Multiple Business Listings at the same address - Negative or Positive?
-
Hi everyone
Does anyone have any experience of working with multiple business listings at the same address? It's making me itch my head!
I work for a travel agency and we have multiple websites for different holiday types/destinations. I want to add business listings for the businesses but I'm concerned that it could have negative effects from the businesses sharing the same address and sometimes the same phone number. Has anyone got any pointers on this, if will effect rankings or my SEO strategy. Thanks!
-
Hi Steve!
In order to build local business listings, the business must:
-
Have a physical location, even if its a home business. The address can be hidden on the listings on many directories, but the physical location must be real, and not be something like a P.O. Box or virtual office.
-
Have unique phone number not shared by any other business.
-
Make in-person contact with its customers (virtual companies are ineligible).
Regarding multi-location businesses, each location should have its own phone number. The listing must be built around the physical location the business occupies, not around services/goods/packages it offers. So, for example, a supermarket cannot have one listing for vegetables and another listing for meat. Or, in your case, your office at 123 Main Street is eligible for a listing for the physical building, but it is not eligible for one listing for holidays in Tahiti and another for holidays in Sweden. So, just 1 listing per physical location. If you have 10 physical locations, each meeting face-to-face with customers and each having its own phone number, then you are eligible for 10 listings.
Definitely recommend reading up on on the Google Guidelines to remove any grey areas here. Please, let us know if you have any further questions about this topic, as it's such an important one to get right.
-
-
Hi there
Do you actually have different businesses for those different destinations? Or it's the same company, just different "branches"? I'd say that having the same NAP info for different business (if it is indeed different), can be pretty harmful and, more than anything else, confusing to users/customers. Sharing street address is very typical for office buildings, but the same suite #, phone etc is a bit strange to me. Also, as far as I know, you won't be able to submit business with exactly the same NAP info to most directories/listings. They'll say it already exists.
Hope this makes sense
-
Hi Steve,
Don't worry too much about the addresses because many businesses work from the the offices these days, but rather than go through lots of possibles here, I would like you to have a read through this post on Search Engine Land, because it carries lots of information and stumbling blocks that others come across.
If you still have questions after this, please do post back in here, but I hope it helps.
-Andy
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
-
Another Business is Using My Client's Address
This morning my client contacted me that another business is using their address as their own! They received a Google verification postcard with pin number on it, but luckily had the foresight to not give it to the person when they called. After some research, we also found out that they are using our address on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. The kicker is: this business is another SEO firm! You would think they would know that using our address would cause NAP issues for their own business. Has anyone dealt with another business trying to hijack their address for local rankings? Any advice on steps to take to report this abuse would be appreciated. Since this person is obviously unscrupulous, we don't want to provoke them into taking any other negative action online that could affect our business.
Local Listings | | IlluminousGwen0 -
Google Local Result- Competitor Ranks without an Address. Why is this happening?
My client is in a fairly competitive local market and there is a competitor who has ranked locally for around 2 years, but they have no actual address on their Google business listing. Just city and state. The listing is always top three and it does have their website listed, but directions aren't even available as there is actual no address. The listing is extremely keyword dense (basically spam but they actually created a business with the spam name). Citation Example: Keyword dense business name, phone number, city and state only Have you seen this? Can you explain why this is happening? Is this against the rules/anything I can do? Thanks!
Local Listings | | mgordon0 -
Map placement on google disappear after claiming business
Hi guys 1st of all pls bear with me as i am new to this, google created a page for our business im not sure how probably its automatic and since it was created by google its unclaimed. My friend have been telling us that everytime he search for our business which is a furniture business located in the philippines he just type in our exact business name "evergreen diamond school supplies" then map or location appear on the right side of the google search engine. After finding out about google business from a friend i tried to claim our business page, we hire a web developer to build a website for us and since our business name is too long "evergreen diamond school supplies" the dev team suggested a shorter name which is "edssph.com" since "edss.com" is not available then after 2 weeks site was done and we launched it. We claimed the unclaimed business page of our business and it took us 3 weeks to receive the post card and now it was verified. We are very happy and when we type our business name "evergreen diamond school supplies" map appears and contact #'s are there and all the necessary info users need but after 2 days whenever i type "evergreen diamond school supplies" location doesnt appear anymore i have to type in "evergreen diamond school supplies taguig" where taguig is our city where our business is located, so what happened? i hope someone here can guide me. If "eevergreen diamond school supplies" doesnt work anymore i am fairly new to local SEO so i'd like to know what happened or what could i have done wrong. thanks in advance
Local Listings | | xpertmedia0 -
SEO - Should individual doctors at facility claim a Google My Business profile?
My client is a physician facility with several doctors practicing at the facility. When doing a Google search for some of their practices such as "family practice" one of the doctor's profiles will display in the Google Local pack - however it is not linked to the facility website where their profile exists. As of right now, we are using YEXT and other tools to claim Google Business Profiles for each practice, not the individual doctors. If there are unclaimed accounts for individual doctors, they are alerting Google that it’s a duplicate and should be taken down. Is this the right process to follow for SEO best practices or should we be claiming both the business and individual doctor profiles? The reason they are not claiming individual doctor profiles is to cut down on duplicate reviews as part of the Reputation Management Program. Advice much appreciated!
Local Listings | | chrisvogel0 -
Location pages for Two location business
Hi friends, I have a website with two brick and mortar locations. Right now I have both NAP's listed on every page on the sidebar and footer. I don't have either in schema format yet, as I don't know if I can have two schema's on the same page. 1. In the near future, I will be publishing pages for each individual location, but I want to keep the NAP of the other location on that page also, in case the visitor would prefer that location (they are only a few towns away from each other) Is that going to cause issues? Should I only have the NAP of that location? Which should I have schema data for? 2. Also, I have location pages for the surrounding cities, which we have added a Google Map with directions to the closest location, written directions, a few local reviews, and a paragraph about services. I want to publish these asap to rank in those ~10 other nearby locations. What NAP should I have on those pages? The closest location, or both? 3. Linking in the Google Local/My Business. I have verified both locations Google Local's, and I want to link them into the respective Two locations once published, but I want to do it properly. I read on one location seo article that I should change the website listed on the Google Local profile to the new url of that location, and link to the Google Local on that page. Is this correct? Which Google profile do I link to in the other location pages? or both?
Local Listings | | JustinMurray0 -
Is there a purpose to the "google my business" description?
Hi there Can someone tell me if the description serves a purpose in the google my business profile since:
Local Listings | | coolhandluc
a) It is not displayed anywhere as far as i have seen (maps, 3 pack local results, knowledge graph, organic results)
b) It is no longer considered as a ranking factor since it was abused so much Thanks0 -
Multiple locations and local directories
Hello, A client has opened a new office in another city. I have created a local landing page for this city. Now I want to build citations for it. However, I have already set up directories like Yelp/Yell with the primary/original address in the original city. Is it OK to set up new citations using the new city local address. The company name stays the same obviously. So I will have duplicate listings on the directories for the same company. Will this work? Thanks for any help
Local Listings | | AL123al1 -
Local Listing Question for Vet Office
We have done the off-page directory listings work for a veterinary office (submitting to the main data-aggregators, as well as sites such as CitySearch/Manta/Yelp) & now want to supplement those with submissions for each individual doctor. There are 8 doctors at their practice. The plan was to submit them to only 3 sites - the main data-aggregators of LocalEze, ExpressUpdateUSA & Factual. They only have one phone number (their main number) to use for listings. So can we submit the doctors all with the same number? Or is that a total waste of time b/c listings will end up being duplicated/merged down the road? What do you recommend that we do?
Local Listings | | JohnWeb120