crawford in a state called Queensland which is across the other side of the country.

See screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/43p6LdtW

Does anyone know why my Western Australian business listings wouldn't be showing when searching in Western Australia  and why the listings for a town in Queensland, across the other side of the country would be showing.

Thanks in advance,

Freddy

[Jon_bangonline]

Thanks Marcus! Appreciate the feedback!!

[MiriamEllis]

Nice answers on this thread, guys. This is certainly an interesting scenario - one in which the legal name of a business includes a geographic term. I'm sure this occurs all the time, but this is actually the first time I've ever seen it brought up, believe it or not. Suggests that multi-location businesses should, perhaps, not name themselves after a city. If your small business is planning to expand into a franchise, maybe you should pick a less geo-centric name. Food for thought.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Freddy

I think Vadim has pretty much nailed this but let me see if I can expand on that a little for you.

Most terms are not 100% specific and Google has to interpret what they believe the user is looking for. There is some context (location of searcher) but they don't have complete certainty in what the user is looking for.

Here is an example: When someone searches for 'marcus miller' I would like to think they are looking for me. Unfortunately, 99.9% of searches for 'Marcus Miller' are going to be for the super cool jazz composer / musician and not the super cool geeky SEO from Birmingham UK.

So, lets review this search term 'Crawford Realty'

What are the possible interpretations of this term?

1. A business called 'Crawford Realty'
2. Reality businesses in a place called Crawford

So, Google hedges their bets and shows the business called 'Crawford Realty' and a list of realty companies in the location called Crawford.

So, why are Google not showing your local listings here?

If the interpretation is for a brand name or a business type in a given location you are not fitting both of those descriptions. If someone searched for your business type + a location where you have an office then that would be a good fit for a localised result for your business.

So, if I search:

real estate Karratha

or

realty karratha

Then I find your local business offices in the local results as we would expect. On page two but they are there:

https://plus.google.com/116505937244694341152/about?gl=uk&hl=en

_Unclaimed I may add so there is certainly some work to be done here! _

Summary

Google has to take a search term and try to understand what the intent is beyond that term and the truth is 50% may be using the term to search for one thing and 50% for another. They have other elements of context such as searcher location but they attempt to serve up results that work for both sets of users. In this case I would imagine they believe that the higher percentage are looking for the business by it's brand name so you get the first listing.

Beyond that your business does come up on a location by location basis when folks search for the location + business area.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

realty location A

[vmialik]

Hi Freddy,

Google thinks that by entering Crawford you are entering the city + Realty therefore those results.

Searches for Crawford Reality + location , as in Western Australia, or even for me just Australia, would return normal results as in this case google interprets the search query as business name + location, vs city + business type as above.

Does that help