Ranking Penalty in Google Places for Primary Cell Phone Number?
-
Say a business runs out of a home (so, technically, the address of the business has a land line). But the business owner works outdoors all day long and so really runs his business off his cell phone.
Is it OK in Google Places to list the mobile phone as the primary contant number, and list the home phone as a secondary number?
Or will Google penalize the business's ranking in local search results for using a cell number as the main number?
-
Hi Echo1, I suggest you open a new thread for this question. This system doesn't show new activity on old questions, so people are unlikely to notice it.
-
What about having a local an a 1800 number? Would that affect the local rankings too? About 2 -3 years ago, having a 1800 number listed meant that you are a trusted business not just a flight-by-night company with its cell phone as their main number.
-
Phone numbers either landlines or mobile phones should not have a difference for the search engines in local search. As I have stated in my first response it is the use of the number consistently accross all your profiles and citations. I also believe a 800 number will be much less effective than a local number . If you use this number to forward to your other numbers that should not be an issue as long as the end users are served well while accesing this number. The last thing you want is a review that says this number is no longer working
-
I agree about the 800#; many resources advise against it as a primary number.
Ultimately, I chickened out and used the land-based line, listing the cellphone under "other numbers." He can employ his wife or use call forwarding to get calls to his cell, and give his cell to prospects upon talking with them. My understanding that a key component in local search listings is consistency, and I didn't want and confusion with online phonebooks and what have you.
Although I'm not using it in this case, I think I also might advise cellphone-heavy small businesses to establish their business with a local "virtual office" provider (an office park). You get your own land-based phone number on their switchboard, a non-PO-Box mailing address, and even an administrative assistant to answer the phone as your business, in some cases. I'm not suggesting non-local-seeming-local trickery; just getting your business out of your house and cellphone and into a land-based business environment. It can also make your business seem bigger to have someone answer the phone; and if you have a thick overseas accent (as one of my clients does) it can help combat first-impression prejudice or comprehension difficulties to start out the business replationship with a "local voice" kicking it off. Some virtual office set-ups even let you use a conference room, when necessary, for a small hourly fee.
I'm guessing, like anything else, something good like this could be used for evil in the hands of some local search people – but life is too short for all that black-hat nonsense. I'm just saying that if a local roofer lived near an office park, he might want to run his businesses out of a local virtual office setup rather than out of his attic, or while on top of his roof...and maybe the whole approach would help some local search issues (e.g., primary phone, map showing home address) to boot.
-
Using an 800 number may have a negative impact on local rankings - especially if it's the only phone number. http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml#62
Cell phone number shouldn't be a problem - especially if the area code matches the address. Per Google's own Places quality guidelines:
"Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.
Use a local phone number instead of a call center number whenever possible.
Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or “refer” users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business."(http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528)
A business cell phone should meet that criteria.
-
With all the porting of phone numbers, I'd think it would be mixed all over the place and not a great method to punish someone. Prehaps consider getting an 800 #
-
Google or the other engines should not care if you use a cellphone or land based unit. What would have an impact in your local search results is if you use this number consistently for your profile. The NAP(name,address,phone) should be consistent on all submissions,profiles,mentions,citations etc. Another factor that could affect local rankings is the area code that your mobile number has ex. if i was targeting los angeles i would want my area code to start with 323,213,310 etc . which is representative of the area. I hope this helps you out .
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
-
All images suddenly deindexed from google sitemap tab.
All my images de-indexed from google as reported in sitemap tab. There are more then 10k+ images that are earlier indexed but suddenly all image are de-indexed. Is that a GWT bug or we have been penalized by google for doing something wrong.Sharing the screenshot. image-deindexed-issue.PNG
Image & Video Optimization | | RaviM0 -
Philosophical: Does Google know when a photo isn't what your meta data says it is? And could you be downgraded for that?
Not something I've ever heard discussed before, probably still a bit too esoteric for present day, but I've always been one to be guided by where I see Google headed rather than trying to game the system as it exists now. So think about it: Most stock and public domain photos are used repeatedly throughout the internet. Google's reverse image search proves that Google can recognize when the same photo is used across dozens of sites. Many of those photos will have alt and/or title text that Google also has crawled. If not it has the content of the page on which the photo exists to consider for context. So if Google has a TON of clues about what a photo is likely to be about, and can in theory aggregate those clues about a single photo from the dozens of sites using it, how might Google treat a site that mislabels it, old school "one of these things is not like the others" style? Would a single site hosting that photo be bolstered by the additional context that the known repeated photo brings in, essentially from other sites? If 10 sites about widgets are using the same widget photo, but the 11th uses an entirely new, never before published photo, would the 11th site then be rated better for bringing something new to the table? (I think this would be almost certainly true, drives home the importance of creating your own graphics content.) Anyway, like I said, all theoretical and philosophical and probably not currently in play, especially since an image can be used in so many different contexts, but it's New Years and things are slow and my brain is running, so I'm curious what other folks might think about that as the future of image optimization.
Image & Video Optimization | | BradsDeals1 -
Phone Numbers in Local Campaigns
Hi Mozzers, I have a both an 800 number and a local number for a local business client, with both featured on the site. Which number should I feature on the Google places, Google+ and local citations — the local number, the 800 number, or both? Any help appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Image Duplicates - Does Google Penalize on this?
Hi Mozzers, I have some doubts on the images hosted on my site. I have a single image on the website coming from 3 different locations. The locations are: img.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg img1.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg www.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg Now, these 3 are the same images with the same Title (they currently do not have an Alt Tag). Now, the 2 sub-domains when opened without any internal URL, redirects to the main domain. For instance, if I access img.mydomain.com it 301 redirects to www.mydomain.com but if I access img.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg I will get the image and it does not redirect. I have checked Google Image search and the full path on the sub-domain of the image is being indexed and crawled by Google Image bot. Now, this is true for both the sub-domains which act as CDN for the images. If Google does crawl all the locations which have the same image, does it cause a duplicate issue for it? I know that if it was content, I would be in trouble but does image also has the same implications. I am planning for image optimization and faced with this situation. Any answers? Cheers,
Image & Video Optimization | | RanjeetP0 -
Google Places - second listing, same name
We will open a new office at a new location and I would like to add it to our Google places. How do I do this? Per Google guidelines: "Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts." - Website & Phone: Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location_._ Do I have to another contact page on my website for that location too? I will end up having to business listing with the same name but different locations. I want people to know that we have 2 separate offices because they serve different clients. I want to show up in Google places for the second location as well. Any thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Strange behaviour at google places
Hello Seomoz! I have strange behaviour at google places with one company. I have submitted company Air Condition SPB to goole places and it was on the 13th page at google places (keyword "продажа кондиционеров Санкт-Петербург"), and after some days it disappeared from google places at all for that keyword and many others. After that I did changes in company name at google places and that company appeared at google places again. And I was watching this strange behaviour at google places for that company many times. Could you tell me what can cause that strange behaviour? Thank You, Dmitri
Image & Video Optimization | | zhuk0 -
Will Google Places put ranking weight on google reviews instead of 3rd party now?
WIth the visual update to Google Places over the past 2 days do you think that Google reviews will become a higher ranking factor as compared to 3rd party reviews. The research I have done shows that 3rd party reviews seem to correlate better with higher rankings..Any thoughts on what might be coming down the road?
Image & Video Optimization | | NiftyMarketing0 -
How do I get google to index review sites for Google Places?
Some of our competitors are ranking higher than we are in google places due to a larger variety of review sites. Google is picking up reviews for them on certain review sites such as yelp.com or projectwedding.com. We have a lot of reviews on those sites also, but google is not picking those reviews up for us. I checked and verified that the phone number and address is exactly correct and has the exact same formatting on all the sites, but google still hasn't picked up those reviews for us. I've waited a couple months now and still nothing. Is there anything I'm missing?
Image & Video Optimization | | DanielLowe0