Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Local SEO
    4. Local Listings
    5. Local Search and Schema.org - Do I need to tag up the "same as" Property to all my citations to help with local rankings?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Local Search and Schema.org - Do I need to tag up the "same as" Property to all my citations to help with local rankings?

    Local Listings
    4
    5
    2900
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • PeteC12
      PeteC12 last edited by

      Hi All,

      We have implemented Schema.og on our website and this also includes the local business schema for all of our branches.However I've read an article (see below ) which says we should also be doing "same as " property and linking this to ALL of our citations such as google plus page , yelp , bing places, city search etc etc  as this will help with citations.

      I am wondering if anyone has done this ? - And if so , has this helped with local rankings etc - I don't really want to invest the extra costs to get this done if I can't find anywhere that says its made a difference -

      The article from whitespark - says - "when you create new citations for your business (or for your client’s), it’s a waiting game hoping that Google and the other search engines will find your new citations quickly and make the connection between those listings, the business, and the website.

      The “sameAs” property can help make that process much quicker _and _easier.  Schema.org explains that the “sameAs” property is used along with the “URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's [or business’] identity.”  By using the “sameAs” property in your NAP schema markup, you can tell search engines that the business you’ve marked up is the same one found at a certain citation URL

      Of course, Google+ isn’t the only important citation source.  There’s also Bing Places, Facebook, Yelp, Citysearch and a few others. The nice thing about many schema.org properties is that you can use them multiple times in your markup."

      I am wondering what peoples thoughts were and whether they has implemented this and if so , did it help ?

      thanks

      Pete

      | [sameAs](http://schema.org/sameAs) | URL  | URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity. E.g. the URL of the item's Wikipedia page, Freebase page, or official website. |

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • MiriamEllis
        MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by

        Hi Peter,

        I believe you're referring to a David Deering article on Whitespark (http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/50-how-to-make-your-local-business-schema-better) from earlier this year. I would trust pretty much any advice regarding citations published on Darren Shaw's company's website and I think that's a great article from David.

        I'd like to know more about his/Darren's experience with seeing quicker citation pick-up using sameAs. I'm not sure if the speed they are citing comes from something Whitespark has noted handling the massive numbers of citations they manage, or if this is something David Deering is experimenting with on his own, or what have you. The folks are extremely nice and friendly up there in Canada, and if I were you, I'd reach out to David and ask him if he can tell you a bit more about any phenomena they have documented regarding use of sameAs, to see whether any gains in speed would warrant you investing in implementing this. I've not seen any side-by-side testing done, but maybe the fellows at Whitespark have done some? Great topic!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • PeteC12
          PeteC12 last edited by

          Hello Josh,

          Many thanks for your input. This is really for our branch pages  - see please example - http://goo.gl/zpdWfj     - Please feel free critic the page if you feel there are mistakes here being made .

          The search volumes here are always quite competitive - tool hire <city name="">so it's not to easy to boost these pages. We've done alot of citations and I am going through trying to make sure they are consistent. The content is unique and we have tried to localize the pages to by including local directions etc etc.</city>

          We've done the schema.org so really , I was thinking, what else can I do to help this pages.The idea about using "same as " property came from an article written by whitespark hence my query about what else I can and should i use it .

          thanks

          Pete

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • PeteC12
            PeteC12 @VERBInteractive last edited by

            Many thanks for your insight. I will look at implementing this aswell as it's one part of our schema markup we havent' done. I like your idea on using tag manager to.

            Many thanks

            Pete

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • VERBInteractive
              VERBInteractive last edited by

              We have been using it in tandem with a rather aggressive local campaign for clients. We have yet to see the results show up in the knowledge graph (links to social) but all of our properties perform very well in local searches. Hard to tell if it's just this part of our campaign that is causing it or the sum of all of the parts.

              As for investing extra costs.  If you are using Google Tag Manager (GTM) and doing schema with JSON-LD, it is an investment of 15 minutes. Very little cost for a potentially great pay off. If you aren't using JSON-LD in GTM I would suggest the switch, it saves a huge amount of time.

              PeteC12 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • custardextract

                Using PO Box/Virtual Address for local citations, but not GMB?

                Hello. So, I am aware that it is in violation of Google My Bussiness's terms of service to use register a PO box/virtual address with GMB, but is it problematic to use such addresses for general link building with local citations, such as local directories and resource pages? Would the cons outweigh the pros (more backlinks)? And what about using one of these kinds of addresses on my website, but not GMB? Is it all so interrelated nowadays that I should steer clear of publishing a virtual address anywhere? That just seems hard to wrap my head around as PO Boxes have served a valuable function for small businesses for some 150 years. Thank you, Jon

                Local Listings | | custardextract
                0
              • Lazeh

                Does Google prioritise local domains?

                I'm in Australia targeting Australian traffic. I often see US domains in the Google SERPS and wonder if that indicates an opportunity for local (Australian) domains to rank?

                Local Listings | | Lazeh
                0
              • MPlata

                Facebook Locations - Good or Bad for Local Rankings?

                Our company has multiple (3) offices, including our headquarters, and each has its own Facebook page. Other than the primary company page, the other two locations have only been claimed and do not have posts, reviews, check-ins, etc. Now, Facebook recently granted us access to Facebook Locations, which, if I understand correctly, would remove 2-out-of-3 office pages and add a "Locations" tab to our primary company page where people can see the other offices. _See Starbucks Example: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Starbucks/locations/?ref=page_internal _ I've read mixed reviews regarding using the Locations feature, but nothing definitively answers whether or not this would negatively affect local rankings. Does anyone have firsthand experience going from individual business pages to a single parent business page with Locations? Is there any trustworthy documentation out there about this?

                Local Listings | | MPlata
                1
              • paulfoz1609

                Local Search - can I use a shortened company name

                Can I use a shortened version of our company name for local search or does it need to match the name registered at companies house exactly?

                Local Listings | | paulfoz1609
                0
              • TaylorRHawkins

                How do you do Local SEO in a small town?

                Good afternoon everyone! I wanted to start a discourse on a subject that I think might benefit a few select readers. What would be your best plan-of-action to successfully propose and execute a Local-SEO campaign for a small, local business in a rural town? The type of town that has next to zero local directories, the type of business that has hardly any (if any at all) "fresh mentions" on the internet, etc. I'm interested to see how other SEOs would handle tackling this kind of campaign. Can't wait to hear what people have to say! 
                Thanks! 
                Taylor

                Local Listings | | TaylorRHawkins
                1
              • MiriamEllis

                Do You Know What's Triggering Your Local Packs?

                Hey To All My Local Pals, Here 🙂 Recently, I watched a totally fascinating LocalU video in which Mike Blumenthal introduced a hypothesis that there may be a way to analyze what, specifically, is triggering a specific local pack. Now, Mike is stating that correlation is not causation in explaining this, but basically what he starts talking about at around 4:40 in the video is that what you are seeing rank well in the local packs may be demonstrably caused by what you see ranking organically beneath the pack, or may be caused by totally different signals. Mike says, _"If you're seeing the top 10 results are all IYP industry sites, and there's a pack showing, and the highest local site is 24 or something in organic, it's unlikely that that's what's triggering the pack. And so then you want to look at third-party triggers and see if that's what's actually triggering the pack." _ Obviously, all of us who do Local are familiar with the idea that a tremendous variety of elements contribute to pack rankings, but I am particularly intrigued by the idea of looking at the organic result beneath a pack and determining that there is little or no correlation between them, and this then driving one to look elsewhere for contributing factors. In a recent response to another thread here on Q&A, I discussed some common local pack ranking failure causes when organic rank is high. What I'd love to see is whether, if you look at some of your clients' desired packs, can you tell if organic signals are driving them, or can you see that it's not organic signals driving the pack, as Mike suggests. What, in those cases, does appear to be driving the packs? I'd be so interested in a discussion on this. What do you see? What do you think of Mike's suggestions?

                Local Listings | | MiriamEllis
                9
              • rpaiva

                Is there a way to get your local SERP by zipcode?

                I have multiple stores across various zipcodes and i'm having difficulty trying to provide an average Positioning on SERP by region.  I do know that your SERP varies by region because different areas use different vernaculars.  Does anyone know of a way that I can provide a SERP for keywords/terms by county or zip code?

                Local Listings | | rpaiva
                0
              • FluidAdvertising

                How does dynamic call tracking affect local SEO?

                I would like to begin tracking calls and offline conversions, but I am concerned that if I add a dynamic call tracking software that it will negatively affect SEO.

                Local Listings | | FluidAdvertising
                1

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.