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
-
Using the Onpage Grader for Local Business websites
Hey Guys, Curious how people use the onpage grader for optimizing pages for local businesses specifically, I'm interested if people use keywords with or without a geo modifier since adding a geo modifier will prevent more natural writing to increase the score. If you don't use a geo modifier do you have some general rules of the city that needs to be in the H1 and first paragraph etc. Any tips for using the page grader for local businesses would be great Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | solidlocal0 -
What is the best way for a UK company to source SEO Support to boost SERPS in USA Google?
We are a niche web retailer with a world leading product and as such are probably the best option for USA customers (even though we are based in the UK) up to 18 months ago google agreed and placed us high for USA searches and we had good business as a result however since penguin (or around that time anyways) google increased our SERPS for more local markets (UK and EUROPE) and decreased our ranks for USA with a consequent reduction in our USA sales We want to improve rank again in USA (and Canada and Australia and Russia) but need specialist help What's the best way to source that? (short of someone saying they know exactly how to do that) ant recommendation most gratefully received Tom
Local Website Optimization | | tomnivore0 -
Google plus page multiple domains
Hi I have had a .com domain for many years linked to my google plus page and local verified to my UK office address. This site sells and advertises my products, some of them are uk only like the school and computers I sell and the rest are digital and world wide. I decided to start a .co.uk domain to be more targeted to the uk and advertise only the school and computers which I sell to the uk and just link to the .com for digital products. I want the .com domain to attract world wide customers and the .co.uk for uk customers. What do I do, does it make sense to connect my google plus business page to the .co.uk site? Should I still have a google plus page for the .com site? I only have 1 office and thats in the uk. Not sure what to do here. I dont want to lose rankings or do anything negative. Thoughts? Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | theindic0 -
Doorway Pages & Service Area Business
I see many national brand franchises that offers restoration services such as water damage (Servpro, Service Master etc.) There are local websites for each franchise. Each franchise has 50+ locations that they service They currently have pages like 'water damage + city' that have about 500-700 words each Some websites have 30- 100 location pages optimized for 'water damage city' These location pages do not have a physical offices None have duplicate content (word for word) above 20% The only different between these pages is perhaps 200 words about the city Example: www.servicecompany/water-damage-los-angeles www.servicecompany/water-damage-reseda www.servicecompany/water-damage-van-nuys Are these doorway pages?
Local Website Optimization | | MilestoneSEO_LA0 -
Multi Location business - Should I 301 redirect duplicate location pages or alternatively No Follow tag them ?
Hello All, I have a eCommerce site and we operate out of mulitple locations. We currently have individual location pages for these locations against each of our many categories. However on the flip slide , this create alot of duplicate content. All of our location pages whether unique or duplicated have a unique title Tag, H1, H2 tag , NAP and they all bring in the City Name . The content on the duplicated content also brings in the City name as well. We have been going through our categories and writing unique content for our most popular locations to help rank on local search. Currently I've been setting up 301 redirects for the locations in the categories with the duplicated content pointing back to the category page. I am wondering whether the increase in number of 301's will do more harm than having many duplicate location pages ?.. I am sure my site is affected by the panda algorithm penalty(on the duplicated content issues) as a couple of years ago , this didn't matter and we ranked top 3 for pretty much for every location but now we are ranking between 8 - 20th depending on keyword. An Alternative I thought, may be to instead of 301 those locations pages with duplicate content, is to put No Follow tags on them instead ?... What do you think ?. It's not economically viable to write unique content for every location on every category and these would not only take years but would cost us far to much money. Our Site is currently approx 10,000 pages Any thoughts on this greatly appreciated ? thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Does Google play fair? Is 'relevant content' and 'usability' enough?
It seems there are 2 opposing views, and as a newbie this is very confusing. One view is that as long as your site pages have relevant content and are easy for the user, Google will rank you fairly. The other view is that Google has 'rules' you must follow and even if the site is relevant and user-friendly if you don't play by the rules your site may never rank well. Which is closer to the truth? No one wants to have a great website that won't rank because Google wasn't sophisticated enough to see that they weren't being unfair. Here's an example to illustrate one related concern I have: I've read that Google doesn't like duplicated content. But, here are 2 cases in which is it more 'relevant' and 'usable' to the user to have duplicate content: Say a website helps you find restaurants in a city. Restaurants may be listed by city region, and by type of restaurant. The home page may have links to 30 city regions. It may also have links for 20 types of restaurants. The user has a choice. Say the user chooses a region. The resulting new page may still be relevant and usable by listing ALL 30 regions because the user may want to choose a different region. Altenatively say the user chooses a restaurant type for the whole city. The resulting page may still be relevant and usable by giving the user the ability to choose another type OR another city region. IOW there may be a 'mega-menu' at the top of the page which duplicates on every page in the site, but is very helpful. Instead of requiring the user to go back to the home page to click a new region or a new type the user can do it on any page. That's duplicate content in the form of a mega menu, but is very relevant and usable. YET, my sense is that Google MAY penalize the site even though arguably it is the most relevant and usable approach for someone that may or may not have a specific region or restaurant type in mind.. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | couponguy0 -
Do more page links work against a Google SEO ranking when there is only 1 url that other sites will link to?
Say I have a coupon site in a major city and assume there are 20 main locations regions (suburb cities) in that city. Assume that all external links to my site will be to only the home page. www.site.com Assume also that my website business has no physical location. Which scenario is better? 1. One home page that serves up dynamic results based on the user cookie location, but mentions all 20 locations in the content. Google indexes 1 page only, and all external links are to it. 2. One home page that redirects to the user region (one of 20 pages), and therefore will have 20 pages--one for each region that is optimized for that region. Google indexes 20 pages and there will be internal links to the other 19 pages, BUT all external links are still only to the main home page. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | couponguy0 -
Site does not rank on Google's country specific search engines.
My site shows up on the first page of 'google.com' but not on the other search engines like google.co.uk / google.co.in / google.com.au. It shows up on the 3rd or 4th page for the most part. My competitors' sites rank consistently across all geographical versions of Google. Is there something i am missing out on? My website is a web applicaton and not a business listing.
Local Website Optimization | | dlsound0