Google Local Changes Randomly & Our Site Keeps Dropping Off Search

[amaray403]

I work for a university where we have 2 law schools. We have our one school on the other side of the state that has been around for a very long time, and then a newer school that is right on our main campus that has been around for about 5 - 10 years now.

The newer of the 2 schools is having so much trouble being able to claim the name of the school in google search. If you type in the name of the school the other school (the one that has been around longer) was coming up in the google local on the right of the screen and their web URL was never showing up in search. This is a huge problem because the accreditations of the 2 schools are different, and students are showing up at the wrong school for their interviews.

Search will only show a domain name that used to be owned by the older school but now gives information for both of the schools. So it'll show up in search results, but only under that other domain and not their own domain that has their name in the domain name.

This school has an updated google mybusiness listing, and a google+ page with the correct listing. I've added some schema data around the business address on their site and JSON for the google+ page, and have re-indexed their sitemap a few times after some changes have been made and we are using their name more in the site. This fixed everything for a short while and we were getting the appropriate google local listing and their site was appearing in search results above the site that advertised both schools.

Now, after about 3 months, it has reverted. I had the older school showing up in the google local, and the site that advertises both schools is the ONLY domain appearing. I've re-indexed the site after finding out that Drupal's timestamps that they automatically add to sitemaps aren't optimized for how google reads it. This has gotten the local listing back, but I still have the wrong domain appearing, it is the one advertises both schools instead of the domain that has this school's information. I don't mind that the one advertising both shows up, but if a user is searching for that particular school I would really like to get that domain to appear first above the one advertising both schools and the older school. Right now the new school isn't even in search results except for being under the site that advertises both.

I wasn't sure if this was something that Moz Local could help me fix by adding the listing across the web, or if there is something else on the sites I can be doing to help them solidify their name in google search/local.

Also - is this subdomain that is advertising both of them hurting them or help them? I was thinking about taking that domain down to one page that acts as a direction source to the 2 domains rather than having a ton of information and keywords that take over the results for their name since that domain is older (and used to be associated with the old school only before the new school was built)

Thank you for any advice on this issue as I'm still pretty new to SEO and to the university.

Thanks again!

[amaray403]

Thank you so much! I've actually gotten permission to talk about the school's themselves for the sake of trying to get some support on this, since this is such a tricky problem.

To answer your questions:

2. So the URL for Penn State Law (pennstatelaw.psu.edu) is not showing up when you type in "penn state law". Only the subdomain that is advertising for both schools at law.psu.edu shows up and the school is listed underneath it, but its own domain name is not appearing. For our other school, the 'Dickinson law school', when their name is typed in their website at dickinsonlaw.psu.edu shows up and then the law.psu.edu site shows up. So everything is working perfectly, and as expected for that school.

3. Years ago, the subdomain law.psu.edu was active for the dickinson schools of law, until the split. Now law.psu.edu is advertising for both schools, and has a series of pages on it that talks about the 2 different choices, AND each school has their own site: pennstatelaw.psu.edu, and dickinsonlaw.psu.edu. The URL that speaks about both schools was set up years ago I think in order to help keep rankings high and start to drive value to the 2 schools websites, and the plan was for that to go down in rankings as the 2 new websites started to build their way up - but it looks like the law site has really held its own at the top of search results for a lot of keywords for the new school. (Probably because the school name is so broad and a keyword in itself)

4. These schools are completely different which is why this is such a huge problem. They have different accreditations and the education is slightly different between the 2 so they share the same website at that one subdomain but the addresses, phone numbers and everything else is different.

5. I've been going through the Moz Local a lot and haven't found any major inconsistencies. The right school is popping up with the correct phone number. I might still look into this to get it exactly the same across the web, but both of the school's listings are popping up with correct addresses & phone numbers.

6. So it is not being listed as a department of the university, but its own school and academic college that you can attend. Technically everything is under the university, but that is not how it is being listed or advertised.

Thank you so much for your response and any other help you can provide. I really have been thinking that the law site providing info on both schools is causing a lot of the problem but I know its a risk to start messing around with that if I don't know what to expect.

Hope this can help other universities with similar problems too! Thanks again!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey There!

This is a bit of a complex one, so I'm going to number points in my reply to try to be organized.

1. First, very important to note that what you are seeing in the local results and the knowledge graph (those results to the right of the organic results which you've mentioned) are not necessarily what other people are seeing. Google targets local results based on the location of the searcher (you) at the time of search. So, if you and your mobile phone are on one side of the state, you'll see different results than you would if you went across state and did the same search there. That being said, the fact that students are showing up at the wrong school is a very good indicator that something is not right in the results they are being shown.

2. I am not quite following what you are describing about the URLs not showing up. Do you mean the website for school A is not showing up in the organic results when searching for school A, and the same thing with school B? Or are you talking about the knowledge graph?

3. I am also not quite understanding what your website situation is, given your mention of a subdomain advertising both sites. What do you have? Do you have a single website with a unique page on it for each of the schools? Or, are there multiple websites?

4. And this brings up the questions of the core NAP (name, address, phone) of the business. Do the two schools have an identical legal business name or unique business names? Do they each have their own phone number, or are they sharing a phone number any place on the Internet, including your website and local business listings?

5. Yes, if there is citation inconsistency, duplicate listings, inaccurate listings, Moz Local might very well be able to help with this. Have you looked at the 2 businesses via our free Check Listing tool to see what we're reporting? Go to moz.com/local/search and enter the name and zip of the first business. Note the results. Then do the same for the second location. Are listings coming up as duplicates, or inaccurate, or even missing? If so, the Moz Local could be very helpful to you in getting clean, separate citation sets built and managed for the for the two entities.

6. Finally, what is the situation of the law school in terms of its relationship to the university? Is it being listed as a department of the university on a campus, or is it a stand-alone entity, or am I not quite getting the arrangement?

As you can see, I'm asking a lot of questions. I think there's a good possibility that you may need to hire a consultant to whom you can 'open the books' to share all details in order to get this straightened out. Without that, our community can only make guesses, which may not result in an accurate answer. If you have permission to share the actual identities of the schools, that might help a great deal, but if not, we can take a guess at what's going on.