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.
Former tenant Google Map listing still displays
-
Our tenant closed their business and we now occupy the address, their Google map still displays, albeit "Permanently Closed" along with ours at the same address. I can't seem to get it removed, it's been 2 years. Help
-
Hi Kevin,
Very sound questions. Google's way of dealing with this is the permanently closed label. There are businesses all around me that shuttered years ago and are still searchable, but bear this label. So, at least for the present, this is what they feel is an adequate solution to the fact that businesses close. Google does make some efforts to hide permanently closed listings, but they are still discoverable if a user searches for the name + the old location.
What can be a problem is when businesses don't actually close, but simply move from an old location to a new one. When they do this, there are steps they should take to avoid having their old location labeled as "closed" because some studies have indicated that this can harm their future rankings at the new location if they continue to use the same phone number as was used at the old location, as well as signalling to customers that the company may have gone out of business.
If you own retail properties with tenants who move rather than closing, a nice thing to do for them would be to teach them how handle GMB so that they don't end up with that "permanently closed" listing. I outline how to do this in the "permanently closed" section of this blog post: https://moz.com/blog/delete-gmb-listing
Might be something to bookmark for future reference!
-
Google is a corporation whose sole purpose in the universe is to make money. I would never think of anyone as a "hater" for legitimate criticisms of an entity that has all the rights of a human being, but none of the responsibilities or risks of one.
-
Hi Everett,
Yes, I keep them updated every month with new data & imagery. Agreed, it's a massive job to "clean up the internet" one that I'm sure is thankless and never ending.
I hope this post/question doesn't portray me as a hater, I love Google, search changed my life for the better. Good people like yourself, Miriam and others are my inspiration to keep working hard to do my part in keeping our internet as clean as possible.
TY for the reply
KJr
-
Kevin,
Have you tried updating the local listing aggregators? Tools that help with that are Moz Local, Bright Local and Whitespark. Yes, this is a problem with Google local and it should be their responsibility to keep their information updated, but I'm sure you can imagine what a massive effort that is for every location of every business in nearly the entire world. The easier you can make it for them the better.
-
True, but isn't it Googles intent to provide accurate data? These types of listings are inaccurate information. Imagine a location had much tenant turnover: Video Rental, Gaming shop, Vape store, and Florist over a 3 year tenure, that's confusing to see all those listings on Google.
We have a building in our town used as a restaurant, it has had over a dozen different tenants in the past decade.
I agree, it has little to no impact on our business and i greatly appreciate your reply.
KJr
-
Hi Kevin,
I'm just popping in to make sure you saw Miriam's recent response to your question in this thread. Let us know, thanks!
Christy
-
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for coming back to this thread. The permanently closed listing for an unrelated business at your address should not affect you in any way. If it were your business that was marked permanently closed, that would be a problem for you. But as it's the former tenant's business marked that way, it's only a problem for them. I would not worry about this.
-
Yes, several times actually, leaving a trail of "Permanently Closed" listings
-
Hi Everett,
Yes on all accounts, I am the in-house marketing manager for Heritage Custom Signs. All suggestions are appreciated
-
Hello Kevin,
I assume you've already tried the "suggest an edit" feature on the maps?
If not, that would be a good place to start.Do you have a Google MyBusiness listing?
If not, you should set one up. This may help.Do you have your address clearly marked on your website?
The more you associate your business with that exact address, as typed, the more you help Google figure this mess out.Do you have your address marked-up using Schema or JSON-LD on your website?
See above.Are you the custom signs and displays company or another company?
-
Hi Kevin,
Did this former tenant relocate elsewhere?
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
-
Unsolved Has anyone noticed the Google quote request response rate never changes?
We respond to almost 100% of our quote requests, yet every quote email that comes in from Google shows a 27% response rate and it never changes. Has anyone else seen this or have any insight into it?
Local Listings | | r1200gsa0 -
Google My Business - Service Area - Use Zip Codes or City Names?
Google allows you to choose up to 20 locations as service areas, and you can choose based on cities, counties, or zip codes. I'm trying to determine if zip codes, cities, or counties are better to select for our GMB profiles. We are located in the US. I am thinking it's best to use all 20 areas allowed on a profile as long as they are relevant, generally giving Google all the info they will let you provide is best. I also am leaning toward using zip codes because it also includes the city when you choose by zip code. For example: Entered the zip code 21009 and the service area selection provided was: Abingdon, MD 21009, USA Entering the city/state returns a selection of Abingdon, MD, USA I also think it may have to do with how people search and find your business as well? Does anyone have experience with this? Best practices? My google searching has not turned up any reliable info.
Local Listings | | WadeBayMgmt0 -
Google My Business for Municipalities?
I'm working with the City of Lakewood, WA, on an image campaign that overlaps a bit with some SEO goals. If you Google "Lakewood, WA", in the knowledge panel to the right of the search results is an image of building on fire. I'm not sure where this image comes from or why it has been selected as the image to represent the City of Lakewood but its been there for a while. If this was a small business, I would simply claim their Google My Business page and feed some good images into it. Problem solved. But Google doesn't offer an option to "Claim this City". LOL. Can you create a GMB page for a municipality? Does anyone know the right thing to do here to make this picture go away and give the city more control over its own image?
Local Listings | | TheKatzMeow2 -
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 -
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 -
For Google's Structured Data, should I change my listings from Product schema to Local Business schema?
I was reading Google's Structured Data spec, and I'm considering changing the schema of our listing pages from the Product schema to the Local Business schema. Is this a good idea? To give you a little more info, the pages that I'm classifying are listings for physical spaces that our website rents out for activities, such as meetings. Here's an example of a listing: https://www.peerspace.com/pages/listings/550ddcde2f352d0800fc186b Our goal is to add the proper schema.org tags to the page so that our spaces show up in local searches, such as "meeting space in San Francisco." The problem is that when we add location microdata (addressLocality, addressRegion, etc.) to our current "Product" schema, Google tells us that "Products" can't have a location. However, we aren't quite a "Local Business" either, since we don't publicly share our space's street addresses—only the space's neighborhood/city/state for privacy reasons. As a result, we get an error from Google's Structured Data Tool as a "Local Business" page because "streetAddress" is required for Local Businesses. Should we switch to the Local Business schema anyway, even though we get structured data errors for streetAddress? Or is it better not to include the location information in the microdata so that we don't have errors? Does Google penalize you for incomplete tags? Any input is appreciated!
Local Listings | | stuartstein0 -
Google Places - Remove Completely vs. Permanently Closed?
This is a bit confusing to explain so bear with me please. We have a client that used to have an old law practice with a partner. The site and backlinks were very large and it had a lot of domain authority. It also had a very large citation profile and history. The two lawyers have since split, but there remains multiple Google Places listings out there for the old partnership. We have fixed the one showing the old business practice name, but not the one that he setup for his personal name. One of the biggest hassles is that the old location he setup has his attorney name in the actual listing. The issue is that we cannot close the old listing (we tried this), as it comes up permanently closed when you Google his name. If you search for his new Law Firm, the correct business listing that we have set up will show. The new listing also includes his name and has over 50 five star reviews. We hoped that the large amount of legitimate reviews would get rid of or at least suppress the old listing, but it is not happening. So I am a bit confused as to what to do. If we close the old listing Google shows the red "permanently closed" listing when you Google his name. We cannot update the old listing information to show his new address as then it will compete with the new listing that we setup that shows all the positive reviews. The old listing was not created by us, and the new one was. The new one shows when you search for his Law Firm name in Google, but not for his personal name i.e "NAME HERE ATTORNEY" or "HIS NAME and LOCATION" Interested to hear your thoughts. The only way I can think to fix this is to contact Google directly and see if there is a way to permanently delete the listing from Google maps, but I am not aware that this is possible.
Local Listings | | David-Kley0 -
Google My Business - bulk location upload vs. single upload
Hi there, I have a question regarding Google My Business listings: We currently have a business with few offices (less than 10). Each office has it's Google listing under the same Google account.
Local Listings | | OrendaLtd
We plan on opening new offices at a certain pace, let's say two a month, which means we'll have more than 10 listings in the near future.
As far as I recall, Google allows up to 10 listings per account, which means it won't suffice. On the other hand, We do not have 10 offices at the time being, which means we're not eligible for a bulk upload. Any ideas how to handle this situation?0