How to tell Google My Business what area is local to my company?
-
Hello Mozers
I've been stumped by the changes in the interface with Google My Business. I used to be able to set up the area for which I wanted a business to cover. Now I can't find anyway to tell Google.
The company I work for is in St Albans and our main workload is London. It would be helpful if I could actually control what Google Local sees as Local for my company, i.e. to encompass central London which is only 19 miles away.
Can someone give me an idiots guide has to how to tell Google the area I'd like our local listing to cover?
Thanks
-
So glad to help!
-
Good morning (my time) Miriam
I'm just writing to say, thank you so very very much!
Finally I've got my head around it. I was so stumped before you gave me those clear instructions.
Finally I've got our GMB page to cover both St Albans and London!
Thank you again
Kind regards
A much relieved Catherine
-
Hi Catherine!
Thanks for saying that. I want to be sure you are following exactly these steps.
-
Be sure you are in the GMB dash for the specific business and are clicking the big red edit button that's over that large header background image at the top.
-
Then, click the edit/pencil icon next to the address
-
Then, be sure to use the scroll bar on the side of the popup to scroll down to the 'I deliver goods and services' text with the little radio buttons. That's where you need to be.
Can you get there? If that is totally absent, I recommend contacting Google directly about this.
-
-
You are quite correct, that option has gone in my part of the world, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK. I'm really stumped as to what to do! I just has my location as St Albans and doesn't as far as I can see allow me to give our service area! Mostly we supply secondary glazing to London for acoustic insulation.
Let me know if I need to give you any additional information and thank you for offering to help - I've read a lot of your tutorials on Local in the past and they have been really helpful!
-
Hello Miriam
You are quite correct, that option has gone in my part of the world, St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK. I'm really stumped as to what to do! I just has my location as St Albans and doesn't as far as I can see allow me to give our service area! Mostly we supply secondary glazing to London for acoustic insulation.
-
Hi Catherine!
Can you let me know, please, if Google has made a dashboard change in your country? Can you no longer set a service radius via the command that says, "I deliver goods and services to," and then has a field for you to enter cities or zip codes?
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
-
Google business listing For more then one location
Hi there, I am Newbie to SEO, So please Help me come out From this Query, I have Client Who serves @ 4 Locations. I have Registered main Business Location in Google business listing , But What if i Do, if want to add My Other 3 Locations With Different Address?? as Website, Business Name, Same, So, I am Little bit confused, What Step i can do to make that Other 3 Listing on Gbl too??? Thnx in advance,
Local Listings | | pooja.verify07
Rohit.0 -
Local SEO Issue or Penguin? Or both?
Hey folks I have a fairly complicated SEO issue we have been looking at for a few years now. There are two parts to this problem so would be interested to get the input of the community here and any experienced in Penguin and Local SEO issues. I am going to have to change the names to protect the innocent a bit here as some of the issue relates to a competitor and a shared address. History My client originally worked for company A which we will call Events R us. He then set up on his own at a new address and lets call his company Fantastic Events. EventsRus never had a good website or SEO Fantastic Events set up a great website and really focused on adding tons of relevant content for all the myriad event options available and subsequently did really well. This is a few years back and they were also doing some article marketing on sites like ezinearticles.com to build links (1). As time went on they did get a bit carried away with these low quality links and were buying $5 spun content articles and other low quality links. They ranked really well for a few key terms. There was a suspected local SEO issue as fantastic events used the same office as their fathers business called fantastic finance and the citations / phone number issues etc all had to be cleared up (2). Fantastic Events and Events R Us remained friends and over time Fantastic Events moved to the same farm address as Events R Us so they could offer a wider range of services based on the farm (and ran by fantastic events) and to some extent run away from the address confusion with the same office and very similar name to the other fantastic finance business. Events R Us wanted some of the Fantastic Events success and built a new website and largely copied the website of Fantastic Events - at times even lifting entire pages of content but certainly mirroring the structure of the site. Fantastic Events tussled with them for a few years over this and over time they updated the content but the structure and services and address all pretty much mirrored what was offered on the Fantastic Events site. (3) Two companies - same address (it's a farm so whilst there are different barns I believe Google can only get as far as the farm gate so same address to all intents and purposes. Same services give or take. Events R Us was the older company overall by several years and was at the farm address many years longer than Fantastic Events (4). Fantastic Events starts running a blog and adding regular, useful event orientated content. The first true team building blog out there as far as we could tell and traffic tripled over a six month period. Penguin hits and Fantastic Events loses a lot of traction - this gets worse with Penguin 2.0. Both the homepage and the evening events page lose visibility and traction. The owner gives up on the blog to a large degree. Subsequent clean up happens and is rigorous - all bad links are pretty much removed and the remaining elements are disavowed. (90% of it is actually gone by now). Penguin 3.0 comes and no recovery at all. Nothing. If anything it gets worse and the once strong blog is now losing traction. Events R Us starts to do really well in search for exactly the same terms that Fantastic Events used to do well for. In particular one page ranks for exactly the same keywords and in exactly the same position (#1) as what was believed to be the primary traffic driver on the Fantastic Events site. It is almost like they exchanged positions and Events R Us went from nowhere to a strong footing with some national and local keywords and Fantastic Events fell from grace. A new website is built. All content is refreshed and bought up to date. Some light investment back in the blog. Some light link building is done around digital PR and infographics. Some initial movement in the right direction but overall this did not move the dial. Certain pages on the site that used to rank are nowhere - looks very much like a page level / keyword level penguin penalty. These same pages rank great, often first on the competitor site (an exchange of positions to some extent). Advice from myself and other esteemed consultants was to clean up, build some good links and wait for Penguin 4.0 to remove that eventuality. Also that the address issue could be causing some local SEO issue where Google believes the two businesses are one and has somehow merged the two with some local SEO filter or some such (same business with multiple websites at same address). Penguin 4.0 comes along and no improvements. Events R us sit pretty. Feeling is that the local issue must play a part here now that Penguin should be eliminated due to the extensive link clean up etc and there must now be some action to resolve this address / local issue. Issues low quality links - but cleaned up 100% now. same business name and address as fathers business initially older business copied the structure and content of newer business moved to same address as older more established business with very similar content older business now seems to have taken all the exact keywords and positions the newer business used to occupy Penguin 4.0 and no resolution. Local SEO issue seemingly remains Summary So we are left in a difficult position. The business does not want to move. But if there is some filtering or merging going on here then how can we get around this? The client is likely collateral damage to an algorithmic component designed to stop single businesses having multiple websites. I know there are reports of this happening but I have never seen such a thing for an innocent business like this but the nature of the address (two separate barns on a gated farm) and the history and similarities between the businesses makes this difficult. Things are somewhat desperate though - a move has to be made now. Even if that is a physical one. The client has considered a virtual address to take that variable out the picture but I have advised caution. I am even cautious about a change in physical address. Google has a long memory. If such a move was made at considerable expense would it help or would the other business retain Is the best option a new start? New brand, address, website, services etc - cut all ties with the historic Fantastic Events brand and by association the Events R Us brand. This is not a recommendation I can quickly or easily make so would be really interested to hear the feedback on anyone who has come across such a multi faceted and complex issue before. This is a tough one. We know what we are doing on the local front. We know what we are doing on the Penguin front. We know how to build links and authority. We are doing this work of the clock to help a long term friend / client get back to where they really deserve to be. The history is not spotty clean but the good work and effort far outway a short spell building dodgy links several years ago now. As an SEO consultant I don't want to advise for the company to rebrand and move offices at considerable expense but whilst I have a theoretical understanding of the issue how can we prove it and be sure this is the best possible advice? Thanks folks - hope this at least makes for interesting reading. This is something of an edge case. A good business likely caught up in a filter designed to stop abuse. Cheers
Local Listings | | Marcus_Miller
Marcus1 -
Google My Business for a Multi-Business Showroom
We are considering signing up for a multi-business showroom co-op concept in our area. Basically this space (1 address) has 10+ businesses that have their products represented at the location. There is one person working that passes along the leads to the individual companies when someone visits the showroom and shows interest in a product. I know at least 5 of the businesses are using this address for a Google My Business profile, and we would like to also. I am looking for some advice on best practices and strategy to ensure were not violating any of Google's policies. Here is a link to the showroom: http://www.brookfieldhomeandideacenter.com/
Local Listings | | JohnWeb120 -
My website Not ranking in google
Hey there, My website Created in wix , & its Ranking in google, i have searched & get know That Websites By wix are nt getting indexed by google is this true?? If not then what are steps i can take To boost MY Site SEO I have Read article Of Wix Here . please check, Thnx in advace
Local Listings | | falguniiepl10 -
Two businesses with the same adress
Hi Guys, A client of mine took over an competitors site 12 months ago. They sell almost the same products and both websites now list the same address on their contact page. Local search isn’t really important to them (webshops). They aren’t really active with Google plus reviews. but I’m still wondering. Could this cause any ranking problems? A lot of online citations still mention the old competitors address and two almost identical company’s with the same address sounds like an bad idea. Any suggestions about this topic? Just as a side note: the competitors site lost a lot of traffic, which is caused by a lot of different problems (double site migration were they didn’t think about SEO). So I would love the hear your thoughts about this specific ranking problem. Thanks a lot!
Local Listings | | Bob_van_Biezen0 -
Google keeps updating/tweaking my Local business branch addresses ? to whats different in my citations and on page. how can I stop it?
Hi All, I have a number of branches as we have separate branch pages and separate google local listings for these. I have been trying to keep them in consistent for citation purposes but google keeps trying to tweak the address in the local listings. Sometimes for example , google is trying to remove the premises number from the Road e.g 78 Doncaster Road is the actual branch address but google local business wants it as Doncaster Road, I also see Google is wanting to sometimes remove the locality name etc?.. Also If the local listing has a county ( in America - you would have State) , google is sometimes wanting to remove this add United Kingdom in Country instead ?. Is this a problem and how to deal with it as I think this is obviously impacting my local rankings?. If i approve all these changes then do I need update all my citations and page addresses all the time ? Or can I just leave the suggested "Update" or overwrite googles suggestion with what I had originally. Does anyone else have this problem ? thanks pete
Local Listings | | PeteC120 -
Local search results question
Hello, I wonder if anyone can help. I have a client who is based outside the main city that he is wanting to rank in. The address on his website is his own home which is about 20 miles from the city. However, he services the city and the surrounding area. His ranking for the very competitive keyword is on page 2 and won't budge. We have made his Google+ page show the servicing area to include the city. We add new content regularly. The onsite SEO is strong and the city name is in the Title and H1 tags. We have lots of local consistent citations for him. This usually results in movement in the SERPS in my experience. But after 3 months this keyword is stuck whilst his other less competitive keywords are moving up. He is ranking 1st for the local area to his home address for the competitive keyword. So my question is - is this purely a result of his local address. Does Google rate him less local than his competitors who have addresses in the city even after we do a lot of citation building etc for him? Will it be possible to rank him for the city? I know 3 months isn't long but still would expect to see some difference. Anyone got any thoughts?
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Local SEO for a company with 3 sites, for 3 different type of businesses
Hi I've been working for an employment lawyer in Sydney for 3 years now, all good, I built many citations and fixed all ones and the website/blog are ranking fine. Imagine I created the citation using e.g Anton Forester Employment lawyers, name, phone and address. Now the client just launched a website about property with the same name/brand and a different business title e.g Anton Forrester Property Lawyer and another 3rd website about conveyancing with the same name/brand and another business title e.g Anton Forrester Conveyancing law. My question is how do I build citations now that the name is different in the 3 cases, 3 websites but possibly the same phone and address? Thanks a lot Cheers Nico
Local Listings | | niclaus780