Business Uses Third Party for Phone Number

[Atomicx]

I have a client that uses a third party rental agency to book their cabins. The client has that 3rd party company's number on the site and I have been tasked with building citations.

I feel this will create a problem by using another company's number instead of a custom one just for this  business.

Thoughts on this matter?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Noah,

I think the first issue here is actually going to be that Google+ Local doesn't consider rental properties as appropriate candidates for inclusion. Here is the language regarding this:

Ineligible Business Models

Rental or for-sale properties, such as vacation homes or vacant apartments, are not eligible to be listed on Google Maps and should not be verified. Instead, verify the listing for your sales or leasing office or offices. If you have a property with an on-site office, you may verify that office location.

Does the company have an on-site office? Otherwise, they will not be able to fully participate in typical local search activities.

They should definitely not be using another company's phone number. Google will be aware that this phone number belongs to the booking agency, and actually, having the client publish this in index-able text on their own website will harm the NAP consistency of the booking agency.

In order to fully participate in citation building, the client needs a physical, staffed office and a unique phone number at which the person who answers the phone answers with the company's name - not the name of a third party business.

I think you've surfaced a really interesting case here. You've made me wonder how many vacation rental companies are in this same boat!

[EGOL]

Get 'em a Google Voice number and redirect it to the third party people.  This will give the website owner some data about how many calls are coming in, when they are calling, if they are being answered, and where they are coming from.  He can also then redirect the calls anywhere, take them himself if he wants or allow to ring through to third party.  Very versatile.  Free.

[SoleGraphics]

Your thoughts are correct. Using a third party number won't help with NAP and citation building. Because Google and every other data aggregator knows that the number being used isn't the actual business number you're basically creating confusion. Plus verifications with a third party phone number are impossible.

Having a local number helps all the aggregators geo locate the business in a sense, which helps with local seo.

Read more here: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/?s=third+party+phone