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Great question! And one that is built into the scenario of a single location business expanding to new locations.

There are typically 2 routes local multi-location businesses can take.

1. Build a single set of service description pages + a unique page for each location.

2. Build pages for every possible keyword/city combo + a unique page for each location.

Benefits of route one: by focusing your resources on this more limited set of pages, you may find you've got what it takes to build the BEST page on, for example, native plant landscaping in the industry and the BEST page about your location in San Francisco.

Drawbacks tend to relate to how to optimize major pages of the website (homepage, about). With just 2 locations, you can likely include some optimization for both cities on these pages, but if you start opening numerous locations, this can become untenable. After all, Whole Foods does not list hundreds of cities on its homepage ;). And, once you've got these two sets of pages built, you can turn focus in all kinds of exciting directions, creating all kinds of new content that continues to build your brand and increase conversions.

Benefits of route two: If you have the resources to do this well, you can end up with some very thorough keyword coverage. However, it may or may not be great for human users. Will users genuinely be helped in some unique way by the presence of your page on 'native landcaping san franciso' and your page on 'native landscaping oakland', describing the exact same service twice? In some cases, yes, but in others, no. So, make a wise choice here. Does a set of pages covering every possible service/city combo exist for users, or because you're crossing your fingers search engines will take note?

Drawbacks become quickly apparent where resources are lacking. Thin, duplicate content can easily result from this route, weakening your website instead of strengthening it. With proper resources, this doesn't have to be the case, but if you suspect it might be tough to pull off dozens of truly top quality pages with the route 2 approach, I'd advise sticking with route one.

Hope this helps, and Rand's most recent Whiteboard Friday might help with organization of the work ahead of you: https://moz.com/blog/build-content-keyword-map-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

Hi Onitamara!

Good discussion going on here. I'll add a few big picture thoughts:

How much content (whether in the form of pages or posts) the therapist will want to build should be determined by 3 things:

• How much she enjoys sharing what she knows and how much time she has to devote to writing
• How helpful this will be to the public both in terms of informing them, and transforming them into clients
• How competitive her market is

If she likes to write, this is a good start, and if she is a good writer, it's an even better one. And, of course, she needs to have the time.

The true usefulness of the content will determine how much it impacts both the lives of the readers and the financial bottom line of the therapist. The true usefulness will also gradually impact Google's perception of the website as an authoritative source on its topics.

The happy medium being aimed for is to publish enough content to attain the bookings and rankings the therapist ideally desires, but not going overboard beyond that. So, for example, if the therapist is located in a small, rural area, she may discover that writing two blog posts a month is all it takes for her to become competitively ranked and to have a full patient roster. But, if her practice is in a metropolis, the effort she'll need to put into being ranked and booked is likely to be much, much greater. Because of this, it's smart to assess the competitive landscape the therapist is entering, and to implement as much tracking as possible to help determine how much content (pages or posts) is needed to meet goals, and how that content is assisting in those goals being met.

Finally, as Ed is mentioning, it's important that your most important pages are the easiest to find, by means of your internal linking structure. In other words, the therapist's page on "Couples Therapy" will likely be one you're internally linking to more prominently than a single article she wrote about "How to Apologize Sincerely" or something like that.

In the long run, though, the decision to create a blog or a library of static articles should be based on the therapist's desire to share, the need to use content as a vehicle for client education and conversion, and the unique competitive landscape in which the practice is operating.

Oh, yes, Ira ... even if you are listing an SAB, it has to have a physical address, but then hide it. Only about 20 categories? Wow - that is really a limited data set. That wouldn't even cover core brick-and-mortar enterprises. Hmm!

Great topic, Ben! Thank you for bringing your question here.

Coincidentally, I've been working on a document regarding scenarios like this one. Unfortunately, it's far from ready for publication, but I can share some suggestions with you.

1. Does each location of the business, or at least each region, have something akin to a local community expert? If so, this is the person you need to be in contact with. If not, you'll have to do this research yourself. Find out what the major events of the area are (fairs, expos, conferences, events, concerts, workshops, celebrations). Next, find out what the most cherished and most influential local entities are (schools, organizations, associations, teams).

2. Now that you have this data, determine where the opportunity lies for a specific location of the business to sponsor, host, speak at, attend or otherwise support these happenings and entities. This could run the gamut from supplying the charcoal for the 4th of July BBQ, to sponsoring a little league team, to offering a scholarship at the community college, to hosting a seminar on a topic relevant to your business. Be SURE the landing page for the location showcases this information.

3. In return for participation and philanthropy, request that online recognition links to the desired landing page. If the local news, local bloggers or other community media can be nudged to promote the company's giving/involvement, and they are linking to the homepage instead of the landing page, follow-up and request that the link be edited to go the page that features your own story about what the business is doing (again, be SURE this exists on the city landing page).

4. If all these seems like too much work, given the scale of your client, I recommend you check out ZipSprout's sponsorship tool, which does much of the research for you.

Hope this helps!

Hi Catherine!

Thanks for saying that. I want to be sure you are following exactly these steps.

1. Be sure you are in the GMB dash for the specific business and are clicking the big red edit button that's over that large header background image at the top.

2. Then, click the edit/pencil icon next to the address

3. Then, be sure to use the scroll bar on the side of the popup to scroll down to the 'I deliver goods and services' text with the little radio buttons. That's where you need to be.

Can you get there? If that is totally absent, I recommend contacting Google directly about this.

Hi KylieM!

Thanks for bringing your question to the forum.

While I'm not sure what the findings of your research were based on, I believe what you've decided may be overly-complicating your task. A business with 2 locations can simply have a landing page for each of its two branches. You don't need a subdomain, you don't need to recreate the website. Just be sure your core pages (home, about, services, contact) are in good shape, and create a unique page for OKC and another for Dallas. This post might help: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Hey There!

Sorry to hear about this. First, I do want to be sure to mention that there has been a shakeup in the packs in the past week. Please see:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/42891-lot-movement-3-pack-local-finder.html

and

http://searchengineland.com/google-filtering-business-local-search-results-258044

I'm looking up 'Sea Leveler Cape Canaveral' in Google right now, and do see a Knowledge Panel for your business, so that's good news, and see this GMB listing:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sea+Leveler+Sport+Fishing+Charters/@28.4086071,-80.6143363,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xb376f8aa9ed43c09!8m2!3d28.4086071!4d-80.6143363

So, I see no signs that your listing has actually be suspended. Please let me know, did you see your issue resolve? Are you able to see the above listing okay?

Hi There,

I'm not quite understanding the concept of "commute" here. My image of an addiction treatment center would be a physical location that patients come to, the same way a doctor's office is a physical location that patients come to. Please, correct any misunderstanding I may be having in visualizing the business model.

If, indeed, your client has multiple physical treatment centers that patients come to, then standard best practice would be to have a unique page for each of these physical facilities. Likely, you could edit your existing pages to fit this approach, unless they have very odd URLs, in which case, you might want to create new pages and 301 redirect the old ones to them.

If, however, the client has built a bunch of pages represent their patients' possible locations instead of the locations of the treatment facilities, that can verge on a spammy approach. For example, if you have a treatment center located in Mill Valley, California, but you've created a page for San Francisco saying something like "customers come to us from San Francisco", that's just not a very useful practice, as far as patients are concerned, and the whole point of it is clearly to earn search engine rankings for places the business doesn't exist. Just not a good approach.

Please, feel free to provide more detail if I've misunderstood any of the nuances here. Thank you!

So glad to help!

Hi Crystal,

I apologize for not seeing your question earlier. It's a really good one. Before I reply, may I ask you a question?

Do your landing pages represent physical locations of the business, or just locations that the plumbers travel to for service?

Okay, thanks for that helpful clarification. So, this SEO company is working in clear violation of Google's guidelines, which state:

_Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. _

So, as far as Google goes, please follow the guidelines provided in this great article by Joy Hawkins for combating spam: http://www.joyannehawkins.com/ultimate-guide-fighting-spam-google-maps/

Linkedin offers this: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/61664/reporting-fake-profiles?lang=en but you may need to dig deeper.

This resource may help connect you to the support for a variety of other platforms: http://www.reengageconsulting.com/be-where-your-customers-are-with-local-business-listings/

Now, all this being said, it seems like you might want to get legal advice in this matter. I'm not qualified to give that in any way, but it seems like a cease and desist-type letter to the SEO company might get them to do the work of removing all of this spam, rather than the burden being on your shoulders. Hope this helps, and sorry for the frustration of this situation.

Hello There!

Using a rank checking tool set to the zip code of your business, I see you ranking #1 in the local pack and #9 organically for "real estate photographer Denver". Doing the same search from my location in California, I see you ranking #2 in the local pack and #7 organically. In other words, you've already achieved really excellent visibility.

I would question the path of making your homepage more optimized towards Denver, because I'm assuming Denver is only 1/50th of your customer base, if you offer a 50-state service. Right now, with your optimization exactly as it is, Google is still highly favoring your Denver location in the Denver-based-and-modified results. I would feel some concern that overdoing the homepage with Denver would be subtracting from your visibility in other parts of the country. At the same time, if you created a Denver-only page for the website and pointed your GMB listing to it, your local rankings would almost certainly drop as the new landing page wouldn't have the same DA as your homepage.

Your About and Contact pages can act as landing pages, of sorts, for your Denver location, but I still wouldn't advise pointing your local business listings at them. Nor does that seem at all necessary given that you're ranking #1 and #2 locally for this core term.

Rather, if what you're really hoping to do is get more business from Denver clients, I'd leave your website as-is and consider some of the following efforts:

1. Continue to hammer down on reviews. You're already blowing away your local pack competition in this regard, but I'd keep working on this. And keep up the work on Google posts. This is for your local ranking maintenance, of course.

2. For your organic goals, I'd work on links. Explore whatever Denver-based links and linktations you can get. This tutorial might be helpful: https://moz.com/blog/linked-unstructured-citations.

3. I would also work on social outreach within the Denver community, which actually corresponds with point #2.

Hope you'll get some more feedback from the community!

Hey Again CalicoKitty

I started a discussion thread on the new filter here: https://moz.com/community/q/community-discussion-did-your-google-listing-suddenly-disappear

This issue is important enough to bring to the community's attention, I think, as so many businesses are being affected. You might want to keep an eye on that, and contribute anything else you notice. I'm hoping our community will pitch in with what they are seeing, too!

Hello Korado11,

As I understand your question, you are offering a service in a large city with several hundred districts, and you are hoping to rank for your service in multiple districts. There will be several facets to the advice I can give you about this.

1. If you are trying to rank in the organic results for these districts, your ability to do so will be based on a combination of domain authority, page authority, links, optimization, website content and user behavior.

2. If you are trying to rank in the local results for these terms, everything in #1 applies, plus other factors like reviews and citations, but you must also take into account the role user proximity plays in local rankings. If you are physically located in district A and your potential customer is located in district B, Google simply may not show you in the local results for that user, because they are not physically near your business at the time of search. Where competition is low or weak, it is sometimes possible for a business to rank locally in multiple districts of a large city, but if competition is stiff, it will be an uphill battle to overcome Google's extreme bias towards user proximity.

3. Whether you are hoping to rank organically or locally, your key here will be to do a competitive audit of the businesses outranking you to see how their metrics for each surmised ranking factor outweigh yours. You will tally this up with software or in a spreadsheet and this is what should set the strategy that you or any marketer you hire will enact so that your metrics can compete with and eventually surpass those of the businesses currently outranking you. *However, there may be some things you simply can't overcome, like user proximity. Where organic/local efforts fail, your alternatives are PPC, social and offline marketing to reach audiences you just can't access via SEO .

4. I would advise you to closely study the most recent Local Search Ranking Factors survey to see which factors expert local SEOs feel have most impact on local and localized-organic results. You will want to familiarize yourself with each factor, and most of them should be in your competitive audit process. I will also link you here to a post I wrote two years ago containing a spreadsheet for a competitive local business audit, but I want to mention that there are some new factors I'd be adding to that in 2019. Nevertheless, it will give you a good idea of what an audit should look like.

5. At the end of the above process, what you'd want to have is a list of tasks and goals, including a list of goals that aren't going to be achievable so that you don't waste time or money on pursing them with tactics that won't actually work. By studying the SERPs and your competitors, you should begin to have a strong sense of which districts you may be able to achieve a strong local and organic presence in, and which districts may be beyond the reach of SEO, making it more sensible for you to attempt to reach those desired audiences with PPC, social or offline outreach.

Hope this helps!

Hi CalicoKitty,

Yes, you are bringing an excellent practical perspective on exactly why this change of Google's is not serving the user's needs. And that's particularly telling that you come up as a top rated business but are not being featured as a top ranking business unless you filter/zoom the results.

I agree, Adwords is a band-aid while we see how this shakes out, and I do think it's worth it to contact Google directly to make the case that they are not delivering relevance. Really appreciate you sharing your experience with this.

Good afternoon!

My ideal approach is that you go with a single website at domain.com with the location landing pages all being domain.com/chicago

It's the simplest method with no drawbacks of any kind. Subdomains can get you into this messy controversy:

https://www.seroundtable.com/seo-google-fight-subdomains-subdirectories-25126.html

But, your scenario has an extra layer of complexity built into it, in that your client has also built out multiple domains. That makes this such an 'it depends' scenario, that it's unlikely you'll be able to get a really authoritative answer from anybody who isn't looking at your client's actual domains.

So, what I can say here is that, ideally, I'd recommend a single website with all content on it and links to it going to strengthen the overall authority of the domain and brand instead of being divided up across multiple domains. I think this is the strongest approach, in terms of SEO, branding, consumer experience, ease of management, etc. But, I will say that there are some cases in which, if the client is earning significant revenue from multiple domains, it could be not-the-best idea to tell them to take those down or even re-direct them. On the other hand, sometimes the client has simply created a spammy mess, sometimes even for the purpose of fooling search engines and customers, in which case, you may need to make overhauling all of their web assets a prerequisite of working with them. Definitely, this is an "it depends".

I am seeing signs that the filter may be letting up. CalicoKitty - I'm seeing your listing reappearing for 'fishing charters cape canaveral' again in both the 3 pack and Local Finder. Can you confirm?

Hey Scott,

I'm voting with the other community members on this - it's just not typically a good idea to do this.

Rather than trying a multi-site approach for a single business, invest the resources in building the authority of the existing company assets. The payoff will likely be greater and the management certainly less cumbersome.

Hey Wbmsmet, great video link. The sound is a little wonky, but I recommend anyone experiencing this filter take a free hour and watch it. Very informative!

Hey There!

I'm sorry you've not received a response from anyone who has experienced a like scenario. I haven't either, per se, but I did want to respond to say that high traffic to pages is unlikely to be the cause of absent local  rankings. Regarding bounce rate, several Google reps have stated in the past the Google doesn't view it as a good ranking signal (see: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-bounce-rate-signal-23671.html) but, obviously, statements like this from Google are the cause of speculation and dispute in the SEO industry.

So, in your shoes,  I would be focusing elsewhere on why your client is failing to rank well locally. If you're allowed to share the identity of your client and the term they are trying to rank for, I'm sure the community would be happy to take a look.

If you don't have permission from the client to do that, I have some resources that could help you troubleshoot the cause of lacking rankings:

https://moz.com/blog/find-local-competitors

https://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures-2018

https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit

The third  link is getting a bit old. I need to re-write that post, but even in its 2017 state, it should point the way to how to do an audit between your client and their competitors that should yield clues as to why the client may be failing to rank.

Hope this helps.

Hi Calico,

Clicking on the 'more' link at the bottom of the 3 pack to go to the local finder, are you still only seeing 1 business come up in the list at your address? When I checked yesterday, I was seeing 4 different companies, including yours, coming up at that address. Curious what you are seeing in the local finder today.

Sounds like a plan.

One thing I immediately notice looking at this, now that I have the info on the dentist, is that they appear to be sharing an address with at least 2 other dentists, and another dental practice (Fountain Grove Dentistry)  is just down the street.

Just at a glance, I'd make a strong bet that you'll have to confront Google filters going on here. The Possum filter is likely to be at play with so many dentists located on the same street. This basically means you will, indeed, have to best the other players by a good amount to get your particular dentist to be the one that isn't being filtered.

I think there's a lot you can do here, which it sounds like you intend to do. But, definitely do let the client know about filtering and that, with such a competitive term, this is going to be an uphill battle between the dentists he shares and address with as well as the other Fountain Grove practice, and then the rest of the dentists in the city.  Good luck!

Hi Brian!

So, normally, yes, you'd just put that in an image, but as you've mentioned accessibility issues, I'm not sure. For example, you might want to be sure that people with visual impairments or other challenges can access this information. If this is an important consideration, then you could be sure that your physical address is clearly marked-up in Schema in a variety of places on your website, and that you list the P.O. box as a mailing address and don't mark it up. Will this be 100% safe ... unfortunately, no. There is a chance NAP confusion could arise, but I'm afraid I've not dealt with a case exactly like this to be able to say what % of risk there would be. An image pretty much nullifies risk, but other methods may carry some.

It would be nice if we could get some feedback from community members who are expert at accessibility. I think you've asked a good and important question!

Hi Gilson,

I don't have an immediate answer for you, but I do have a quick question. Are you checking all of these results from the same computer all day long, or are these from different computers, mobile devices, etc?

Hi Omer,

Adding modifiers of any kind to the business name is against Google's guidelines. Your client is actually right that having city names in the business name can increase local rankings, but it's considered spam to do so and businesses that are ranking via this tactic are at risk of red flags being raised at Google if they notice it, if a competitor reports the company, etc. So, while your customer is right that this tactic can increase rank, it isn't really worth it to spam Google.

Hi Hector!

Just want to add a proviso to Sean's good advice. As it looks like you are in the HVAC business, I'm guessing yours is a Service Area Business (meaning you go to customers instead of them coming to you). In that case, Google wants you do add your physical address in the Google My Business dashboard, but take the steps they provide to hide that address via the text in the dashboard that refers to serving customers at their locations. Google wants all SABs to hide their addresses. If your competitors aren't doing this, it's either because they a) have a physical location customers come to, b) are unaware of Google's SAB guidelines, or, c) they know the guidelines but aren't complying with them.

Here are Google's guidelines. Hope this helps!

Hi Susannah,

You're very welcome! Until the client can get a separate phone number for Location B, don't create the GMB listing or any other citations for it. Hopefully, you can share Google's guidelines with them and help them see the good sense in complying with Google's wishes on this. In addition to being guideline compliant, unique phone numbers greatly lessen the risk of accidental listing merges, so pretty much any multi-location business needs to make a basic investment in a unique number for each locale.

Hi There!

Thanks so much for sharing the details of your experiment. I agree that recommending that clients change their address is not advisable, but your experiment definitely shores up the explanation that Google is filtering based on shared addresses. Some Local SEOs are theorizing that Google's aim is to improve result diversity, and thus, quality of their results. I could see that being true in some cases, but in CalicoKitty's case in this thread, I think Google is actually delivering less helpful, rather than more helpful results.

So appreciate your contributions to this thread!

You're welcome, Omer!

Hi Donald,Great question. 2-3 months may not be a good time estimate to give a client for moving the local needle. Bernadette wisely raises the issue of citation management. Have you been doing this? Real estate agencies often have very convoluted citation scenarios due to the continual arrival of new agents, old ones retiring, duplicate listings, multi-practitioner listings sharing details (like phone numbers) that they shouldn't.

If you've not yet delved into citation management yet, it's very important to do so, with the understanding that:

1. Structured citation building is not typically a competitive difference maker in tough markets, because tough competitors will likely already have large, clean structured citation profiles. So, basically, you'll be playing catch-up if you've not yet engaged in managing citations.

2. Competitive difference maker or not, inconsistent citations are lead-killers. Misdirecting customers via inaccurate information is not good for business. And, of course, inconsistencies are believed to weaken the 'trust' Google feels in the data they are finding about your business.

3. Duplicate clean-up can sometimes move the needle in the local packs, so this would be a high priority task.

I'd recommend going through our Local SEO Checklist for other ideas. Hope this helps!

Hi Erik!

Coincidentally, I just had a piece published at Local Search Insider that describes how to handle business moves. I wrote this specifically for seasonal businesses that move every year, but the steps would apply to you, too:

http://www.lsainsider.com/its-so-easy-its-scary-how-halloween-businesses-can-avoid-losing-customers-to-seasonality/archives

Please, let me know if reading that answers your questions, and if you have others, please ask away!

Hi Gabe,

1. If they don't have separate phone numbers, then I personally would not advise building citations for them. Google wants the number you list for a location to connect as directly as possible to the specific location. Lacking this, I wouldn't build citations, but you might find varying opinions on this.

2. Yes, if you decide to build citations for each building, you are talking about building a complete, unique citation set for each locations. So 20 buildings would equal 20 citation sets.

3. In a correct scenario, properly created listings for multi-department businesses should not water anything down. However, your scenario may not qualify as 'correct', given lack of unique numbers.

4. Here's an example. This is USF: https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+San+Francisco/@37.7766466,-122.4528717,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x8085874a311220bb:0x6a56ca6f837ff84e!8m2!3d37.7766466!4d-122.450683

And here is a unique building on this campus (note separate phone number): https://www.google.com/maps/place/Phelan+Hall/@37.7762416,-122.4497874,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x68467e565121581b?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEjOWA7YDQAhVkilQKHbXTA0YQ_BIIeDAK

I haven't looked closely at how this university is doing things, but I was able to find that example in a couple of seconds. Hopefully, you can find others.

Adhering to the letter of Google's guidelines, any citation set you build should have a real world guideline-compliant name, direct phone number and accurate street address. Any variation from this can lead to problems. Hope this helps!

Hi Marcus!

Thanks for pinging me on Twitter. I'm not a penalty expert, so I'm going to start my advice with this recommendation: I highly, highly recommend that you hire a penalty expert to consult with you on this prior to advising your client to make a move in any direction. The sheer length of your client's story = a very tangled scenario that is going to need to be investigated from the ground up for resolution. Advice given while not looking at your actual client's properties could actually make the problem worse rather than better (arggghh!) and that is the last thing your client needs right now. So, I highly recommend investing in consulting with an expert. I would recommend you consider seeing if Joy Hawkins has availability. Her coverage of both Penguin and Possum is excellent. She knows her stuff and may be one of the few Local SEOs out there with the patience and skill to get to the root of your client's issues and map out a plan for cleaning them up.

So, with that being said, this is what I see:

1. It's extremely unfortunate that in your client's effort to avoid NAP confusion with their father's business, they ended up sharing a property with a same-industry competitor. That really raises a red flag for me, and when coupled with the fact that the competitor then copied their structure/strategy/content ... yes, it makes perfect sense that Google would be suspicious that this is really one business trying to brand itself as two. It has all the earmarks. Worrisome.

2. This thread at Linda Buquet's Local Search forum might interest you, http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-search/43121-have-you-seen-any-local-rankings-you-feel-were-affected-penguin-4-0-a.html Marie Haynes might also be another good person for you to contact.

Hope this helps!

Hi Donald

Woops! My mistake. I see your client is a real estate attorney, not a real estate firm. So sorry about that. Interestingly, as far as Local SEO goes, some of the same issue apply in terms of both industries commonly featuring multi-partner practices and that rolling out as citation confusion. But, you say you've done a good job of managing their citations and want advice beyond the average checklist of local search basics, I have two thoughts:

1. I'm hoping you may get some more feedback from community members with legal clients. I haven't personally worked with more than a handful of lawyers over the years and don't have any tips that would be stunners specific to the industry.

2. Are you aware of NiftyLaw? They're a subsidiary of NiftyMarketing.com, owned by Mike Ramsey. You might comb through their blog (http://niftylaw.com/blog/) to see if they are giving away any gems, or, if the client is really having a hard time, you might even consider consulting with them.

Hope this helps!

Hi Marcus,

I haven't see a case like you described regarding getting caught in a duplication filter. Like I said, I'm really not an expert on penalties. In your shoes, with a client with this complex of a history, I would hire an expert. It could save the client months of trouble. I'm sure you really know your stuff, but even the best SEOs can overlook things. I'd want a second opinion from someone who looks at penalties and filters all day long to tell me if I'm missing something.

Hey There,

So, that horizontal display would be a 'carousel' of results, like Google rolled out a couple of years back. Bing rolled out their local carousel in 2014. Interestingly, the order of results in the carousel you've highlighted  does not in any way match Bing's local-finder-type results here. Nor am I seeing an immediate correlation between the carousel and what is appearing in the organic results.

What you've highlighted, in the larger scheme of things, is the lack of information our industry has published regarding Bing local ranking factors. Google has gotten all the love! The last article I can recall of this sort was written 4 years ago (http://searchengineland.com/10-basic-bing-local-optimization-tips-109158) and it's pretty basic stuff. It's hypothesized that Yelp reviews may especially help you on Bing, and I've also seen it posited that Facebook likes could be a factor. The major factors are likely similar to Google's, but they may be weighted differently and there may be unique Bing factors Google doesn't consider. And that's just the purely local factors I'm referencing ... as for how they are ordering their carousel results, I'm afraid I have no resources to which I can link you.

Basically, if there is a particular carousel you want to get into, you'd need to analyze the top 5-10 competitors in that pack to see what their strengths are. Is it Yelp reviews, links, on-page, citations, something else?

You've reminded me how much I would love to see our industry throw a little more attention Bing's way, in terms of Local, but Google has hogged more than its share of attention, and I plead as guilty to this as anyone else in Local. It would be really neat if someone with the time/resources would do a study to pin down what is driving the various types of local results in Bing.

And, if our community knows of something I've overlooked, please shout it out!

Hey, fascinating! Thanks for the link, and cool to know Google is investigating this. Thanks for the update, Jason.

Hi Meier!

No hard sell here but have you checked out Moz Local for active location data management? The main concern you're surfacing - that your clients are investing quite a bit of money and getting listed on directories you don't really consider to be of great value - is a common one. Moz Local pushes to far fewer partners than a competitor like Yext, but they are all really core platforms. Here's a list:

Acxiom, Bing, Best of the Web, Citygrid, Foursquare, Factual, Hotfrog, Infogroup, Localeze and Superpages

We've also made recent announcement about new partnerships with NavAds (to manage Apple Maps) and with Yelp, as well as adding a Google Sync feature which enables you to manage your Google My Business listings from the Moz Local dashboard. So, you might want to check this out as an alternative to your clients' current provider.

Basically, what most of the top Local SEOs recommend these days in terms of citation building is that you hit the majors, which is easiest with an automated service, and then you manually build a few more additional citations on the highly specialized platforms that rank well for your client's industry or geography. For example, if your client is a general contractor in San Diego, there may be either trade association sites or San Diego sites that are very popular and where you want to get the client listed. This process of automated management of the majors + manual management of geo/industry-specific platforms is typically a good recipe for citation health.

I like the way you are thinking ... trying to get rid of clutter and hone your Local Search Marketing down to what clients really need. You might really enjoy this recent Streetfight Mag article in which Local SEO gurus Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm discuss exactly this same topic: http://streetfightmag.com/2016/12/12/building-the-essential-digital-marketing-bundle-for-local-businesses/

Hey Julie, Happy New Year!

Coincidentally, Nyagoslav Zhekov just did a truly comprehensive study on this a few weeks ago: https://whitespark.ca/blog/what-happens-when-you-cancel-yext/

Well worth reading. He's one smart fellow!

Hey Rickey!

What you are referring to is called an Editorial Summary. Originally, these came from Zagat, but at this point, Google's documentation simply mentions that "Writers compile these short descriptions, which give you a quick snapshot of a popular business." They may be based, in part, on 3rd party sources, and do not appear to be algorithmic. Google does not give any further specifics about the identity of these 'writers', but I think it's a fascinating and poorly documented facet of local business listings.

Are you seeing a bad editorial summary you're trying to correct, or were you just curious about this?

That's a good link from Dmitrii, but this one is newer (from just last week): https://moz.com/community/q/google-my-business-two-businesses-same-location

Please, read through my answer on that, which sounds like it exactly describes your client's scenario. Then, if you have further questions, please ask them

Hi Varun,

While you can't disable the suggest an edit feature, you can report incorrect edits to the Google My Business forum:

https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Google-My-Business/ct-p/GMB

Be sure you give the complete details of the listing, the history of the edit that was made, and anything else you can think of that would help. Cross your fingers that a Top Contributor will take a look at your post and help you. Hope this helps!

Hi Beachflower,

I want to be sure I'm understanding the finer details of this. What I think you are describing is that there is actually just one business: Corporate Data Recovery, but that they have built 4 different websites representing the main business + 3 different cities. Is that correct? (Please let me know if I've misunderstood).

But, if I'm understanding correctly, then, yes, this is a problem. As things presently stand, Corporate Data Recovery would be allowed to build just one Google My Business listing and 1 set of citations across the various platforms to represent it. It would not be allowed to build citations for the Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne websites that have been built.

If the business wants to keep running the 3 city websites in addition to the Corporate Data Recovery site, they should:

1. Remove all addresses and phone numbers from those city websites. They should each have their own, unique phone number and should not be citing the physical address of Corporate Data Recovery in any way.

2. Be sure those sites are not duplicating one another's content in any way

3. Be sure those sites are not using bad cross linking practices in an attempt to promote one another (see Rand's recent Whiteboard Friday on this: https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-maximize-benefits-avoid-problems-whiteboard-friday)

4. Be sure you are not building citations for these location-less city sites. If citations exist, close them.

To bring some further clarity to this, businesses sometimes create this scenario your client is in because they are trying to hone in on a particular geography/keyword via the creation of a mini-site for that phrase. While this can sometimes work at winning specific traffic, it's important to understand that these mini/multi sites do NOT represent local businesses. They represent keywords. Corporate Data Recovery is a local business with a physical address and phone number, but the Brisbane/Melbourne/Sydney sites are NOT local business websites: they are simply marketing materials, and therefore, ineligible for many of the tactics one would use to promote a local business.

The main danger here is that the multi-site approach will actually weaken the NAP (name, address phone) clarity of Corporate Data Recovery (the actual local business). So, if the client wishes to continue running those other sites, they should implement the 4 practices I've highlighted, above, to lessen risk of negative outcomes.

It's because of the complexity of scenarios like these that many Local SEOs will advise clients to build a single, powerful website for their brand, with content on it targeting each of their desired terms/markets. It's a great deal simpler to market a single website, with no concerns about NAP degradation, duplicate content, etc. That being said, there are some cases in which mutli-sites can be valuable, if the company knows how to manage and use them properly, resulting in benefit to the business, rather than harm.

Hope this helps!

Hi Paul,

Are the website URLs on your current citations going through redirects now? If so then, yes, you'll definitely want to correct that as Google specifically states that they don't want URLs that redirect. If you're a Moz Local customer, you should be able to get those URLs corrected in just 1 step on all the supported platforms. If not, you'll want to do this manually on the top platforms where you have listings.

Hey There!

Are you saying you are considering changing a number phone number for a vanity number (letters instead of numbers?). I just want to be sure I'm understanding correctly. Thanks!

Hi Meisha,

Wow, that is a conundrum!

I'm going to start with some outside-the-box thinking here. If this were my client, I would tell them that (much like a grocery store floor plan) their current floor plan has highlighted a customer pain point. They are causing consumers frustration by making them go across the street to check in, which feels unnatural to the consumer. If it felt right, it wouldn't be a pain point. So, my first piece of marketing advice to this client would be to make a physical adaptation to put the check-in center in Building A, where consumers believe it should be. Problem solved. I realize this would be a hassle for the business, but when you consider that what they are currently risking now is getting off on the wrong foot with all of their customers at the very start of the 'relationship', what you have is negative sentiment>leads to negative reviews>leads to negative reputation>leads to negative impacts on revenue. That is not a path any business would want, so if at all possible, making a physical accommodation to the obvious needs of customers would be the smartest thing the client could do.

If it is totally impossible to move the check-in into building A, I have some questions:

1. What is the industry?

2. Does the check-in have its own phone number, or is the number shared with any other part of the business?

3. Does the check-in have its own entrance door, or is it shared by the conference center in building B?

4. Does the check-in have its own street address, or is it just the address of building B?

5. What, exactly, is in building A right now?

The answers to these (if you can share them) may help us puzzle out the second-best solution if the check-in can't be moved.

Hi Meisha,

Thanks so much for replying to my questions. That definitely helps me better visualize the client scenario. Okay, so bearing in mind that if this were my client I would advise them to physically change the location of the check-in from the conference center to the hotel, as this is clearly not a comfortable/natural layout for guests, if the company is unable to make this structural change, here's what they are up against:

1. If this business were in a different industry (not a hotel) there would be some wiggle room for them having 3 different GMB listings, as Google does permit multi-department listings. That works well for car dealerships (parts department, sales department, repairs department) and for hospitals (x-ray, emergency, billing). But for a hotel - no. Google is not going to have a category which represents hotel check-in, so despite this entity of the business having a separate entrance and phone number, I would not advise creating a 3rd GMB listing for the check-in. I don't believe it would fit in with Google's conception of a department and it could get the business into trouble.

2. So, since we don't want to do that, what we're left with is having the 2 GMB listings (one for the hotel and one for the conference center). But, we can't alter their names, as that would also violate Google's guidelines. Google can read street level signage, so unless the real-world name of the conference center is Green Tree Conference Center & Waldorf Hotel Check-In you cannot put those words in the business title of the GMB listing.

3. Because of this, what you are left with is listing the hotel and listing the conference center exactly as they appear in the real world, in terms of their names, addresses and phone numbers, with no additions. And that leaves guests being confused and discomfited.

4. So, if we can't move the check-in desk to the hotel, what the client is left with as options would include:

• Making it abundantly clear on the hotel site that check-in is across the street
• Instructing all phone staff who take reservations to verbally signal this to guests
• Including this also in any emails, print mail or other forms of confirmation guests receive when booking
• Hiring a staff member who manages the parking lot to greet guests as they arrive by car and personally instructs them to check in across the street.
• Anything else the business can think of to alert guests about the location of the check-in to lessen inconvenience to them.

What I'm describing here, based on my understanding of your client, would be the only safe options I can think of. Hope they help!

Hey RoxBox,

Thanks for the reply. I want to start by saying that I am only a fan of vanity phone numbers for a really limited number of scenarios: radio ads, TV ads and billboards. Beyond that, I am just not a fan. Here are some reasons:

1. You don't want to use a vanity number on your local business listings because some won't accept letters instead of numbers, and there's a serious question as to whether clicks-to-call might get hammered, too.

2. Unless your consumer base is all really young folks with perfect eyesight, vanity numbers make things unnecessarily difficult for consumers trying to see the tiny letters on a mobile phone's number pad, and even on a landline pad. I've had my phone disconnect while I've hunted around for the letter Q, for example. So, vanity numbers really aren't consumer-friendly.

So, if the business is determined to have a vanity number, I would advise them to use it only for specific advertising scenarios (like a radio ad). And if they want to connect that radio ad to UX on the website, go ahead and put it in an image in the website masthead. But keep it separate from the pure text-based NAP of the business, whether that features a toll free or local phone number. Never make a vanity number the only option for a local business. They just aren't well-liked, according to an informal poll I took of some Local SEO colleagues.

Hope this helps!

My pleasure, Paul. Have a nice weekend!

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.