Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Donald,

Thanks so much for the answers. Other than a past SEO doing this for some weird reason for your client, the only other explanation I can think of is that the weird listings are the outcome of some kind of aggregation by the directories in question. Some directories do auto-generate listings, and there is a possibility of your client's business getting mixed up with the details of some other business. But I'm not really leaning that way because of the fictitious address. That "feels like" spam to me. But, I definitely would review this with the client in full to see if anything about it rings a bell to them about past work that may have been done internally or by an agency.

I think the best thing to do here would be to discover as many directories as you can that are listing the fictitious business and contact them to request listing removal, as you've done with Manta. You will easily be able to approve that the address is non-existent, that the phone doesn't connect to anything, and, if you've received no reply trying to use the email address, that the email is unresponsive. Show legal proofs of ownership of the brand name if necessary. Then, once you've gotten these odd listings removed, I would make it a practice once a month to search for any new listings that may crop up. Not very fun, but it seems necessary in the instance of such an odd scenario.

Good luck!

You're welcome, Patrick. So, I have 2 suggestions:

1. Short-term, change the email being sent out so that it links to a correct, custom map on your website instead of G Maps.

2. Long-term, go to your town on G Maps, and in the lower right, click the tiny "send feedback" link to report the missing street issue. It will likely take a month, but hopefully Google will act on this. Only then should you re-include the link to your G Maps map in the email.

Hope this helps!

Hi GVZH!

Great question. There are so many different phenomena that can contribute to the scenario you're seeing. In order for the community to help you dig into this, we'll need to know:

1. The identity of your website

2. The exact keyword phrase you're trying to rank locally for.

If you can share these things, you should receive some great, targeted advice here. Otherwise, unfortunately, we'd just be making random guesses.

Hi Gary,

Great question. The answer is, no, I don't believe that is a "known" quantity, because it would vary for each scenario, each search. How frequently one of your clients appears in the results is going to be based on a) it's strength, b) the strength and number of nearby competitors it has and c) the location of the searcher. So, as you can imagine, that varies, search by search, user by user.

A given in any scenario is that a business is only likely to rank for both truly local and remote searchers for the city in which it is physically located. So, let's say you have a dealership in Dallas. Someone in Dallas searches for "auto dealership" and your client has a good chance to rank for that. Someone in Sugar Land searches for "auto dealership Dallas", and, again, your client can rank for that. But, if someone in Sugar Land searches just for "auto dealership", Google is going to show him Sugar Land results, and your client won't be included in those because they are located in Dallas.

The variables in the scenario relate to the exact proximity of a user to your business at the time of search. A searcher in a Central Dallas neighborhood looks for "auto dealership" on his device, and Google is most likely to show him dealerships that are closest to him. If he then drives over to the Park Cities neighborhood and performs the same search, his results are likely to change to that geographic area of the city. But, if the searcher is, say, 10 miles outside of Dallas, searching for "auto dealerships Dallas", Google defaults to a different type of result for him, which appears to be based more on authority than proximity.

So, those are basically the elements that you have to take into consideration in trying to understand the reach of a given business. You have to consider the location of the searcher, as well as the level of competition both right next to the business, and within its entire city or zip code.

Not a simple answer, I know! But, I hope it helps.

Hey Michael,

Nice to know my name is one your cherished family members had (may they rest in peace), and thanks for the kind words in your reply. I'm sorry if what I was describing was a bit basic - stuff you already knew, but it does sound like that city-specific ranking bias of Google's is the cause of what your clients are experiencing in the more populous area you've described. One thing I am curious about, and would like to ask you as you've been looking so much at the results in this tri-city area. Let's say your client is in city X in the XYZ of this triangulation. Do you ever see competitors in city Y ranking in the local packs for cities X and Z, or competitors in city Z ranking in the local packs for X and Y? Just curious.

I know what you mean about spurious agencies offering your client the impossible, and yikes, the client taking the bait. So frustrating when that happens. Likely, the best thing to recommend to the client in city X is to invest in Adwords so that they can show up in the paid results for cities Y and Z.

Enjoyed your reply very much!

Hi Steven!

So, basically, the answer is: you can't. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it is the reality for nearly all single location businesses that serve multiple cities. Google's bias toward physical location affects all service business models this way. Unless you can get a staffed, physical office in the second city, it will be a waste of your time to make it your goal to rank in the local results for that city. Instead, your options are:

1. Go after organic rankings for that city via the authority you build surrounding website content+links for that city.

2. Pay for visibility with locally-targeted PPC.

3. Use social media to try to build brand awareness for your work in that city.

4. Do everything you can to encourage word-of-mouth among existing customers. Customers in City A have friends and family in city B. Make a superior effort to offer the type of superior service that would cause the A group to recommend your services to the B group. Consider how loyalty programs might assist with this. Perhaps every customer who brings you a new customer gets a voucher for a free dinner, free massage, etc.

5. Explore building relationships with related businesses in City B. Perhaps your company does everything but bake the cake for weddings. Find the best bakers in City B and see how you can help one another in terms of lead gen.

A combination of all these efforts could begin generating some leads for you that are not dependent on the unrealistic goal of ranking locally where you aren't locally located. Hope this helps!

Hey Mike,

I hope you'll take a peek at my Monday blog post which Paul has linked to in his reply to you. It deals with precisely this topic. Your dilemma is a really common one, and so frustrating, I know! Basically:

1. Yes, you should remove the keyword stuffing. It's a guideline violation, and therefore, a risk.

2. Yes, this may cause rankings to drop - you will have to build authority in a Google-approved way to get it back.

3. Yes, Google can "soft supsend" the listing if you don't remove the kw stuffing, which will likely cause your listing to become unverified and your reviews may get lost because they aren't associated with a GMB account anymore. You'll have to re-claim the listing if you get caught, but I can't guarantee the reviews will come back (this is scary).

4. Yes, Google is doing an awful job catching this type of spam, so help them out. Once you've cleaned up your own listing, start reporting every single competitor for spam. It would help if you could achieve Local Guide status in Google, as it will give your spam reports a bit more oomph...better still if you can get to know a few other Local Guides and team up to repeatedly flag a business for spam. You have to be on the lookout after you report a business for business title spam - very often, they reappear with the spammy name intact! Arggh - so annoying. But be persistent.

Again, hope you'll read the article, and thanks for asking an important question.

Wow - this is super weird, Donald. When I saw the word "hijack" I assumed your were talking about this entity hijacking your GMB listing, but you've clarified that this isn't so. Bearing in mind that I haven't dealt with this scenario before, here is what I see.

When I search for the Galveston address in Google's main engine, I see:

https://www.google.com/search?q=1644+Lynn+Ogden+Lane+Galveston%2C+TX+77550&oq=1644+Lynn+Ogden+Lane+Galveston%2C+TX+77550&aqs=chrome..69i57.463j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

You are right ... there appear to be a number of listings that have been created for this business.

When I click into Maps, I see the following error message:

Maps can't find 1644 Lynn Ogden Lane Galveston, TX 77550

So it would appear that address doesn't exist. Let's check Smarty Streets just to be sure. Yep! As I suspected "address unknown".

So, the address being used doesn't actually exist.

Calling the phone number several time only yields a busy signal.

The website listed on that Wufoo form is your client's own website. Are you seeing a website anywhere for this other entity?

The Manta listing for the strange entity is bringing up a 404 error page: https://www.manta.com/c/mh1l5py/s-s-s-custom-closets, but I'm seeing a live listing on Hotfrog and a couple of other low level directories.

I have to ask, what would be the point of this spam? If they're pointing to your client's website, and the phone number on those weird listings isn't functional, how would this be a successful spam strategy? I just don't get it.

A couple of questions, Don:

1. Are you positive your client has never attempted to operate any type of undertaking in Galveston? Positive they didn't try to do anything spammy on their end, like set up a fake location there? No offense intended in any way, but sometimes clients have done weird things in the past that we don't know about unless we ask.

2. What is the email being listed on those weird listings: warblingjulian@rediffmail.com. Is that your client or the unknown entity? Have you investigated that email at all...tried to write to them? I just don't see any other way to contact this unknown person than by filling out the form/emailing them, if they have no website or working phone number.

One suggestion:

I would urge you to do some work on your client's website to locally optimize it better. The website is currently very vague about its location. The homepage, contact, footer, about, etc. should list the full NAP of the business. Right now, I'm seeing a mention of the city here and there, but to ensure that your client retains dominant status for its name + location, some optimization needs to be done on-page to associate that brand name with the correct street address.

Please, if you can, answer the couple of questions I've asked, and thanks for bringing this mysterious case to the community. It's just not adding up for me. It's not typical local spam.

Thanks for the further details, and shalom to your wife and family.

Hi There,

Normally, no, having a local presence should not harm your national marketing efforts. However, it is important that any Google My Business listing you build is guideline-compliant. Are the GMB listings you built representing real, physical addresses and do you have face-to-face interactions with your customers? If the answer to either of those is "no" then you shouldn't be building GMB listings.

If my answer hasn't quite cleared this up for you, please feel free to provide further details about your business model.

Hi There!

Some questions for you:

1. Are these two legally distinct businesses? One being the recruiting agency and the other being a non-proft soccer camp, both legally registered as unique entities, or is the soccer camp just a service offered by the recruiting agency rather than a stand-alone "business".

2. Does the recruiting agency meet face-to-face with the student-athletes?

3. What is the exact physical location scenario? Is the soccer camp actually taking place in the same office as the recruitment work?

4. Is the soccer camp a year-round business, or is it seasonal? How does this work?

5. What, exactly is meant by "they've been told by Google that they can't use the same address as their recruiting business"? Does this mean that the business spoke 1:1 with Google support about this?

Please, answer all five questions as best as you can so that the community can be sure to provide advice most closely tailored to the specifics of this business. Looking forward to your replies!

Hi Kevin!

Thanks so much for joining in on this conversation. Just a heads-up that suite numbers are not a solution for differentiating businesses in Google My Business. Google doesn't pay any attention to suite numbers, and the use of fictitious suite numbers is actually a Google guideline violation, because Google requires that you represent the address of the business exactly as it appears in the real world.

Hi Sociable!

Yes, Google will show a 2-pack for a branded search (like Me Gusta Tacos) if the business only has 2 locations in a given city. From looking at your website, it looks like you have two locations about 20 miles apart, so that might be a bit of a stretch for Google to include both in the same pack. But, here are three things to consider:

1. When you perform your search, are you physically at or next to one of the restaurants? Because of the searcher-proximity factor, this could affect the results you see. If you go to the other restaurant, do you then see a different result? How about if you search from 20 or 50 miles away from both?

2. Have you built up enough authority for BOTH locations to convince Google that they should show both in a pack when someone in your area does a branded search. If not, this is something to work on that could eventually influence Google to give you that 2-pack you want. Can't promise that, but this would be a way to work towards that goal.

3. Unfortunately, your business name is of a type that may have intent problems. When someone searches for "me gusta tacos" how does Google parse their intent? This could be someone speaking Spanish declaring their enjoyment of tacos, it could be a non-Spanish speaker asking for a translation, it could be someone looking for your restaurant, or it could be something else. This being the case, you may need to build brand authority over time. Google gets it that when someone searches for "Taco Bell" there's really no question of intent and they are likely to show them a local pack with multiple Taco Bells in a city or multiple Taco Bells in nearby towns. No one typing that it is looking for a bell shaped like a taco, or a taco shaped like a bell, or what have you. The brand is so known, the intent is a given. So, with your smaller brand, you'll be hoping to build that kind of authority that signals to Google that anyone searching for "Me Gusta Tacos" means your company. Right now, you need to focus on building local authority so that local searches are shown your business. In the future, if your chain expands, you will need to build regional and then national brand recognition, so that you can get that "Taco Bell treatment" in any local pack where you have branches.

Hope this helps! It's a good question you asked.

Hi Paul,

Okay, glad to know you were at least able to determine that GMB listings aren't right for the business model. Sounds like you will need to rely on other forms of outreach (organic, paid, social). Good luck!

Hey Mike,

Great discussion going on here. I want to clarify - when you say "apartments" you are talking about apartment complexes, right, not individual apartment units within a development? In other words, Tan Apartment Community, Green Apartment Community, Blue Apartment Community; not Apartment 3, 20, and 35 within communities?

I thought you raised some really thoughtful points, Kane. This particular situation isn't one of those black-and-white ones with a super obvious call - it's nuanced. So, I thought the points you brought up were very valid in an "it depends" kind of scenario. Thanks for the very kind words.

Hi Andrew,

As Brooks has highlighted, your client's catering business sounds like a service area business (SAB) and is therefore eligible for a Google My Business listing, provided the staff meets face-to-face with its customers. Your client will need to enter their address when creating the listing and then select the options Brooks as pointed out so that the street address won't be public on the live listing.

That being said, there are some nuances to this. Google did have a bug, in recent memory, during which they briefly showed the addresses of SABs. It was a temporary issue.

Given this, the conversation you need to have with the client surrounds whether their privacy concerns are so extreme that they don't want their street address ever to appear anywhere on the Internet however briefly, or, whether, like most home-based businesses, they just don't want customers showing up at their house thinking it's a walk-in business.

If the former, your hands are tied to doing a limited Local SEO campaign for them and you'll have to rely on Organic SEO, PPC, and Social to get the word out as best you can.

If the latter, then the SAB listing is the solution for this client. It's Google's policy not to show the addresses of these businesses, and you can restrict other citation building to the sites listed in the Phil Rozek article Brooks has linked to. You'll at least be able to do a good, pretty complete campaign for them in this scenario, though not quite as thorough as you can for an SAB that doesn't care whether their address is published on some platforms.

Hope this helps and that you'll have that conversation with the client to discover the source of their objections, whether that be a strong fear or a simple concern over inconvenience.

Good suggestions from Brooks, but sounds like you've checked off the things he mentioned.

So, typically, Google will display the one you designate as the profile pick, but as you've seen, not always.

If you've removed the unwanted photo from your website, you can ask a GMB forum TC to help you get your listing updated. Here's a thread from Google's forum along those lines: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Enhance-Your-Presence/Photos-pulling-from-website-that-are-not-wanted-to-show/m-p/1119604/highlight/true#M6409

But, if you want to keep that photo on your website, you can try flagging the image from several accounts over the next few weeks to see if Google will get rid of it. If nothing happens after a few weeks, you could take this to the GMB forum, but I'm not sure they'll be able to do much unless the photo is really inappropriate, in which case, you may just want to remove it from the website.

Other advice: be sure you're not using a logo as your profile pic. Google really doesn't like those and often will replace them. Be sure every photo you've uploaded to your GMB dash is of best quality and is something you'd be okay with having Google use to represent the business.

Hey There,

So sorry to hear this has happened. Recommended reading:

https://onlineownership.com/google-has-suspended-your-page-due-to-quality-issues/

https://searchengineland.com/top-9-reasons-google-suspends-local-listings-247394

I recommend that you go through both of those to see if there's something you may have overlooked. Then, as Andy is mentioning, you need to take this to the GMB forum and be persistent in asking for help. Tell them you've read through both Joy Hawkins' and Tim Capper's articles on suspensions and that you either a) found and fixed an issue or b) could not find any issue at all. Be prepared to share the complete details of your business and the exact language of the message you got from Google, and to be persistent in asking for help from the Top Contributors (TCs) who staff the forum.

Hi WP-Pro!

So, there has been a ton of buzz in the past week or so about zero-results SERPs (see an excellent article about this by Dr. Pete here on the Moz Blog: https://moz.com/blog/zero-result-serps

Google ran a test of the above that they have since shut down.

However, I don't believe this is what you've noticed. I think you are talking about what might be called a "Branded Knowledge Panel", in that a term Google used to show a typical 3-pack for is now being dominated by a single business, with their knowledge panel showing up on the right side of the SERPs and no competitors in sight.

This is a huge pain in the neck when Google does this, as it leaves all other local businesses out in the cold. Basically, what has happened when you see this is that "something" has caused Google to believe that a single business is THE authoritative result for a search. This is fine when someone is searching for Taco Bell, but really annoying when someone is searching for "tacos".

If an authoritative knowledge panel is negatively impacting a SERP for which you were previously competing, leaving your business out in the cold, you need to take a very close look at that competitor to see if you can figure out why Google is giving them this preferential treatment. I recommend doing a competitive local business audit to highlight areas where that competitor is strong and you are weak. And look at their use of features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, etc. to see if there is some way they've gotten ahead. Study their keyword optimization on their website. And, of course, take a close look to see if some kind of spammy behavior on their part may have gotten them this preferential treatment.

There isn't a direct action you can take to force Google to show a 3-pack instead of an authoritative knowledge panel, but the general idea is that you've got to become stronger than your competitor so that Google realizes that there is more than one quality answer available to that particular search query. Unfortunately, you may have a long haul ahead.

Just a thank-you for sharing your experience and tips with the community, Arowland! Much appreciated! Very creative workaround you've come up with. Neat.

Hi Jon,

Unless Yelp's policies have changed, I believe they only offer bulk management of features to paying customers. If you are paying to advertise on Yelp, I'd recommend contacting a rep there to see what's possible.

Happy to have you here, Lior!

While you're diving into this topic, you might like to read:

https://whitespark.ca/blog/the-json-ld-markup-guide-to-local-business-schema/

What a kind offer, Ben. Hopefully, if Bcallegary hasn't already taken steps on this step on their own, they will see your post here with such a nice offer to help.

Hey There,

I recommend you reach out to GMB support on Twitter with a link to the listing, explaining that it's a stand-alone location, not located within another business.

Sure thing! If for any reason, that doesn't work out for you, please feel free to come back here.

Hi Karma,

Thanks for sharing the URL. Notes for you follow:

1. At a glance, it appears your client is being impacted by Google's Possum filter. They are sharing an address with a competitor (Lee's Signs) at 853 S Peachtree Street. You can read more about Possum here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/google-possum. You can confirm for yourself that this appears to be Possum in action, as, if you do a search for your desired keyword phrase in Google, and then click in on the map, your client is totally missing. But, once you zoom in on the map, your client appears in the local finder to the left of the map. So, that's a good diagnosis that Possum is at work here. In a nutshell Google is going to filter out all but one sign shop at that single address. They are filtering your client, because they feel, for whatever reason, that Lee's is the stronger answer. Given this, I highly recommend again that you take the time to do the competitive audit I've linked to in order to help you discover why Google favors this specific competitor over your client. The only way to beat the Possum filter is to prove to Google that yours is the more authoritative business. To do that, you'll need to know exactly what Lee's strengths are.

(here are a few more random things I noticed while looking at your client)

2. The profile photo representing the business in the Google Knowledge Panel is of a Lutheran Church, rather than of your business. I'm not sure if the idea here was to show a sample of company work, but there's a chance Google could be confused by this image. I would make every effort to change it out for an image of the actual business.

3. When I look at streetview in Google Maps, I'm not able to see the business. It could be behind trees or something, but the location Google is dropping me in is showing a parking lot with what appears to be a furniture store in it. Where is the business in relationship to this? Do they have street level signage? Is this a public-facing location that customers come to in order to do face-to-face business with the company?

4. I notice that 1/2 of this brand's Google-based reviews are from first-time reviewers (folks who have never left a review for any other business than this one). Are you confident that the client is strictly adhering to Google's review policies? A majority of one-off reviews can sometimes be a signal of review spam.

Hope this helps, and that taking the time to do a local-specific competitive audit will help you start to form a plan for the client to surpass their competitor. Best of luck!

Hi Kate!

We're so happy to have you here. I want to be sure I'm clearly understanding your strategy. When you say you are building local listings, do you mean you are building local business listings for the state of California? Local business listings are address-specific. So, if you are marketing a plumbing company with a physical location in, say, San Diego, CA., you can create local business listings surrounding this, but what you cannot do is create a local business listing for a state. Please, provide a little further detail here about how you are handling local business listings.

Also, can you let the community know whether you are referring to organic or local rankings in terms of your goals?

Thank you!

Hi Kate,

If you are marketing a business in the payday loans industry, your challenge is more complex than many other business categories face, due to Google taking punitive action in the past.

If the business is virtual rather than physical, you cannot do Local SEO. Unless the business has physical offices where staff make face-to-face contact with customers, you cannot build out local business listings on platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, etc. Instead, you'll have to focus on organic SEO and PPC. Here's a recent article specifically about your industry: https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/22/a-review-of-the-payday-loans-algorithm-in-2018/

Hi William,

Good finds from both Donna and Nicholas. Please especially pay attention to Donna's query regarding your address.

I have two additional questions for you.

1. Are you meeting face-to-face with your customers?

2. At your address, within your building, or even within the same couple of city blocks from you, are there any other video production companies?

Hello There!

I believe what you are referencing is the red "Duplicate Address" label in the Status column under Locations in your GMB dashboard. Google uses this label if there are two listings at the same address, and I know, it's frustrating!

I highly recommend reading this recent tutorial by Joy Hawkins on this topic: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/resolve-duplicate-addresses-google-business/

I think you'll find it's just what the doctor ordered!

And we're so glad to have you here, Ed!

Hi there!

Yes, your sense that MapQuest has decreased in importance is correct. They were a very early mapping product and enjoyed some years as an early adopter. I believe MQ is still pulling data from Infogroup, but basically, they handed over the keys to Yext and their help documentation is all about using Yext instead of using MapQuest. Kind of sad, honestly. There was a time before Google Maps was the be-all-end-all in mapping.

Hi Ben,

So, Google's guidelines state:

-Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible.

-Use a local phone number instead of central, call center helpline number whenever possible.

Given this, sharing a phone number between locations should be avoided. A unique phone number for each location of a multi-location business should be considered a necessary investment. However, the implementation of this (or lack of it) may or may not be the cause of ranking problems. It would be a good idea to do a complete audit of the second location to document all of the factors that could be causing that business to rank lower than its competitors in its city of location.

Hi Crystal,

I might need a bit more info on this to offer best guidance. Am I understanding this correctly:

• Your client is Dr. Jones.

• Dr. Jones has her own office at 123 Main St.

• Dr. Jones does not own any other offices, but she sees patients at the local hospital and at the local health care clinic, as well as seeing them at her office.

• You want to know if Dr. Jones is then eligible for 3 Google My Business listings since she sees patients at 3 locations, one of which she owns, and two of which she doesn't.

Is this the scenario, or would you describe it differently?

Hi Crystal,

You're welcome, and from the additional details you've provided, I would recommend:

1. Just one GMB listing at her central location with her single phone number

2. Build content on the website and socially around her privileges at other clinics

Hope this helps!

Hi Taylor,

Are you able to share the identity of the client? If not, my best advice is to investigate

1. Filters (like Possum)

2. Hard/soft penalties.

3. Bugs

Hi Kyo,

Please, check out the illustrated guide to the Top 20 Local Search Ranking Factors, which I wrote in 2017. It provides a thorough explanation of the most important ranking factors listed in that survey. I hope this helps you out with definitions, and if any questions remain after you've read through it, please let us know. Thanks!

Hello There!

Thanks for asking a good question. The best practice for this is found in Google's guidelines, which state

-Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible

• Use a local phone number instead of central, call center helpline number whenever possible.

So, it will be best if each of your facilities publishes its own, local number.

Ad Adlev,

Yes, that's a weird-looking example. As far as I can tell, it's likely stemming from the business in question setting San Francisco and San Diego as their service radius and then Google drawing the lines between that. It's a huge service area, so it looks a bit strange, but it is plausible.

Hi Matt!

Glad you've asked, and you're right - you definitely don't want to mark your business as closed. Instructions for this are found in the Guidelines for Representing your Business on Google, which read:

Seasonal hours

​If your business has seasonal hours, use the following guidelines:

• During the season in which you’re open, set hours that reflect the current season's opening hours. You may set special hours for holidays, temporary closures, or other events.
• When your business is out of season, remove all opening hours, so they appear as unset. Set your opening hours again at the beginning of your next open season.

Hope this helps and that you have a good open season!

Hi Adam!

Yellowbook still exists and is accessible from the US. I'm sorry but I'm not sure why it wouldn't be so from your location.

As for workarounds, I can suggest two:

1. Infogroup feeds Yellowbook, as far as I know, so if you have something you need to do on Yellowbook, you might want to take that up with Infogroup.

2. If you need a citation built only on Yellowbook, get someone in the US to do it for you. Of course, if the business you're promoting is in Israel and there is some reason Yellowbook isn't accessible to anyone from there, having a citation on that platform would be of questionable value.

Hope this helps!

Hey Steve,

I first learned about Pointy from the American Independent Business Alliance a few months ago, and wrote a bit about it here:

https://moz.com/blog/local-seos-guide-to-buy-local

*See the section subtitled "Digitize Inventory Easily".

It's early days yet, but the fact that founder of WordPress and co-founder of Google Maps are Pointy's angel investors makes me think it could go far.

While I've yet to hold a Pointy device in my own hands, the potential for it to enable smaller local businesses to get their inventory onto the web so easily is incredibly appealing.

If anyone is actually using Pointy, I hope you'll contribute to this thread!

Dear Sabar-din,

Hopefully, the article Hannah linked to will answer your question, but if not, please let us know and please explain why you are trying to remove the listing and what precise steps you've taken so far.

Hi Jacob!

This does sound totally odd. Let me be sure I have the facts straight:

1. You have an MCC account via which you are managing Google Ads and it includes both your agency and your clients Google Ads campaigns.

2. You are also managing local search for your clients. Have their GMB listings been created in their own accounts, or were they created under your agency's account?

3. When you search for "Happy Floors Orlando Florida" (fictitious name), Google is bringing up a local pack of results that shows your client (Happy Floors) but also shows your agency's listing in it 1,000 miles away?

4. The only link between the two is that you have your client listed in your portfolio?

Please, let me know "yes" or "no" to each of these.

Also, as you can't publicly share the details of the business/agency in question, please ask a friend (maybe someone at another agency) to do the search you're doing and tell you what they see. I'd like to do this myself, but understand if you need to keep that private. Tell me what comes of that, please.

You've definitely gotten me curious!

Hi Ben,

You're welcome! Good follow-up question.

If your company (XYZ) places patients in facilities you don't own (Sunshine), then you aren't authorized to create GMB listings for Sunshine. Nor would any other service that places patients in those facilities. Sunshine would need to market themselves as the owner of that location.

Hope that makes sense.

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for coming back to this thread. The permanently closed listing for an unrelated business at your address should not affect you in any way. If it were your business that was marked permanently closed, that would be a problem for you. But as it's the former tenant's business marked that way, it's only a problem for them. I would not worry about this.

Good Morning, Bek!

I hope you will receive a variety of responses from our community on this, as citation management is often a case of horses for courses. What you choose should be based on factors including the scale of your business model, your funding, your expectations of control/management, etc.  Basically, you have 3 options when it comes to citation management:

1. Do it all manually. The plus side of this is that you have as much direct control as possible. The minus side is that it is time-consuming and can't be scaled easily for companies with multiple locations. It's all but impossible to efficiently, manually manage local business listings for dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations. And, manual on-going monitoring of citation quality is a huge chore even if you only have a single location business.

2. Hire a company to do it for you manually. Whitespark is one of the more popular companies that builds a la carte citations manually. The plus side of this is that you pay once and the citations are built well with good data that you've approved, without you having to invest a lot of time. The minus side is that citations typically need to be managed on an ongoing basis, which companies like Whitespark don't do. They are an excellent service for a one-time manual build, but because of the way data can degrade over time, may not be the right match for a business that wants to monitor and manage their listings on an on-going basis.

3. Automate it. This is what companies like Moz Local, Uberall and Yext do. Moz Local, for example, distributes your data to the major citation platforms (including the major aggregators) and then offers you a dashboard for ongoing monitoring. The plus side of this is that the work on your end is nominal and, at least with Moz Local, you'll be alerted to ongoing issues with your data, including inconsistent and duplicate listings, as they arise. A solution like this scales to dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations. The main minus side is a lack of direct control, plus cost can be a factor, and one of the key complaints about Yext is that (unlike Moz Local) they charge for your distribution to low-quality directories that few people actually use.

So, those are your 3 options, and what might work best for a single location boutique may not be the right match for a multi-location restaurant chain. Some businesses do like Yext, but if you do a bit of searching, you will also find genuine complaints, as you will about most providers. Other people are big fans of Moz Local, BrightLocal, Uberall and other providers. So, as I said, I'm hoping you'll get multiple points of view on this thread, do some investigative work, and discover the right match for your brand's scenario. In the end, that's what matters most!

I'll just finish up by letting you know that if you have any questions about how Moz Local could help you business, please email our customer service support at help@moz.com. You'll receive a friendly and helpful reply.

Good morning!

So sorry to hear you've encountered some trouble. Can you answer some questions for me about your scenario, please?

1. Did your re-design of the website keep the exact same domain and URLs, or did you have to do any re-directs?

2. Am I right that your concern is that, when you search for things like "austin plumbers" while you are physically located in Dallas, you are seeing your client on the first page of the organic results, but when you search from a physical location in Austin, your client is coming up on the 9th page of the organic results? Is that right?

3. You mention local results, as well. What were your client's local pack rankings prior to the re-design and how, exactly, have they changed?

4. How long ago did you launch the re-design?

Thank you for the replies to my questions. I'm just going to start jotting things down here:

1. Your client is outside of the Austin city limits. The location is the quite a bit west of the city boundary, as perceived by Google: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Austin,+TX/@30.3172704,-97.91144,11z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x8644b599a0cc032f:0x5d9b464bd469d57a!2sAustin,+TX!3b1!8m2!3d30.267153!4d-97.7430608!3m4!1s0x8644b599a0cc032f:0x5d9b464bd469d57a!8m2!3d30.267153!4d-97.7430608

2. I mention this, because Google is fairly biased towards physical location, and a business outside of city borders is not one I'd typically expect to see ranking well locally, unless there was little competition. Organically, I might see them ranking however. So, I'm walking into this not really expecting your client to rank well locally, and I just want to mention that.

3. Using BrightLocal's rank checker tool and setting my zip to the zip code at Google's perceived center of Austin (78701) I am unable to find your client in the first 10 pages of the organic results for "austin plumbers". You mentioned you are seeing them on page 9 from another tool. I just can't find them at all.

4. Yet, when I search from my own location in California for this same term, your client is #1 in the local pack and #2 organically (just below Yelp). So, for non-Austin-based searchers,your client is doing extremely well. And, this comes as a bit of a surprise to me, given what I said above about them being beyond city limits. To have overcome this, the site must be doing something right to be so dominant!

5. So, now, the frustrating part of this. It has long been observed that Google handles proximity of the searcher quite differently when the searcher is near a business vs. in some other city or state. In other words, if, from my location in California, I look for a plumber in Austin, I'm not likely to see the exact same results as someone actually in Austin would see. Rank checking tools aren't great at approximating this. So, I want to ask you to ask your client to do something. Have them search from their office computer on Ranch Road for "austin plumbers" and tell you exactly where they see themselves both locally and organically. Please, if you can do this, come back and let me know what they say.

Clearly, the launch of the new site design is making you question whether something you did caused the ranking drop. But, I want to be sure that we aren't overlooking that Google somehow made a change that is coincidental to your redesign and has nothing to do with it. If your client's site was penalized, I wouldn't expect to see it ranking so excellently for my searches from California. And the GMB listing is not suspended or anything like that. So, let see if you can get your client to tell you what they see searching from their own office. I'll stay tuned.