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Meant to say it's def Yelp that's boosting the rankings.

I've investigated and reported lots of cases of using high authority directory pages to help fake spam pages rank.

For a long time an atty ranked in 2 spots in the 7 pack for Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney. One of the most competitive local phrases out there. One listing linked to the Lawyers.com search page for "Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney" the other one linked to the Avvo.com search page for "Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney".

Think about it. All those pages are filled with local NAPs and local keywords. +++ High authority.

BTW this is now against the GMB guidelines since I made a big case out of the LA atty and some other cases. But of course some are still getting away with it.

As far as we all know Pigeon is still only living in the US, plus the timing does not match. Pigeon hit July 24th. Plus we normally refer to Pigeon in relationship to the local page (Google Places). And if anything Pigeon seems to have given directories even more of a boost.

But there was a different update that affected local that reportedly started on exactly 8/25. Carter from SerpWoo just did a really long complicated post full of about 20 screenshots at my forum last night, showing and explaining it.

So due to timing, I think it maybe could be this other algo that's affecting you, since it hit the same day, but of course that's just a guess. And no one else is talking about this update and I don't really understand everything he said to be honest because his tool is really complicated and difficult for me to understand fully. (Or I should say I have not made the time to figure it out yet.)

Great points all Miriam!

Many local businesses and SEOs have a Google strategy of divide and conquer.

With Google Local a better strategy is "United We Stand!"

The other important thing is that we need to be mindful of the S in NAPS (Name, address, phone, site) All need to tie together.

One well optimized site with location pages works better for a wide variety of reasons.

Here is a biggie that many don't realize. Let's say main site is optimized for all the plumbing KWs and Place page is linked to home page of main site.

Then you do a microsite for citywaterheaterrepairs.com. If NAP is on the site and other signals to help it rank locally, that tie it back to the main business, sometimes the algo will REPLACE THE URL on the main Place page with the microsite URL. What happens next? The ranking drops for the money KWs- city plumbers, city plumbing service etc, because the Place page is now linked to a site optimized for waterheaters.

I've had SEOs post in my forum about this problem and even post emails they have gotten from Google support saying they will not fix the URL. Support basically tells them the algo will connect whatever site it thinks is relevant and if you only want the algo to connect to your main site - then you should only have one main site.

So anyway that's just one potential issue that can come up.  Hope that helps and best of luck!

Hi Chase,

BrightLocal and Places Scout are the 2 best known rank trackers for local. But none of them, including Authority Labs do it the way you want to do it.

With them all you enter the KWs you want to track and it will report on the rankings. None of them find all the existing KWs you rank for.

I only know of one tool and it's free that will go out and FIND whatever variety of KWs a site is already ranking for. Again it's free, so not totally reliable and only works if the tool has already picked up the site.

But it's a very cool and relatively unknown tool I discovered and posted an in-depth overview about recently that demonstrates how it could be used for local search. The tool is savedhistory.net. May need to dig around to uncover the power of it. I had to play with it quite a bit for my post, to get to the meat of the features that are cool for local KW ranking and research. Here's the site I used in my example so you can go right in and see what it does without digging. http://savedwebhistory.com/d/90210dentist.net

Again it's free, not pretty and not comprehensive - but can be useful for the situations I cited. Pre-consult, new potential client, to see what they may already be ranking for. OR for KW discovery to find out what other KWs competitors in that industry rank for.

Hi Luke, yes I'm one that's been cautioning about merging and Google still says wait as well - until you get the new dashboard and the one click upgrade option.

Here is a concern I have about your initial merge attempt. When you tried to merge it should have merged with the existing Place page. If postcard showed up with a different address it makes me wonder if you accidentally merged with a dupe out there that had the wrong address. How did you get the postcard if the address was wrong?

Re categories - The new Google Places dashboard update is rolling out right now. Soon everyone will have it. With the new dash categories are also limited and there will be no more custom cats. Any custom cats you have will disappear after you are upgraded anyway. So everything is moving to default streamlined categories.

Google still has 2 different algos and 2 different display styles for local. The main algo that shows up we call blended and that's the one everyone refers to above, where your organic listing will be blended in or absorbed into the Places listings.

The other algo (the old Places algo) does not show up as much any more, but when it does, the organic and Places listings are separate so you can easily get 2 listings if both site and Place are strong.

Here's an example Poway Dentist: https://www.google.com/search?q=poway+Dentist&ie=UTF-8

(The telltale sign that that's the old algo is the link above the pack that says "Dentist near Poway, CA"

Both listings are in the Places "pack" plus in organic as well. But again this style listing does not show up much any more and typically only for smaller towns or less competitive search terms.

Actually centroid bias is only a factor with the OLD pack algo which seldom shows up any more.

With the new blended algo, which has been around for a couple years now, centroid isn't a strong factor. It's more about organic ranking factors now.

I have clients that rank #1 that are farthest from city center, have the fewest backlinks, less citations and reviews than others in their market. I even got one Dentist a double #1. He's #1 in organic plus A in blended. He's so far from centroid, he's literally almost the next state over. In fact 1/2 of his patients come from the other state. It's all about the on-site "Local" SEO!
To answer your question about how can you tell city center - a better question might be how far does the search radius extend. It varies by city, but is easy to see.

Do a search on Google - not maps (because the results are different and most consumers search on Google and being listed on page 1 there is what counts.)

Search for "City key phrase". Look at the map right on Google search. You'll see the cluster of where the most prominent listings are and you'll see where the map cuts off. If you or your client is located beyond the area shown on the map, they likely aren't going to rank on page one.

A great example of the lack or centroid bias is "Seattle Chiropractor".  Do a Google search and look at map on that page, then click map link to see in better detail on the big map. Most listings are near centroid. But #1 is WAY north of town and the E listing is way way up there.

Hope that helps.

Great points Miriam!

Peter, the other thing I've seen happen with microsites - using Miriam's example...

If Google finds the compost microsite, then sometimes she'll change the link on your G+ L page to the compost site. Now all you rank for is compost and you lose rankings for all the other KWs that were on the main site.

I've had consultants contact support about that problem and support says: There is nothing we can do if the algo finds another one of your sites. The only way to be sure the algo links to the correct site is to only have one site.

Ah I see. Sounds like printing error. I know one of the problems we had for awhile was batches of postcards going out that were blank. So ya, some kind of glitch.

"Do you know when Google will roll out once click conversion option in the UK? Have they indicated dates?"

Google never projects dates. But it's a slow rollout in US right now. I'm not hearing about very many existing dashboards being upgraded yet, so hard to say when it will hit UK.

Wayne, here are some other resources I found for you that were posted at my forum.

http://www.poweredbysearch.com/canadian-local-seo-citations-the-ultimate-guide/
http://www.ngsmarketing.com/local-citation-building-study-part-4-local-business-directories-around-the-world-canada-uk/
http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2011/05/diy-canadian-citations-our-2011-update/
http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/local-seo/canadian-citations/
http://www.adster.ca/blog/top-10-canadian-citations-for-local-businesses-and-local-search-marketers

Hi Feuza,

In Google local it's tough to rank in the local 7 pack unless your address is actually in the city you are trying to rank in. You can try to rank in organic in those other cities, but depending on competition, normally you can't get in "the pack" unless you are located there.

But again varies by industry and city. Test it. Google: "City + KW" and see if everyone's address is in that city.  Sometimes in smaller towns or low competition industries it will be mixed results.

As far as citations go - they don't move the needle that much with the blended algo. I mean they are important and you need to have a good base. But adding more won't necessarily increase rank. The current algo is more about organic ranking factors.

But as far as citations for service area businesses with hidden address... it's good to still get citations with address, because Google will match them to the address inside dash.

If you have clients that really don't want their address showing anywhere online, Phil Rosek has a post with a list of citation sources that don't require address. http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/22/private-local-citations-where-can-you-list-your-business-but-hide-your-address/

Wanted to let you know you have major violations that could get you suspended. So you may be suffering from a ranking penalty.

Your listing says your business name is "austin's photojennette wedding photography". You can't add city or keywords to your name. Must be name only.

Also Google hid your address due to being a home business. In the past instead of hiding your address they would just delete your listing for violating that guideline, so this is better. Hidden address does not hurt your ranking.

Incredibly smart answer Miriam. I'm going to steal this line: "In general, inclusion of more than one result in a single pack for the same brand is the result of tremendous dominance or lack of competition."

Miriam covered it all, I'll just say that things are somewhat different post-Pigeon. In the past it was very difficult to get more than one listing in the pack. But now with Pigeon I've seen packs where ALL 7 were for the same business. Example: one medical practice and 6 Drs at the same practice. That never used to happen before. And it's not really fair if there are 30 other businesses in that city that one locks everyone else out.

But Pigeon has not settled in yet and it appears they are still testing and training it. So I would not count on that continuing and I've only seen it happen in some smaller less competitive markets.

So all you can really do is follow Miriam's advice and continue working on all the best practice stuff you can. Consumers searching via phone that are located closer to location B will more likely see that one.

"As far as Social is concern, I would advise you to go one page for each state and cover all stores that comes under that particular state"

Actually if they create a Google+ Local page for each store - which they should in order to rank in local... then that page will also automatically be a G+ Business page with social features as well. They could opt to not use all the store pages for social and just have a brand Social page - but just letting you know all locations with a G+ L page will also be social pages.

To set up for 200 locations you want to use the bulk datafeed, now called "Google My Business Locations":  https://support.google.com/business/answer/6002002?hl=en

Sorry but that setting could cause you problems AND won't help you rank in those other areas. The service area setting does not affect ranking at all. You could set it for the whole state but you'll still only rank in the city you are located in if it's a competitive term.

Attorneys should not use that service area setting at all. Even if you sometimes go out to customers. Google has lots of issues with service area businesses, so that setting could confuse her since most attorneys only do business at their office. Again it won't affect ranking (positively BUT could affect it negatively I think).

I'm consulting for a Dentist right now that should be #1 but isn't. In doing their audit I discovered someone mistakenly set up service areas on the G+ business page. Just fixed it last night and am anxious to see if correcting that setting helps their ranking. (Complicated to explain how/why it would but I can if anyone needs more granular details.)

Hi Jonathan,

I help SEOs all day long that broke the rules and got caught and their client pays the price. Some fight for months to get their listing back, so I am a bit of a purist about the rules because I know the damage breaking them can do.

UPS or Pak Mail type addresses are prohibited and not considered by Google a "real" business location.  Does not matter if she meets clients there.

Here is Google's thinking. (And I work with upper management with Google on a daily basis on cases like this, so I know for a fact.) If someone found her on a map, drove across town, walked into the Pak Mail would she be there?

Also does not matter if address is hidden. Google still sees address in dashboard. They can find out it's at Pak Mail just like I did (http://goo.gl/maps/Ikmu3) and then the listing is toast as mailing addresses are not allowed period.

Does not matter if people online that claim to be experts SAY it's OK to do add city or KW to name or if competitors show their address.

It's like if I told you "it's OK to park in that no parking zone - I do it all the time!"

IF YOU are the UNLUCKY ONE to get CAUGHT - neither the cop or Google will accept the excuse that "others do it and get away with it" OR "some blogger told me it was OK to do it."

Photogs are under high scrutiny so sometimes Google does an industry sweep of a city looking for violations. IF they catch that mailing address or KW stuffed name, you could be in trouble. And if they catch the competitors showing their address, they could be too.

Actually locations like you mention are not allowed. I'm a Google Top Contributor and we deal with this often at the Google Business forum.

I know attorneys for example that have gotten 10 listings suspended. The entire account, including the main location they actually work out of.

And yes Googlers and mappers sometimes do stop by to check a location in person. (Not very often but it happens.)  They also call and have ways of trying to find out if the location is valid according to their guidelines.

Sorry, should have been more clear. Did not mean ranking order per se... More so trust and standing with Google.

I help folks with G+ L problems all day and lots of the problems over past year have been re traditional service area businesses like plumbers. Hundreds of thousands of listings were deleted, many were down for months. (Largely due to hide your address violations which does not apply here but there are a myriad of other problems tied to SABs - which in Google's eyes often tend to be on the spammy side.)

Also Google is now deleting SABs from Map Maker so you can't see history to do troubleshooting.

Additionally SABs are not supported for merging with G+.

Specifically with attys, many set up additional offices - often times virtual offices that are not staffed - which is a violation. Sometimes to try to avoid getting deleted, they'll set up service areas for these additional locations. If you work with Google a lot you know she often paints with a broad brush and deletes or suspends listings that follow certain spam patterns. Throws baby out with bath water so to speak.

So in my opinion there is just sort of a bias I guess you could say against SABs on multiple levels. That's gradually changing.

I try to teach folks to learn to think like Google and avoid possible spam filters or things that could trip a red flag. I just feel like why create unneeded attention, possible closer scrutiny or risk the algo making a wrong assumption, over a setting that does not have any upside at all.  Google looks at data in aggregate. Almost all attys serve clients at their office and do not have service area set up. So why be different and risk it. Especially if no benefit.

But again I help people recover from problems all day long, after they've done something that's already tripped them up. Therefore I see more problems than most and tend to be over-cautious because I know how time consuming and tricky it can be to fix something on Google local AFTER you get suspended, deleted or a rank penalty.

Hope that helps clarify. Was in a rush before and maybe should have explained better, but it's alot to explain and even in this reply that's only part of it, but I think enough to help highlight some points.

I'm with Miriam on this!

If the listing was set up properly in the Google My Business dashboard then the full address is listed but the address is not shown live because it's a violation for the address to show if they only do business at the client's locations.

However citations should still have full address and NAP should match exactly as it is in the dashboard. Because Google matches citations to the address field even if address is suppressed.

Only exception would be if it's a home address and the client is adamant about having it not listed anywhere. If so, then Phil Rozek has a good post about citation sources that allow submission without a street address.

So sorry wish I could help but bulk is the one thing I don't deal with. I find there are not many consultants that know about/work deeply with bulk uploads either and from all the questions I get about it at my forum I know it's not an easy or straightforward process.

Have you posted at the Google Business forum? Myself or one of the other Top Contributors can escalate it to Google if no one knows how to help.

Also have you tried phone support? If you can get someone on the phone that understands bulk, that may be your best bet. From the feedback I get it sounds like most of the phone support reps are somewhat entry level, but maybe they can get you to someone?

There are a few issues I wanted to point out.

1st off the address in your Google dashboard needs to be the real address you work from.  So if you move you MUST change it in dash. If you don't all kinds of problems could come up including duplicates and including your listing being deleted.

Any time you move, it breaks NAP so you will likely lose ranking.

If you move to a new city you will likely only rank in that city, not the previous city. (Depends on competition and proximity.)

In either case you need to set service area and be sure address is hidden. But that service area does not affect ranking in any way at all. Ranking area is still determined by the location that's in dash, even though address is hidden.

Hope that helps and best of luck!

I think there is a locksmith spam ring doing this.

I've helped a couple locksmiths in the Google forum with the exact same problem and all these spammy locksmiths are linking to Yelp category pages.

In 2 cases they were linking directly to a Yelp page of the locksmith that was reporting them.

I'll add this example to the ones I've escalated to Google management.

Kevin, most of the experts I read seem to think backlinks to your G+ Local listing don't boost ranking at all.

Thanks parayama for the mention.

Happy New Year all!

Thanks Miriam.

It's buried in a thread on another topic, but shows screenshots of the same problem described here.

Numerous Complaints about GoDaddy's Locu Menu Links on Google Local Pages

Scroll down to post #8 - #12.

"We did this to let people know that we come out to their location, and also to try to expand our reach. For example, if you were searching for an SEO company in Chesterfield, that is an area that is about 30 mins from us. I'm not sure our local office listing would "carry" that far out, and thus the service area was created as a test."

Service area and service radius have absolutely no impact on ranking. It's been tested, proven. Typically you'll only rank in the city your are in. Unless competition is low and you are very strong, then sometimes you'll rank in other cities, but service area settings don't play a part.

"I'm not sure that the bot would take that long to recrawl the listing, and I would have thought that it would have happened by now if that was the case."

Sorry, not talking regular bots, like the ones that crawl sites. Maybe bot is the wrong word. But with Local listings you can have a violation for years without an issue. Then you make a minor edit and it seems to trigger a recheck of the listing to see if it stands up to current guidelines, then it gets wacked.

You had another question I got via email but it's not showing up here so copying:

"I had a question about this, as even though we had quite a few mentions of the city and service they were spread out throughout the description and not bulked together in the traditional definition of keyword-stuffing. If what you were saying about the description having no part to play is true, how would that have had an impact on the LBL drop?

Help me understand, my mind is a sponge right now ;)"

Description is not a RANKING factor. But the algo looks at it as a signal of spamminess. Spammers have lots of patterns that the algo can pick up on, this is one of them. So a non-spammy description can trip a filter if it follows the same pattern of overly repetitious keywords.

In that short description, count every single time any word is repeated more than once. I did a quick scan and counted 25.

Mike Blumenthal has also said mentioning city even twice in description can cause a 10 point ranking penalty. I have examples I could show at my forum, where the description was not spammy or KW stuffed, but the city and KWs were repeated multiple times. They clean up description per my recommendation and pop right back up.

But again all that was pre-pigeon. After, it seemed like lots of really spammy ones were getting away with it. So may no longer be an issue.

But like I said above, if it does not help and if customers will never see it and if it could maybe hurt AND if your ranking was suffering, why not clean it up? Nothing to lose.

Chase, Wissam's link will help a lot.

But in general many citations, stem from the yellow pages. Many mature businesses I've worked with have never submitted a single citation, yet have 50,000 or more.

If they've been listed in the phone book, it propagates out from there. Many directories scrape the online yellow pages, then other directories scrape those directories. Plus you'll see in David Mihm's visual, many of the back end data providers get phone book data and business listings, then feed the info out to tons of other sites.

Thanks Miriam!

One more thing I wanted to mention. The guidelines purposely do not spell everything out. They are VERY vague for a reason... so as not to give spammers and scammers an exact road map of what to avoid. But folks like Miriam and I, that help folks in the trenches after they have already gotten in trouble, often know about unwritten rules or where the line is drawn on vague guidelines.

I often ask Google management too where the real line is drawn or what a subtle guideline really means. Often the reality is very black and white, it's just written in a pale shade of gray.

If by local you mean you've merged with G+, then FYI after you merge with G+ you are not supposed to edit anything in the old Places dash any more at all anyway, so there is really no "which is better" strategy. You are limited by which dash you are in and whether you have merged or not (which if you have not do not BTW.)

Plus custom cats are going away soon. Google is upgrading everyone to the new Places dash, which like Google+ does not allow custom cats. THEN they are auto-upgrading everyone to G+ so everyone will have a merged page, which again does not allow custom cats.

So both the old dash and custom cats will be gone soon. Sad...

Hi Ruben,

Keyword stuffed names are a major violation but one that Google often does not penalize.

Check out "Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney". 2 fake names occupy the C and D spots.

Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer (Site used is AVVO.com)
Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney (Site used is Lawyer.com)

Both listings are really for Brenner Law. Same location and phone #.

Tons of us have blogged about it and reported to Google numerous times. Even reported to Matt Cutts a few times. The listings violate the guidelines PLUS 2 should not be showing in the pack like that for the same business anyway.

This is due to the bad Pigeon algo that was released 7/24. Pigeon is rewarding lots of spam. However KW stuffed names have been a problem for a long time. Just worse since Pigeon.

Yep Miriam, that's what I meant. You just said it shorter and sweeter!

I was just coming to say something like the 1st part of what Chris said. Google local listings are for physical locations, does not matter how many sites you have.

Since you mentioned ecomm wanted to say that online only businesses do not qualify for a Google Local listing - it's not allowed. But if any of the locations do business face to face with customers locally, then they can have a local page. And yes if all the same company, it's fine to have all listings in the same account.

Yes the service area is set right AND that's why Google already automatically hid the address and it no longer shows live.

However hiding address does not get around the other violation. The address in dash must still be 'REAL'.

Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.

• Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.

Note: when you change address you'll likely need to reverify, she'll likely have to start over in the 6 - 8 week ranking cycle and will possibly lose reviews. Same thing with correcting the name when you do that.

So re-doing to make this right can cause some problems which is why Miriam and both stress learning all the ins and outs so you can do it right the 1st time. Because Google is not very forgiving about making changes. But this is how we learn right? (Taking hard knocks and having to re-do stuff.)

"Is there any additional benefit to claiming a business listing other than locking it from being edited?"

Claiming does not lock it from being edited. Still can be by either Google or users.

As far as SEO and ranking - no benefit really. I see unclaimed listings in the A spot all the time.

Except for 2 important things.

1. Categories are one of the most important local ranking signals. If you don't claim, all you get is whatever standard category Google gives you, no additional ones.

2. As far as conversions, click-though and stick rate - claiming can make a HUGE difference. (Adding great images, a compelling description, hours, etc.)

Click-though and stick rate are both important ranking factors.

The data/image from the page shows up in the Knowledge panel, so a surfer comparing listings in Google search could be swayed more by a nice KP, especially if there are the additional elements added of having a G+ Post and image show up. That's just extra free ad space you aren't using if you don't claim and post to G+.

So all the above could help get either more calls or clicks and again click-through is now one of the strongest ranking factors. So I would assume click-through from SERPs to G+ would also count.

I've been posting about the new carousel a lot too, since it was 1st spotted in the wild and have many of the same questions you do.

Since I have not been lucky enough to sit on a test server that is displaying carousels yet, I have not had a chance to investigate. Have only seen other people's screen shots.

But I have a strong feeling this is launching soon, so when it does I can investigate more. At this point I'd only be guessing. But again GREAT questions that I hope will spark a good discussion.

If no keywords in domain I would also go with #3 from a pure SEO perspective. Although post Hummingbird and post Pigeon I'm not sure it matters quite as much these days.

Just my 2 cents, no strong theory behind it except for good ole fashioned local SEO.

Yes I agree with everyone above. There are pros and cons both ways. We've had this discussion many time at other venues and the general consensus, even from top citation pros is that it does not matter too much either way.

As Range and Monica said, keeping NAP consistent is the most important thing.

FYI I just announced the carousel launched - it's official and rolling out now!

Good points all Richard!

"Those that don't have Google+ and haven't setup social and other profiles or have NAP listings typically rank poorly even if they are EMD."

Yes, sorry I should have qualified I was only talking about local listings in the pack. In regular organic it's somewhat different. The specific potential benefit I was pointing out, only works for local pinned listings. And Google mainly seems to still like EMDs and PMDs in local pack listings .

But like you said you can't just do any one thing and expect to rank. You can have a subdomain or even an EMD and if everything else isn't optimized well or there are violations or the competition is stronger, you still may not rank.

Yes if you are outside the US, then I agree with the others. The Pigeon algo expanded overseas and exhibits many of the characteristics you are describing.

Many report 7 packs being reduced to 3 packs, but in some industries packs are totally gone.

Thanks Miriam,

Not sure he specializes per se, but Mike does work with feeds or consults helping with problems on them. Of course when it comes to all things local "The Professor" has most of the answers. But besides him I don't know of anyone that's really a specialist in that area.

Thanks Miriam, we've been discussing in the G+ Pro community all day and I'm working on a forum post for tomorrow. I have Andrew's post in there and I'll include a link to your post here as well.

Hi Ashwin,

You asked: "So what happens to my Google plus page now? Do i discontinue using it"

No I'd still keep it current and use it, for reviews for one thing. But additionally the data from your G+ L page still gets used and fed to other places like the knowledge graph. And your page may still show up and rank in Map search and Google+ search as well. Plus you never know when she'll come out with some new display format and use that local data.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that sometimes packs disappearing is temporary and based on a wide variety of factors like query volume. So the pack could come back. I've seen packs disappear for a week and then come back.

Actually they are one in the same, just different names and there are several different products and updates, so G makes it really confusing.

The business owner side is still branded Places. In fact all the NEW branding for business owners to sign up and the brand new dashboard that is still rolling out is all called "Places for Business".

It's the consumer facing page, where a customer would leave a review that was rebranded as Google+ Local.

Then there is the Local Google+ page which is a totally different animal and it does not show up in search unless merged with the Place page/AKA G+ Local page - once it's merged there is no name for that one. I did a long post explaining all this with a funny "WTF do you call these pages again?" image. So convoluted!

Google is sort of redoing branding or should I say doing away with all the past branding though for local and it appears she's heading toward one page name. Everything will just be called a Google+ page. Then it's just a matter of whether you verify or merge to add the social features. But then again she's getting rid of most of the links so consumers can't even get to the G+ L whatever you call it page now anyway, so...

"I know that since they have a presence in these towns that are within 25 miles, I could set up an "area of service" listing by verifying their other stores as locations for the main store, which would get their central store and main website listed in the local results in those towns."

Actually that's not how local works and would cause problems on a few levels. The service area setting is only for businesses that go out to the customer - like plumbers. It's not for retail stores.

Plus setting service area does not help the slightest bit as far as ranking in other cities. It only shows customers how far you will drive to service them on-site.

In local if the competition is medium to heavy and decent size town you typically will only rank in the city you are located in. So the main store is not going to rank in city A unless competition is very low. You can test by searching City A + KW  and see if only businesses from that city show or if listings show for the city the main office is in.

So best strategy is to optimize each location for their primary categories in the city they are actually in.

Thanks Wick for the extra details. This one is tricky because some of the services will overlap.

Where an SMB may see themselves as 2 different companies, Google often looks at it as a marketing ploy and sees it as really 2 divisions of the same company.

This one is a little hazy to me. I think the only safe way to even try to have 2 listings is if none of the categories cross over. So even though they both do home maintenance of sorts that cat should not cross over.

Does that make sense?

Hi Sarah,

Like I said for a long time I recommended adding that info as Google DID say they looked at it. However the new dash is right around corner, then that info will be gone. So if there, leave it. If not I would not bother adding. You could get the new dash next week.

PLUS stuff down there never did directly impact ranking. There are far more important areas you could spend time. Doing really smart local on-site SEO moves the needle the most these days.

Yes there is a new help forum that's been up for a couple years now.  I'm a Google Top Contributor there.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/business But it's mainly a peer support forum and Google will not answer any questions about ranking and seldom comments on other questions.

Wow, excellent response Miriam and right on!

The other thing you might want to consider is getting more rankings for long tail queries for each location by actively incorporating neighborhood SEO. So each location tries to get more rankings for neighborhood and other regional queries to help compensate for the fact they may not rank for KW + city.

I think there have been several posts about this, but here is one I found for you from SE Land:
http://searchengineland.com/ready-googles-neighborhood-algo-194161

The local blended algo in the 7 pack is more about organic ranking factors. Claiming, filling out, # or reviews and citations does not matter as much as organic does.

I just did a huge post about it showing how you can research and see this and how to do competitive analysis to see why whos at the top of the 7 pack is really there.

But additionally new Place pages can take 6 - 8 weeks to fully work into the local database. So if you recently pin verified you won't show in local at all for KW searches and will only show on maps for direct phone or name+ city searches.

I'm very much a purist when it comes to the Google Local guidelines, since I deal with fixing problems all day AFTER someone has gotten in trouble.

In my mind sharing an office like this is tricky to handle.  Now you likely would not get in trouble for adding a suite, but to me if a suite does not really exist, then it does not exist so it's a little like making up a fake location.  Here is the pertinent part of the guidelines.

Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location.

In big office buildings you'll often see 10 businesses that are all at the same address that don't specify a suite at all, so it would look to the algo as if they are all in the same office. So maybe just skip suite on the new listing?

Just my anal-about-the-rules 2 cents.

Miriam, MM guys usually won't deal with GMB issues at all. If it's a problem in the GMB dashboard, then I think it's GMB support you should call.

But I started getting reports at my forum about that exact same missing image problem today. Many of my users said when they checked the listing, their images had mysteriously been moved to a "scrapbook" folder in the photos tab.

One of my users said: "I have also noticed with a few clients that pics that were directly on the GMB page were relocated to a "scrapbook" folder in the photos tab. Not sure why, but some of them seem to be going back and forth on the GMB page."

So I think something is up with images. I'm pretty sure support will tell you it's a technical problem and they are working on it. I plan to ask Google local management tomorrow and will try to remember to report back here if I find out anything.