Potential sexaual harrassement issues in adding home address to website
-
Hello Google Local Experts
I'm a little stress, to put it mildly. I have been working hard to get to grips with Google+ and Google Local. I have followed all the advice on Moz that I can lay me hands on.
Following advice, I have added my private address (in rich text snippets) to the header of my own site. I've not felt particularly comfortable about doing that, but it's clearly one of the messages Google Local requires to be sure that your site is authentic.
My concerns got concrete last evening when a new follower on Google+ started to send me private messages - culminating in asking where I lived. Despite family demands I went straight to my site and removed my house number. Now I know I'm messing up my NAP - but Ahh - my About section points straight to my site which at that point had my full address in Bold on each page of my site.
I really am upset about this and think that Google should be rethinking their demand for displaying a companies address on the site. If you are self employed you are put in a vulnerable position which is morally questionable.
Please would someone give me some advice on the best way to address my worries in the short term?
Please could someone with a bit of clout point this potentail danger to women out to the powers that be in Google?
-
Thanks
-
Hi Catherine,
Please don't worry that you seemed over-anxious. Being safe is so important, and I'm so glad if I was able to help a little. Wishing you well!
-
Thank you Miriam, I am very grateful. I'll follow all your advice to the letter. I apologies if I came over a bit too anxious, it's just I was really rattled. Feeling safe at home is something we lucky westerners take very much for granted, until we feel threatened! Thanks again, taking positive, informed action is empowering!
-
Hi Catherine,
I'm terribly sorry to hear about this worrisome experience you have had and agree with you that people's privacy concerns are totally legitimate. Let's start with your most immediate concerns. If your address exists around the web and you are worried that someone is stalking you, you might want to start by contacting the local police to make them aware of the situation. They may have important advice for you that you simply won't get on a marketing forum. You might want to take extra precautions, such as ensuring that your home security is up-to-date and that your neighbors are aware of your concerns and can let you know if they see anyone strange on your property. Tell a friend or relative and arrange to check in with them via text or phone periodically each day so that they know you are okay.
The marketing side of this is important, but your safety comes first. If you fear for your safety, take precautions first.
Having said that, we can look at this from the marketing side as well. Let me clarify for you, and for others on this thread, Google's position on address.
-
If you have a brick-and-mortar address that accepts walk-in traffic during stated business hours (like 9-5), then Google does want your address to be visible on your website and your Google+ Local page. Typically, home-based business models do not accept walk-in traffic, but public businesses like retail shops and restaurants do.
-
If you are a home-based business, however, and do not accept walk-in traffic (maybe you accept in-home appointments, or you travel to your clients' locations to serve them), then you should be hiding your address on your Google+ Local page. As to publishing your address elsewhere, such as on your website or your third party citations, that is up to you. Yes, there is some indication that it's more trustworthy in Google's eyes if they can cross-reference your hidden address in their database with other instances of it they find non-hidden around the web, but you can still achieve visibility without publishing it. You can simply publish your business name and local phone number on your website if privacy concerns are paramount to you.
I recommend that you read the 2 following articles by Phil Rozek about local business directories, beyond Google Places for Business, that allow you to hide your address when listing your business:
As these articles will describe, there are many directories that allow you to be listed while hiding your address, and for a business owner with privacy concerns, these are great resources.
If you decide that it's important for your home address not to appear anywhere on the web, you can choose from one of two approaches:
-
Discover all references and edit them yourself.
-
Hire a company like Whitespark to do citation cleanup, the goal of which would be to get your address hidden where possible or to delete references where hiding an address is not allowed. Whitespark just launched a new citation cleaup service you might want to check out.
I want to stress, however, that either method will take time for edits to go into effect, and you will have to follow up periodically to be sure nothing has re-surfaced. In the meantime, I strongly advise that you put your safety concerns first and contact authorities and your personal support circle so that you can feel safer. Sending good thoughts your way.
-
-
Matthew's response is spot on. I just helped a client get a virtual office where he can receive mail and hold meetings when he needs to. Some may disagree, but legitimately using a virtual office space will work in the local space. My client's home is in a small town near a few larger cities - not ideal for local search because no one would search his industry with his town name. So we picked the largest city, which is only a few miles away, and for $75/mo he has an office in a major business hub that he can attach to his business. Along with home address, I am also apprehensive about using personal cell phone numbers for your NAP. To circumvent that, I secured a Google Voice number that is tied to his cell phone. So now his mobile number and home address (where he lives with his two young children) is hidden from public consumption.
-
Hi Catherine,
I'm with you on publishing my home address. Like you, my business is home-based. I opted to get a UPS store address instead of publishing my home address. However, despite my using that address for the last 11 years, this is apparently no longer acceptable practice. Same goes for PO Box addresses. (See http://www.billhartzer.com/pages/google-bans-ups-store-locations-for-google-maps-listings/ for example).
The other route some people have taken is to get a shared office space, somewhere where you do physically work (at least some of the time) and where you can receive mail. That way you can use that address instead of your home address. This can be expensive depending on what shared office spaces are available in your city. But, if getting into Google Local is important, it might be worth considering so that you have an address to use that isn't your home.
Good luck!
Matthew -
I don't want my home address or phone on my websites because I don't want people coming to my house on business matters and I don't want the phone calls. There are many legitimate reasons why a person would not want these things published.
But, Google has a definite bias towards people and businesses who list their name address and phone on a website. Here is a quote from one of Eric Schmidt's books, as quoted in a SearchEngineWatch.com article at http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2241704/Eric-Schmidt-Google-Will-Give-Higher-Rankings-to-Content-Tied-to-Verified-Profiles.
“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”
The part of this that bothers me is how difficult google makes it to speak to members of their product team such as adsense or adwords. Their business model is based upon allowing machines to do all of the work. Part of that is being one of the most-difficult-to-contact companies on this planet - yet they want all other companies to be on an available for interaction 24/7/365.
-
Hi Catherine
I am really sorry to hear this and it's obviously been very distressing to yourself and your family.
If you go to the user's profile page there is a little down arrow underneath their picture which allows you to Report/Block them and then gives you a range of options to say why. That may be a start and hopefully Google will be able to respond to you.
But if you think the approach was possibly a criminal offence I would also take it up with your local police
I hope that helps - a little.
Peter
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
-
Post indexing Issue
I am now currently having the crowing issue for the past 9 months the domain hardly Index post use to make it by using Google inspect tools for faster indexing before it's was announced that Google has temporarily disabled it. post like https://xclusivesongs.com/meet-nigerian-most-awarded-music-artists/ takes up to 6 days before indexing. another issue is that it's one year now I'm still can't believe that my domain is yet to dominate is brand name looks like something is wrong I don't just get it do mean each time I search the name xclusivesongs it keeps showing me like this saying do you mean?" 8vhEn3y
Local Website Optimization | | Gerradino0 -
Boost Website Traffic
Tom Beavan Websites is my business where I create and design affordable websites for small businesses in Wordpress. I am looking to improve my traffic to my website as dramatically as possible. At present, my website is a one-page website with limited content - https://www.tombeavan.co.uk. My website ranks #1 for local keywords like: Web design Wiltshire Web design Trowbridge Wordpress developer UK So in terms of keyword position, I am doing well for local business but I only get 200-300 visitors per month. I would like to dramatically improve this to improve the number of enquiries I get. I do tend to get a few enquiries but think if I improve the website traffic, the quantity of website enquiries will increase too? I have a long list of tasks I would like to do for SEO: Add a lot more content to the website Add more backlinks Guest blogging Lots more What would you recommend a good starting place or a place which will increase traffic effectively? Thanks for your advice in advance 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | tombeavan0 -
Local SEO + Searcher Intent Targeting for Home Builder
Good Morning, All! I work for a home builder - www.HibbsHomes.com. Their site has hundreds of pages and blogs and I'm looking at consolidating many of them as they're older and use an older SEO strategy. Can you take a look at their portfolio? http://hibbshomes.com/custom-home-builders-st-louis/st-louis-custom-homes-portfolio/ I'm wondering if I should consolidate the various projects into their own pages by house type and city - rather than having all on one page? Both for SEO and for easier searchability. How would you organize this for these? The benefit to setting up city pages is the local SEO rank (St Louis has so many suburbs). The benefit to setting up pages by home style or size would be for user experience. How do I improve this for both? And... how do I optimize for conversions better?
Local Website Optimization | | stldanni1 -
The best option for expanding a website to another country
Hi everyone, I have a couple questions about expanding my website from US to another country. Which option would be better to use: Country-Coded Top Level Domains, Sub-Directories or Sub-Domains? If I use a new domain, but I want to keep all the content, would canonicalization affect SEO of my new website? I want the new website (or another option) look just like the one I have, except for changing contact information, pictures and adding another language. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | KseniaLL0 -
Is my competitor doing something blackhat? - Cannot only access pages via serps , not from website navigation /search
Hi Mozzers, One of my competitors uses a trick whereby they have a number of different sitemaps containing location specific urls for their most popular categories on their eCommerce store. It's quite obvious that they are trying to rank for keyword <location>and from what I am see, you cant to any of these pages from their website navigation or search , so it's like these pages are separated from the main site in terms of accessing them but you can access the main website pages/navigation the other way round (i.e if you select one of the pages from finding it in serps) </location> I know that google doesn't really like anything you can't access from the main website but would you class this as blackhat ? / cheating etc ... They do tend to rank quite well for these alot of the pages and it hasn't seem to have affected pages on their main website in terms of rankings. I am just wondering , if it's worth us doing similar as google hasn't penalised them by the looks of things.. thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Joomla website optimization software or tools?
Hi there, I am running joomla based website for my transportation website "Limousine Service" I have question what kind of software or tools i can use to improve the SEO on my site?
Local Website Optimization | | GarySahota0 -
Website Migration - remove unnecessary sub-folder?
Rebuilding a site that currently has good rankings. The original site was build in Joomla. I am doing the rebuild on WordPress. The old site is at the domain www.savannah-dentist.com, but clicking on any link generates a url with a subfolder; i.e. the website is at www.savannah-dentist.com, click on the logo and you will go to www.savannah-dentist.com/rosenthal/, the "meet the doctors" link goes to "www.savannah-dentist.com/rosenthal/meet-the-doctors" When I rebuild the site, do I have to retain that url structure? If I get rid of the folder and make everything simply like www.savannah-dentist.com/meet-the-doctors, will I be jeopardizing our rankings? Thanks! -Adam
Local Website Optimization | | aj6130 -
Sites Verification Issues
We have a group of automotive dealerships by a website provider that causes issues when trying to verify our sites. Because they use Analytics for their data program, they install a code into our websites-stopping us from doing so properly in our back end. We also cannot verify ourselves in webmasters or adwords. We can't actually "own" any of our sites since they run a java query script from within the website. They also do not allow the use of iframes or scripts, so we can't even use the container to verify these sites. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated as I am sure there is some way to break this to get our data and be verified.
Local Website Optimization | | spentland0