Changing My Listing from an Actual Address to a SAB
-
I own a lawn care company and I currently have it listed with its actual address. I have been reading that service companies with a actual address listing MUST change their listing to hide their address and show a service area.
As you can imagine, the business is extremely seasonal and any negative impacts to my listing would hurt the company. If it makes a difference, the majority of lawn care and landscaping companies are listed with their actual address. So my questions are: (1) Should I change the listing now? And if so, what kind of impact will this have? (2) Should I wait until late autumn to change it so it can recover during the winter. Or, (3) should i just leave the listing how it is now?
Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions, I appreciate it.
-
Thanks for the responses, I really appreciate how quickly everyone helps out on the forum.
-
Hi Cestbob,
Good questions. Here are Google's official guidelines regarding addresses and SABs (service area businesses):
- Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas. If you wish to display your complete business address while setting your service area(s), your business location should be staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours. Google will determine how best to display your business address based on your inputs as well as inputs from other sources. Learn how to add service areas to your listing.
- If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option.
So, from your description of your business model, Google would want you to hide your address. This being said, I agree with Richard that they seem very lax about enforcing this and have seemed so for some time. Who knows, though? Tomorrow could be the day they initiate some plan to crack down on businesses that aren't complying with this guideline.
So, whether you choose to comply with the guidelines or not is up to you, but I do think it's important to state that none of this has anything to do with you achieving visibility in neighboring cities where you serve. Only in very niche markets or geographic regions of almost no competition can one typically expect to show up in the local pack of results for any city beyond their city of physical location.
In order to achieve non-physical location visibility the most common practice involves the development of local landing pages on the website with the goal of achieving organic (not local pack) visibility. You can read more about this here:
http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide
Remember that such pages must be completely unique and serve the needs of your customers. Hope this helps!
-
Thanks for the response Richard.
No we don't serve people at our location. I am wondering if I should change the listing because while the listing does great in the specific city where the address is listed, we are nowhere to be found on the surrounding suburbs - which is a greater part of our market. And also, I am fearful that down the road google will decide to take action against a listing like mine (and the majority of others in my industry), when the actual address is listed.
So, the potential benefit would be to have our business listed in additional service areas, the negatives could be an impact to our current favorable listing if we change it or punishment by google if we don't.
Thanks Again
-
I have changed a few without any negative impacts. Think about it, Google still knows where you are. However, if it's not really mandatory to change it then why do it? They aren't enforcing the service area, and do you actually service people at your location? Like can they come in and make an appointment or drop off a payment? I fear not having a physical address shown may affect CTR.
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
-
Google Is Linking to Wrong Local Page - How To Change?
Hi All Thanks in advance for any support. I've setup two "local" pages to target the next door town for one of my clients. One page targets "t shirt printing" and one page targets "embroidered workwear" However when I search for "embroidered workwear town in question" google connects the search to my t-shirt printing page and not the embroidered workwear page. Would it be possible to advise on what I need to do for the correct page to be linked to the search term? Here is a link to the search term in question **https://tinyurl.com/vvgr5r5 ** and the page that we would like to appear in the results, not our tshirt printing page https://tinyurl.com/s77md9o Thanks in advance for any help
Local Listings | | ruislip180 -
Google Map Penalty or Odd Filter? Listing Goes Missing
Hello Moz. We have a law firm client who practices criminal defense law. Historically, he has been ranked for _years _in the map pack and first page of search for a variety of phrases. This is a law firm with twice the number of reviews of the next competitor, solid back links, and open 24 hours a day. Over the past 30 days, he now appears inconsistently in the map packs. Sometimes he is in the C slot and sometimes he does not appear at all. Most of the time he is not listed for specific legal phrases for DUI, DWI and criminal defense. When he is not listed in the A, B, or C slot, then he is actually gone completely. You click on More Places and his listing for the map is just completely gone. You can scroll down from listing 1 through 20+ and not find his firm in the Map listings. You would think he would just be further down on the list at 5 - 10. But it is just missing. However, when you change the filters for either rating or reviews, he suddenly will appear. In fact, he will be near the top of the list, but only on filtering. You can even clear the filter and he stays listed in typically the C slot too. However, if you refresh the page, he is gone again. My question is simple: Do you think there is some type of data issue or penalty in place? Or is this just how the filters work - suddenly showing a list that should appear in the main area. PS: If I am not clear on the above, I can send video evidence of this oddity.
Local Listings | | peteboyd0 -
Facebook's Address Change Request
Our Facebook business page is: www.facebook.com/MetroManhattanOfficeSpace/. Facebook suggests we change it from: 347 5th Ave, # 1008
Local Listings | | Kingalan1
New York, NY 10016 To: 347 5th Ave
New York, NY 10016 Google Places shows our address as: 347 5th Ave #1008, New York, NY 10016 The Facebook change deletes the Suite number and eliminates the comma after "NY". I am concerned how this will effect address consistency and local ranking. Shouldn't the Facebook address match our Google Places address precisely? Isn't it critical that our address format and info appear exactly the same everywhere? Will complying with the requested Facebook address change have a negative impact on local SEO? Thanks, Alan Rosinsky0 -
Google map listing
Hello Moz Frdz, My website Is Ranking Very Well Overall, also in Google Map Listing too, it is also Verified Listing , But The problem is someone has added My website domain TO there Address with 3 different places Because of That My Customers Not getting Proper Direction to my correct place, They R misleading to other 3 Places Listed By someone else, I Have Also Marked That Places As Permanently close, But Google Has Not accepted, How should I Remove That wrong Locations which Used My website ? Please Please any Expert Help? Thnx in advacne
Local Listings | | falguniiepl10 -
Removing Unverified Listing From Google
We have an old unverified listing that has our information on it, but we can't get it off google. I told them months ago it was closed, and it is marked as closed in Google...but it still shows up. Moz Local is telling me this is an inconsistency that hurts our local rankings. I went to delete the page from our Google Business/Place, but if I did that, the warning said that I would just not have access to the page, and that the listing would still show up on google. How do I permanently get rid of those thing, so it's not longer an inconsistent listing? Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Worried about changing local SEO homepage tactic
Our current home page is texty, talking about why choose us and general information on what the service involves. We are currently developing a new web design and content architecture involving moving all the content out of the home page, and making the homepage a beautiful guide to the site, as is the best practice. I think the home page will generally result in a better user experience. SEO: we currently rank second for "service city" (going to our homepage). Our domain is service-city.co.uk. While the change is going to involve us adding lots of new good-quality pages with new keyword targets, our most important keyword by far is "service city" and the home page would probably still be the most appropriate page for that keyword. And I'm gravely worried the change will negatively impact this keyword. I would appreciate your thoughts
Local Listings | | Cooper10 -
Competitor with 4 listings at same address
Hi there. I went to www.google.it and did a search for "Scuola di inglese a Miami" (English school in Miami) The result I got was that one Company (Kaplan International) ranked with several listings at the same address and with different languages. I read several time that you are only allowed to have one listing pr address. How is this possible? Will they eventually get merged or penalized? Best regards maps?q=scuola+di+inglese+a+miami&ie=UTF-8&ei=psJ0U5DFAcnXOdbIgNgG&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ
Local Listings | | E_F0 -
Upstream locations to mark a business closed that will cascade to other listings services?
Working with a multi-location business with hundreds of locations, there is always a certain amount of churn (closures, new locations.) In some cases, the business owners never claim listings, or claim them in only the major local business listings such as Yelp and Google Places. Does anyone know of a good post or discussion about how to do a "cascading mark as closed" which will make its way through the LBL ecosystem eventually? In other words, is there a few upstream places to mark a business closed that will influence the consumers of their data feed? thanks!
Local Listings | | scottclark0