Hi Gayane,

Thanks for the link and the further information. You could go either way with this, but personally, I would stick with designating the business as brick-and-mortar. If you choose the settings for a service area business, Google will determine whether or not to hide your address, and if you are the only business in your locale/industry with a hidden address, there is some chance that you could see a ranking drop in Van Nuys. And, given your location (a busy, competitive place) setting a service radius is unlikely to cause you to show anyplace but Van Nuys, anyway. So, personally, I'd stick with the settings for brick-and-mortar because you are eligible, and I would pursue the work described in my point #2, above.

Hope this helps!

Hey Neil,

Smart topic, and yes, you are right that Google has stopped showing the description in pretty much any relevant place. It's still showing on Google+ Local pages, but as almost no links exist to Google+ Local pages anymore, few people are likely to ever seen the description. Nevertheless, the description is information you are giving to Google about your business, even if they don't display it. So, in my opinion, it's still worth it to write a good, non-spammy description.

On a side note, I find it particularly weird that a couple of GMB dashboard updates ago, Google went to the trouble of allowing rich text in the description. That seemed like a great feature. But, it's become of rather minimal value now, with the description being all but absent from what the typical user will see.

Hey Ruben!

Eric is correct and this thread at the Google and Your Business Help Forum with the reply on it from a TC confirms Google's policy on this:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/SVQj4YfZccs;context-place=topicsearchin/business/remove$20old$20listing

Hi Adam,

Good comment! I'm also thinking about the multi-site scenario - particularly the multi-mini-site scenario. I've never been a fan of this approach and it does seem like the update could be applied to this scenario. Not sure yet ... but could be.

Hey Donald,

YP can be a good citation for a local business but I am puzzled by the sheer number of links you've found - 2500? Most businesses would not have 2500 listings (unless they are McDonald's or something like that). What is the origin of this many links from a single entity?

Hey Rod,

This is Google's def. of Doorway Pages: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311

If you read through that carefully, I think the conclusion you may draw is that the difference between what Google is describing as a doorway page and what you may hear Local SEOs referring to as 'local landing pages' or 'city landing pages' or what have you, would be uniqueness and quality. This is my reading of this, anyway.

If you are going to create landing pages, as in the case of a local business serving multiple cities, I would suggest making maximum effort to ensure that each page is a thorough, unique, stand-alone resource for visitors. Don't throw up a bunch of thin, similar pages. Go for uniqueness and high quality. Hope this helps.

Hi Jess,

Can you provide further detail regarding what your relationship is to Carr Workplace? What is your business? Did you set up a listing via Google My Business for it? How does your business operate? The more detail you can provide, the better answers you should receive from the community.

Hi Charlie,

I'm sorry you haven't yet received any feedback yet on this question. Mike Blumenthal's writing on this topic (which you've already read) is as much as I personally know about on this, having never personally implemented a call tracking strategy for a local business. I'm hoping someone in our community will still reach out to you on this, but it may be that having read what you've read, you know as much as most folks on this topic. It may be you'll need to experiment to learn more.

My pleasure! And wishing you best of luck!

Hi Pete,

Hmm ... could be my Yankee lack of knowledge here. What is a tool hire affiliate? This isn't an industry with which I'm familiar here in the US, but my best guess is that you rent tools (like mowing machines or bulldozers) to people. Yea or nay? At any rate, it sounds like what you are talking about might be similar to something we used to have here in which industrial strength vacuum cleaners (hoovers) are located at the front of grocery stores. The stores don't own the machines. Rather, the machine owner has a sort of kiosk within the store from which they rent their machines. Is this similar? In such a case, you'd need to have pages specifying that your products can be found INSIDE such-and-such market at 123 Front Street. You can create web-based content for these, but should scrutinize the Google guidelines to see whether you qualify for Google+ Local pages or not: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Does this help, Pete?

Hi Pete,

I want to be sure I'm clearly understanding your business model. You are saying yours is an e-commerce site, which is most commonly a virtual model, but you are also saying you have locations. Are these locations physical locations unique to your business (not like having your products in someone else's store) and do your employees interact face-to-face with customers who come to rent your products? If yes to all these, then there is no problem with you having a page for each of your physical shops - no problem at all. Just be sure each page you create is unique and useful and linked to from your navigation.

Please, let me know if there is some facet of this I'm not quite getting. For now, the practice of having a unique page for each of your shops is still a best practice.