It's my pleasure, and good luck with this, Silkstream!

Hi Peter,

I believe you're referring to a David Deering article on Whitespark (http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/50-how-to-make-your-local-business-schema-better) from earlier this year. I would trust pretty much any advice regarding citations published on Darren Shaw's company's website and I think that's a great article from David.

I'd like to know more about his/Darren's experience with seeing quicker citation pick-up using sameAs. I'm not sure if the speed they are citing comes from something Whitespark has noted handling the massive numbers of citations they manage, or if this is something David Deering is experimenting with on his own, or what have you. The folks are extremely nice and friendly up there in Canada, and if I were you, I'd reach out to David and ask him if he can tell you a bit more about any phenomena they have documented regarding use of sameAs, to see whether any gains in speed would warrant you investing in implementing this. I've not seen any side-by-side testing done, but maybe the fellows at Whitespark have done some? Great topic!

Hey There,

If memory serves, Google switched to using Most Helpful as the default setting some years ago when they partnered with Zagat. Prior to that, it had been ordered in terms of recency. I am not positive about this, but I believe 'Most Helpful' is determined via an algo that may include a combination of the authority of the reviewer + recency + review language and other factors. In your case, there is some reason that the algo thinks it is helpful for people to see those negative reviews - and I can totally see how much of a pain this is, given that the rest of your reviews are largely positive and you even have more recent, positive reviews.

I'd definitely take a look at the review profiles of the 2 people who left the negative reviews. If they've left lots of other reviews, their authority could be playing a role in this. If the reviews are, indeed, libelous, this post may help you in reporting:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-reviews/3931-how-remove-slanderous-google-reviews.html

Sorry not to have more definite information about this, but it's one of those algo-related things that likely puzzles many business owners and about which Google is not very forthcoming.

Hey Donald,

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

Hi Brian,

As others in the community have rightly indicated, sharing a phone number across multiple websites is definitely a no-no. It may help to think of it this way. You have a Google My Business listing for your company, HappyTrees.com, and it points to your website. Google's bots travel from your GMB data to your website to cross-check for accuracy. They find your name, address and phone number on the website page your GMB listing points to and say, "A-okay, this checks out."

Then they crawl further and they begin to encounter the phone number you've got on your GMB listing and HappyTrees.com on BigTrees.com, TallTrees.com and GreenTrees.com. The bot stops and says, "Wait a minute, I thought this phone number belonged to Happy Trees. What's up with this? Hmm ... my data isn't trustworthy about this business. Likely, this shouldn't be ranking as well as this competitor here who clearly has this very consistent NAP."

Maybe a somewhat cartoon-ish explanation, but I find it can be helpful to visualize how Google may react to decisions you are making in your online marketing. One of your best bets for achieving high rankings is to have utterly consistent NAP across the ecosystem, and so, the following things can dilute this:

1. Any mismatches in name, address, phone, website anywhere on the web

2. Taking a multi-site approach instead of a single site approach

3. Duplicating your content across multi sites

4. Sharing details or interlinking between multi sites

5. The use of call tracking numbers in any local search campaign except in a very few instances which are described very well in these 2 posts:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/

http://localu.org/blog/truth-about-seo-call-tracking/

Any mistakes in these areas have been described as severely damaging to a business' ability to rank well for its desired terms, so a thorough study of the history of each of these types of issues would be your best bet for protecting your company against unwanted outcomes.

Hope this helps, and glad you've asked!

Hi Adam,

Good question. Unfortunately, a storage unit would not likely meet Google's guidelines for a physical location. Rather, what you'd need to do here is list whatever your headquarters are (your main location where you answer your phone, even if that's your house) and build just 1 Google+ Local page for that, being sure to set the business as a service area business so that the address is hidden. Then, instead of going for local pack rankings for your service locations, you'll need to go for organic ones via the city landing pages you build on your website for the various cities you serve.

Hi Caleb!

That's a good question. It's very important for me to state here that Moz Local is not a ranking tool. We do not guarantee rankings in any way. Likely, you already know this, but just wanted to be sure this was clear. Whether using a tool or working manually, citations are built for 2 main reasons:

1. To build up the 'trust' it is perceived that Google places in widely available, correct business NAP+W.

2. To help customers locate your business on a variety of platforms.

#1 is believed to help you with your Google local pack rankings and #2 is believed to directly market to customers on platforms they frequently use (like Yelp or Facebook). Citations are not widely recognized as a means for improving organic or national rankings.

So, in your case, as you don't really see customers between normal business hours, citation building may not be the most important investment for your business. On the other hand, if you have a B2B relationship and your business associates are coming to your office between normal business hours, citation building could help them find you in the local packs of results. Additionally, citations are normally listed in the organic results below the main result for a branded search, so, it could be postulated that this could help B2B customers feel more secure about how established your business is. But, it would not like help you rank better for your software keywords.

*However, there is one grey area related to this that deserves mention. The majority of citations include a link to the business website. So, in a sense, citation building is a form of link building. It would be possible, then, to parlay that out into thinking that earning citations means you've earned some new links for the business, right? And links do influence organic rank, right? But, it's my gut feeling that, because the links contain in citations are not merit-based (in other words, you're not actually earning them based on something great you've done) they probably do not have a ton of value in the current, more sophisticated Google environment. Could they help at all? My guess is that they might be of minimal help, but that you would likely benefit more organically from other efforts.

Hope this helps!

Hi Ruben,

I agree with Dmitrii that it shouldn't matter what program you use, so long as the tags are readable by Google. The only benefit I can think of for going with one service over another would be if some popular product happens to increase your chances that customers might see your stuff, but I honestly haven't ever seen that documented.

Hey Neil,

The problem here is that Google has rolled out both a new local and a new maps interface in the past couple of months, and I'm not sure what this has done to photo requirements. Here are the most recent things I could find for you, but I am not positive the numbers are still accurate. You might need to experiment a bit:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/02/24/google-my-business-upgrades-business-photos/

http://localu.org/blog/your-google-my-business-profile-image-your-most-important-image/

Hope this helps a bit!

Hi Ruben,

Back in 2014, Google stated that they don't want markup on testimonials on your website. You can read about this here and figure out how you'd like to proceed, given this policy:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local/26385-say-what-google-says-dont-add-review-markup-your-customer-reviews.html

This caused quite a bit of talk at the time, and I don't believe all sites are complying, but important to know.

Regarding third party reviews you are republishing on your site, I have not seen individual reviews coming up with stars on them for some time, but this seems to change so frequently. For example, up until recently, I was seeing Facebook listings coming up in Google's SERPs with stars on them. Now, that appears to have changed. So, I'm not sure what, if anything, you could do right now to get individual reviews posted on your website to show up with stars in the SERPs.

If anyone has seen a different pattern, please do share with Ruben!

Hey Neil,

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

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

Hi Ruben,

Just to clarify, are you talking about testimonials you've collected from clients and have published on your website or are you talking about 3rd party reviews you've collected from other platforms and are re-publishing on your website?