Multiple Business Listings at the same address - Negative or Positive?

[Steve-Witt]

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!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Steve!

In order to build local business listings, the business must:

1. 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.

2. Have unique phone number not shared by any other business.

3. 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.

[DmitriiK]

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

[Andy.Drinkwater]

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