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.
"Duplicate" on Google Local - Attorney and Business Listing
-
For our law firm, we have a Google Local listing for the firm (Riddell Law LLC). Google also created a local listing for one of the attorneys (Riddell) (we didn't create it, but are in the process of verifying it). Both listings are at the same address. Moz Local says these are "duplicates" - is that true? Would Google penalize us for this? I am not sure how to fix it - both the individual attorney and the business are in fact at the same address.
If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you!!
-
Hi Tony!
Yes, you would want any practitioner listings on other platforms to match the practitioner listings on Google (i.e. have the same phone number across the board for each practitioner you are promoting). The idea here is that, the more frequently Google finds Practitioner A listed with Phone Number A, the more trust Google feels in the data they have about that entity. Conversely, if Google were to find Practitioner A listed with Phone Numbers A, B, C and D, Google would feel less trust in what the accurate data should be.
So, for sure, you'll want to clean up phone number variants you find so that everything you can access matches what you're listing on Google for a given practitioner.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Miriam,
If it is recommended to create individual practitioner pages with unique phone numbers, is it necessary to build out citations beyond Google for the practitioners?
For our case, our client has existing practitioner citations across various listing sources - would this mean we would also need to clean up these listings with the NAP that aligns with the practitioner GMB pages with different phone numbers?
Thanks!
-
My pleasure, Bridget! Happy to be of help to you.
-
This is immensely helpful. Thank you!!
-
Hi Bridget!
I'll respond to your important question with numbers, for easier reading:
-
Moz Local will surface any listing we discover that strongly matches your Moz Local listing. We're making you aware of the existence of these listings, but this does not necessarily mean that they are, in fact, duplicates. It's up to the customer to decide whether a listing is a duplicate or not.
-
It's very important that your law firm study the Guidelines for Representing Your Business On Google. Read the entire document and pay particular attention to the sections on naming and practitioners.
-
Google does allow multi-practitioner firms to build a listing for the business and one for each practitioner. If there is only one lawyer at the practice, Google doesn't want him to build a separate listing, but if there are multiple lawyers, then it's allowed to build a listing for each of them, in addition to the listing for the practice. This is all laid out in the guidelines
-
If there are multiple practitioners, it is highly advised that each one has his own, unique phone number, not shared by any other practitioner or by the business. He should be directly contactable via the number. And, it is also advised that you create a landing page on the website for each of the practitioners and link their listings you build to these pages. All of this serves to differentiate one practitioner from another and one practitioner from the business, itself, hopefully securing you against ranking problems, accidental merges, customer misdirection, etc.
So, in sum, practitioner listings are not true duplicates, but you must follow guidelines for creating them and be sure that the practitioners are being properly differentiated from one another and from the business. And, finally, if you judge that a listing Moz Local surfaces for you is not a true duplicate, you can use the 'ignore' button to have it removed from the list.
Hope this helps, and please let me know if you have any further questions!
-
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
-
Tracking Phone Numbers in Google My Business Listings and Beyond
Hey all, Wanted to run something by you. I am getting pressed to use tracking phone numbers for all of our GMB pages for over 100 locations across the country. Has anyone done this for their own listings or for their clients? Because I will have to do it for GMB, this means I will be sending these same phone numbers out to the other major directories and data sources around the web. The phone numbers do contain the local area code for each city and do directly connect our customers to their specific location without any kind of redirecting. How is Google looking at this? I have read before it is a no-no but have also read it is not a big deal. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree0 -
Google points of Interest / POI
Hello, Looking for some guidance on how to appear and get listed in Google Points of Interest in the Search Engine Results Page. Like when searching for "attractions Seattle" at the top of the SERP these listings appear. Cannot seem to find some good resources on the topic as well. Thanks Conrad
Local Listings | | conalt1 -
How do I treat multiple buildings on the same college campus on Google for local SEO?
Should I delete them? Simply give them a different address like "City, State, Zip"? I see the benefit of having key buildings on campus in Google Maps, but I don't want those to affect my accuracy score and, thus, my local rankings for SEO.
Local Listings | | GabeGibitz1 -
Having two GMB listings at same address
We currently have two verified GMB listings at the same address - I "inherited" these when I joined the company, and was considering merging them, as I am aware it is generally not recommended to have more than one listing per company per location. However, the two listings highlight two different sectors of our company so I decided to keep both and optimised them as best as possible by completing the information, adding pictures etc. One of the listings uses our legal company name, one uses our name that we trade under as an e-commerce business. The listing with our legal company name links to our corporate website and focuses on installations we do, while the listing with our e-commerce business name links to our ecommerce website and focuses on products we sell through there so they differ a bit from each other. Both serve the entire country, so they are not targeted specifically toward local searches. The following differ: Business name, sector, website
Local Listings | | ViviCa1
The following are the same: Address, phone number, opening hours So far we haven't had any issues, both are verified and show up in Google, but recently, we have had the following notification pop up: Fix locations with duplicate addresses__Use shop codes to differentiate locations that have the same address. Click each location and give it a unique address or shop code, or remove it. I'd appreciate some advice as to what would be best in this situation. Should I just add shop codes to differentiate the two listings in order to be able to keep them both? If so, what purpose do these shop codes have, how should I format these and will these be publicly visible within our listings? If you would suggest merging them, how could I ensure that it shows up whether people search for our e-commerce business name or for our legal business name as these are different? Thanks in advance!0 -
Google My Business for 2 Websites With the Same Location
Hi,
Local Listings | | alihus
My client has two separate websites with different business names but under one location and phone number. The websites are for two separate services that he offers.
My question is that if creating two Google+ for business pages for the two businesses bad for their SEO or local ranks?
And what about creating local listings for both?(This does not seem logical to me personally!!)
Thank you for the kind answers in advance.0 -
How can I submit Baidu business listings if I live outside of China?
A client of our wants to manage business listings for three locations in China. We wanted to submit to Baidu but from what I've learned this is highly regulated (you live in China, pay a fee and call them to confirm). This is the only article I could find about submitting to Baidu: http://www.nanjingmarketinggroup.com/blog/baidu/how-can-baidu-maps-help-my-business Are there any conduit or 3rd party services available that can handle this? Thanks
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
Local Search and Schema.org - Do I need to tag up the "same as" Property to all my citations to help with local rankings?
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. |
Local Listings | | PeteC121 -
Should I change my local listing Service type from Brick and Mortar to Service Area in Google? And will it affect my ranking in a negative manner?
Currently my company Big Boy Bail Bonds, Inc is ranking very well for the city it is located and, currently service type is brick and mortar. But my Company does not only service people at our location but we service the entire county of Los Angeles. And I wanted to know if you would advise me on weather I should change the service type from brick and morter to service area. and if doing that would effect me in a negative manner when it came to my ranking? Plz advice Thank you in advance.
Local Listings | | LittleDog1