Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi MediaCom,

You could try calling Google's new phone number for data issues to see if that gets you faster action:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local-important/2022-huge-news-phone-support-google-local-data.html

It may not yield results, but if you haven't tried it yet, it could be worth a try!

Hi Raymond,

This issue with the way Google formats Canadian addresses comes up often in the Google And Your Business Forum.

See:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/canada$20address/business/VqptZa8vcVM/jItn_Vm9LPoJ

I would recommend that you start a thread in that forum, perhaps with Flash's name in it. Something like:

Can MM RER Flash Help My Canadian Business, Please?

Then reference the thread I've just linked to, and give full details about your situation. This is just an ongoing issue, but Flash is a high level MapMaker RER and may be able to give you actionable help with this.

Hope this helps!

Hi Maria, I see you've started 2 threads here with the same question. I've responded to the version of your question, here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/optimising-for-local-search#post-149218

Hi Cushing2013,

I've not seen this error message myself. Let me see what I can find out. I'll return to this thread as soon as I have further information.

Hi Nittala, The last I heard from Google on this, their position is: "Below the reviews by Google users, we may link “Reviews around the web” on third-party sites." see: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/third$20party$20reviews$20not$20showing$20up/business/mPz5bqu7ViM/mhgNtGtkqUcJ Note that they say 'may'. I don't know of anything you can do to force Google to display third party reviews on a Google+ Local page. How long ago did you get the reviews? In the end, it's up to them whether they want to display these or not.

Hi Falk, I'm stumped. I don't understand how you are seeing your hotel in the main results with a true grey/pinned local result if you have no address or phone number. Unfortunately, without being able to actually look at the listing, I can't get any further with this. What you are describing is not something I've ever seen before, and I have to wonder if Google is handling things very differently than one would expect, given the remoteness/other factors about your location. If you can share the listings, I'm happy to look at it. If not, I can't really provide any further insight.

Hi Nathan,

Dorothea is correct about P.O. boxes being forbidden in Google's local products. However, phone verification is not a solution, as Google will not offer this for every business - only some of them. If this is the case for your business, and you are not being offered a phone verification option, then postcard is the only way you can verify your business.

What is the exact situation with this business? Why can't mail be delivered to the brick and mortar location? I know there are some parts of the U.S. where the post office does not deliver mail to homes and businesses, but only to P.O. boxes. Is that the case with your location? If so, my best suggestion would be that you go through this troubleshooter and see if it leads you to Google's new verification issues phone number:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1399021&page=ts.cs

Hi Falk,

I agree with much of  the advice offered by EEE3. Unfortunately, your client is not eligible for inclusion in Google's local products if they lack a physical street address and local phone number. The competitor's usage of a fake phone number is not advisable...he is misdirecting his own potential guests and, there is a good chance Google will see through this.

So, local inclusion just isn't appropriate for your client, meaning you will have to rely on Organic SEO rather than Local SEO to gain visibility for the hotel. I am presuming that if no one in this region of the world has a street address, Google isn't showing any truly local results for the area (no results with the grey, lettered pins on them). So, make the website as strongly optimized as you can for the town and region where the hotel exists and rely on traditional SEO techniques for gaining high organic visibility for the client. That would be my best advice.

Hi Gary,

Ben has provided a good answer. Now, technically, you are perfectly free to link to the homepage from all of the local listings. That is in no way forbidden, but it is a preferred practice in many cases to link to a landing page for each location. Just be sure your location landing pages are strong pages (not duplicates, not with thin content, etc.). The use of landing pages is also a good place to reinforce the NAP (name, address, phone) for each unique location. They will all share the same business name, but will have unique street addresses and phone numbers, and these can be clearly listed on each respective landing page.

Years ago, Eric Enge interviewed Carter Maslan on this topic, and to my mind, Carter's advice about these types of landing pages still stands: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml

Scroll down to this part and read from there:

Eric Enge: Let’s say you have more than one location, 100 for example. In your view, is it helpful to have individual pages on the website for all of the locations? Also, is it helpful to have the Google local business center linked to each of those individual pages rather than having 100 locations that point to a single web address?

*Note, this was published in 2010, so some of the terminology is outdated, but the main message about this particular topic is still right on. Hope this helps!

Hi Russel,

If you were my client, I would advise you to stick with your one website and then work on building out awesome content for your surrounding cities. Why would I advise this:

1. Everything you build on your one website serves to strengthen your overall presence. Rather than dividing things up onto a bunch of different domains, you're building a big, powerful website.

2. I seldom find it warranted for a single business to have more than one website. For example, a San Francisco-based plumber is offering identical services, whether within San Francisco, or traveling to serve clients in San Jose, Oakland and Mill Valley. I'm not convinced of the genuine need for him to have millvalleyplumbing.com, sanjoseplumbing.com, etc. To me, it looks like an obvious attempted grab for rankings rather than a client-focused decision.

3. Tied into that is the fact that few plumbers have the time to develop enough truly unique and helpful content to flesh out multiple websites. This puts the client in danger of suffering EMD or duplicate content penalties for publishing a bunch of thin content (or worse, duplicate content) websites. From my experience working with local business owners, I've found that an attainable goal is creating a really strong, unique page for each of their service cities...not creating whole websites for each of their service cities. There could, of course, be exceptions to this, but this is what I've found to be the case most of the time.

4. It's so much easier for the client (and you) to manage a single website than a bunch of different mini sites.

So, those are some reasons I'd advise going with a single website and creating city landing pages on that site for the client's service cities. Do not create duplicate pages. Create fantastic, unique pages. This is a must. Hope these make sense. And yes, write good URLs, for the city landing pages when you create them.

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for coming back for further clarification, and I apologize if my response was too vague to be properly understood. Let me try to explain this better.

When you do a search for something like 'pizza manchester' or you do a search just for 'pizza' from a Manchster-based device, Google will typically show you 3 types of results. One will be the traditional organic results that have been around forever. There will also be PPC AdWords results, right?

But there will be a third type of result for this specific kind of query, and that will be the true local results, which are accompanied by the grey tear-drop shaped pins with letters in them. Those are the local results, currently most typically linked to the business' Google+ Local pages. They are governed by different data and are really separate from the traditional organic results.

Google may show only one result like this on a page, or they may show 3, or 7, etc. The display has changed many times over the past half decade, but basically, the idea here is that these must be viewed as totally distinct from the other types of results on the page, as different factors govern them.

What we were discussing earlier is that, back in 2010, Google stopped showing true local results for website design and SEO firms. So, you'll get organic results for these queries, not local ones.

I hope this makes better sense.

Hi Web3 Marketing,

I'm finding it challenging to provide a really good answer to your reiterated question, because, to me, 'web design' just isn't a local search, because Google doesn't view it that way. If personalization is having a localizing effect on some devices, signed in/not signed in, turned on/turned off, then, yes, we can sort of say that Google is giving some local treatment of this as they would to all queries, but overall, I think this has to be viewed organically rather than locally.

That being the case, your organic SEO is likely going to boil down to a mixture of the traditional age+content+links+authority, etc. Of these, I would imagine that your content strategy would be really crucial in sending a strong message of locale, so that, in those instances where you are seeing some effect of localized personalization happening, you might gain an edge. The trouble is, are your potential clients seeing these types of SERPs or are they simply seeing the common, broad results for this broad search term?

Hi Gordon, Thanks for your reply. The results you are seeing are organic, though, not local, right? If they are actually local, that's big news. But, even if they are organic, then, yes, that is different than how I see this broad search handled where I live in the US. No local companies...just (presumably) big companies.

Hi Gordon, By that, I meant that standard Local procedures relate to typical business models like those. Web Design firms, however, fall into a category of their own, and Google handles them differently than they would almost any other local business model.

Hi TechWyse,

You're very welcome, and I'm sorry you experienced a glitch in the reporting system. If it happens again, please comment on that fact on the thread in question.

Hi Anton,

Because of the nature of your business (web design), you fall into a funny category in Google's handling of the SERPs. If you were a plumber or a doctor, the answer would be simple, but Google hasn't shown local results for queries like 'web design Edmonton' since 2010. Both website design and SEO firms all got knocked out of the true Local index at that point, and so, your efforts for rankings actually have to be viewed as organic, rather than local, because of this oddity.

What are you seeing when you simply search for 'web design' from an Edmonton-based device? Are you seeing organic rankings of any local companies, or are they random, national businesses. When I search for web design from my computer, I don't get any companies in my town (despite the fact that my own website design company is located there!) What I do get is big, monster design firms and entries from things like Wikipedia giving definitions of the term 'web design'. So, that leads me to view a search like 'web design' as a really broad search. I'm not doing a technical analysis of each of the top 10 listings, but whatever their authority is, Google is showing them to me, and it appears to have nothing to do with my locale.

Do this same search yourself, and I would bet you are seeing the same. If so, this means that ranking for the broad term 'web design' would be a matter of major organic SEO work (and probably not something most web design companies are even aiming for) simply because of the scope of the competition. Now, if you are seeing something different than what I'm describing, that would be worth noting, too. If Google is showing Edmonton-based companies for the broad search, that would be very interesting to me to know.

At the end of the day, regardless of what Google is displaying, everything must be viewed from an organic mindset rather than a true local one, because of Google's handling of web design firms.

Hope this helps!

Hi Nexxtep,

So it does sound like your business has a real local component. The trick will be to convince Google of that

What keywords are you trying to rank for? I looked up 'it services valdosta, ga' and am not seeing it bring up any true local results at all. So this may be one of those industries for which Google just isn't going to show the pack of local results at all, no matter what you do, meaning that your efforts will need to be largely organic.

Hi Anaid,

Wow, that sounds like you have a ton on your plate with this project. I think you are taking the right steps in minimizing danger, but honestly, if you've got to write 30 awesome pages of content about the export/import business, you may need to insist on getting some help from a dedicated copywriter on that. With all the other work you are doing, time has to be found to research exciting topics to make these pages great, and if you're already maxed out in your time, you may need an extra pair of hands and eyes.

Hi Nexxtep,

There are several things to consider here. You mention:

Google+/Local/Places/whatever-the-heck-you-call-it-these-days page

After visiting your website, I'm trying to ascertain whether your business is actually local or virtual. Do you serve clients face-to-face at your location or theirs? If not, your business is virtual and not appropriate for inclusion in Google's local products.

What also needs to be considered is the fact that Google has not displayed true local results for website design and SEO firms since 2010. You offer IT services, I see, and I don't know whether Google would lump you in with this other group of unsupported industries, but it's something to consider.

In sum, if your business doesn't meet Google's definition of local, then a Google+ Local page is not right for you. You can, however, set up a Google+ Business page, for which you don't need to local (you could be national, like a brand, etc.).

If you'd like to provide further information to clarify your business model or question, please do so.

Good discussion going on here, guys. I just want to clarify one point in this discussion, as I'm concerned that some of the advice may confuse others. It has been stated in this conversation that:

If you're wanting to show up in the Map Pack for local results in various cities, you HAVE to have a "real" physical address in that city. You can't hide the address and have any hope to rank.

I respectfully disagree...with part of this. Yes, you must have a real physical address in the city in which you're hoping to rank locally, but for service radius businesses, it is certainly possible to rank while complying with Google's hide-address law. In fact, some Local SEOs have observed that complying with the hide address rule can actually boost local rankings. Conversely, failure to comply with the rule has resulted in estimated thousands of listings being closed by Google.

So, yes, you need the address as your foothold in the city, but if you serve clients at their locations rather than your own, hide that address. And don't worry about rankings being put out of reach by complying with the law. They are actually far more secure for you if you comply.

Hi CWseo,

Yes, the 'in' search has always done that. Odd, isn't it? I've never understood why Google does that in that way, but it's been like that since 2010.

Hi Clicksjim,

This is an 'it depends' answer.  Basically, yes, if you're creating a brand new listing, you still create it via Places, but in regards to what happens with + and + Local, that's more complex.

Here's Google's own explanation of this topic:

http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2623007

And here is a really good FAQ:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/business/oRvAQC_IakA/vsfNhuMzURYJ

In reading that last post, do note that it was written before the whole merging thing happened, so merging is available to some businesses now, but not recommended for all. Read:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/08/10/google-business-pages-to-merge-or-not-to-merge-that-is-the-question/

and

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/11/28/having-issues-with-your-glocal-social-merge-my-advice-dont/

and

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/12/19/service-area-business-with-a-verified-social-local-google-page-delete-it/

Hope you find these helpful!

Hi Antonio,

You have asked many questions here. I will try to cover as many as I can, within the scope of Q&A.

From a purely local perspective, Google is interested only in your brick-and-mortar locations. You may have 1 listing per location, and each one must use your legal business name or DBA, a unique (not-shared) business address and a unique local phone number. You cannot have 2 businesses at the same address, nor 2 businesses sharing a phone number. Any confusion here can result in penalties, so it's really important to be totally clear in how you list yourself, and be sure that your website and all citations of the business precisely match the way you have listed yourself locally in Google's local products.

I am concerned that if you go with the suite number approach you are mentioning, above, that the similarity in the 2 business names is going to bring up a red flag at Google. Google's guidelines state:

Businesses with multiple specializations, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties.

I believe that Google might find the approach you're considering to be a violation of this guideline.

If your business is Joe Bloggs, then that is one business, regardless of how many websites or specialties you may have.

Your Google listings can link to separate city landing pages rather than the homepage. That is fine. So your listing for your brick-and-mortar location in city A can link to the landing page on your website for city A, and so on and so forth with cities B, C, D, etc.

Regarding categories, it's fine to choose custom categories, but it's a good practice to make at least the first category one of Google's pre-set categories. I like to find at least 2-3 pre-set categories, but this isn't always possible. Just make sure that your custom categories follow the rule of is-not-does. So plumber, not plumbing; chimney sweep, not chimney sweeping.

Regarding a wide service radius, remember, local results revolve around your physical brick-and-mortar locations...not your service area. So, focus local attention on your physical locales. Everything else needs to approached from an organic standpoint, with a hope of getting organic rankings for these other cities and regions where you're not physically located.

To begin targeting these service regions where you're not physically located, consider the practice of creating fantastic, unique landing pages for various locales. Do not create thin or duplicate content. Start with your 5 most important targeted geographic spots and create big, creative content for them. Then, move onto the next 5. Just remember, your goal with these is organic - not local.

I hope I've answered the bulk of your questions helpfully!

Hi CWSEO,

Just want to pop in to address the local side of this. Google has not shown local results for website design companies since early 2010, so no matter what efforts you make in that direction, you will not get true local results for your business. Everything, therefore, must be approached organically. If you do a search for 'Web Design Leicester', you'll see that there are only organic results..not local ones. I'll let others approach this from an organic perspective, because of this phenomenon specific to design and SEO firms.

Hi Anaid,

Google's definition of a local business is one that has a physical location and unique local phone number within a given city. So, the goal of ranking locally for cities where you don't have these things is not one I would set. Rather, you should strive for true local rankings for the cities where you do have that real office and dedicated local phone number, and hope for organic rankings in those cities where you serve, rather than where you are.

You are right to be concerned about duplicate content. Chris has given some good suggestions. I would further suggest that you consider blogging. Get your service people in on the action to write up their projects in different service cities. Take photos and videos. Develop a body of unique content this way, rather than going with the thin/duplicate content approach.

The decision to target every major city in the USA may not really be ideal. I don't know what your business is, of course, but I would say that nearly any business taking this approach would be tempted to put up tons of duplicate content, because the effort of writing thousands of pages would be so intensive. Better to have 50 awesome pages rather than 900 poor ones. If you're a B2C company, perhaps some of those efforts to reach out can be Social rather than via creating landing pages, but landing pages can certainly be an important part of your effort, so long as they are great content.

Just remember, your local goals need to revolve around your brick-and-mortar businesses. Everything else needs to be viewed as an organic effort.

Hi Onlinechester,

I believe what you are describing is the quite common phenomenon in which the previous organic rank of a business for a given query is subsumed into a newer local ranking (a ranking in the pack of lettered, pinned results). Since the Venice update in early 2012, it has become uncommon for any single business to have both a local and organic page 1 ranking for any search term. There are exceptions to this, but as a rule, if you've got a local listing, you're unlikely to have a secondary organic one on the same page of the SERPs.

Some marketers have published pieces on managing to achieve a double page 1 ranking for local clients. Here's an article on that topic by Adam Steele:

http://www.nightlitemedia.com/2012/05/organic-and-google-places-ranking-on-page-1/

There's also a good discussion going on about this topic at The Local Search Forum:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local/1816-disagreement-my-client-over-organic-vs-g.html

I recommend you read both resources and see if what I've written is accurately describing the common phenomenon you are experiencing.

If not, please come back with further details.

Hi Greg,

From the ongoing discussion, it looks like you've got to investigate the potential of a penalty on the organic side of things (not my area), but let me take a look from a local perspective.

1. On the client's Google+ Local page (see: https://plus.google.com/105185934363953908565/about?gl=US&hl=en-US), I see a potential problem in the business description, which reads: "Coops Cars has great deals on the best used cars in South River (and the entire East Brunswick area). Affordable financing options and extended warranties available. Coops Buys Cars also - we pay cash for used cars and trucks, even if you don't buy one of ours." I recommend you remove any geo terms from that (take out South River and East Brunswick). Google has never publicly stated that use of geo terms in the description causes a penalty, but for many years, Local SEOs have observed that it can cause one. So, I'd get rid of it. To be on the safe side, I'd take the business name out of description, too.

2. Even more serious problem. Your client appears to have a duplicate Google listing going on. I did a phone number lookup in maps.google.com for (732) 334-1770 and see this: https://plus.google.com/113899383798859891141/about?gl=us&hl=en I found it by clicking the 'see all 2 results' link in maps.google.com for the phone number lookup. So, the business is listing itself as 'Coops Used Cars' and 'Coops Buys Cars'. This could be totally killing their ranking chances, locally speaking.

3. I am not seeing any other duplicates, but you need to discover if there are any. Look up different iterations of the business name, and also any old or alternate phone numbers. As you mentioned that the client was being spammy, you need to be on the lookout for anything else weird they may have done on a local level. For example, purchasing virtual addresses or using P.O. boxes in neighboring towns.

4. Okay, here's another one. The client has a phone number issue going on. The number published on his duplicate Google listing is (201) 334-0570, but the number in the footer of the website is 732-334-1770. Definitely a problem, as the conflicting numbers will erode Google's confidence in the business' NAP

5. Hmm, here's an odd one. I'm not familiar with NJ geography, but why does a phone number lookup for( 201) 334-0570 in the main Google search engine bring up a ton of listings for the business in Hackensack, rather than South River? That needs to be investigated and all citations brought into a consistent NAP format (name, address, phone number).

6. A phone number lookup in maps.google.com of (201) 334-0570 is bringing up a closed business listing with the title We Buy Any Auto. So, clearly, some spamming of the local index has been going on, and a thorough investigation is warranted.

That's about all I have the time for within the scope of Q&A, but I think with this quick glance, I've identified some key issues that are almost certainly affecting your client's ability to rank well locally. A history of spamming can be hard to overcome, but every effort needs to be made to clean up past bad actions. You may even want to hire a professional citation editor to help you. Nyagoslav Zhekov's name springs to mind (ngsmarketing.com) and his rates are quite reasonable. Definitely, this client is going to need a lot of work.

Hi Ilya,

No, there is not a backdoor way that I could advise. Google+ Local is all about local businesses and that does not fit your business model.

Regarding citations:

A citation is typically defined as any mention of your company name with full or partial contact information (address, phone number). It does not need to contain a link to your business. If it does contain a link, this would obviously help your business, overall, in the organic SERPs. If it is a non-linked citation, I suppose that might increase the prominence of your overall business, in that it would appear that lots of sites are talking about your company, but as you don't have physical offices, you would presumably be promoting places that don't really exist. In my view, that doesn't make sense.

Regarding creating profiles at Yahoo & Bing:

Yahoo's Local Listings Guidelines are here:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ll/guidelines/local-01.html

These guidelines state:

Provide accurate contact information. You must provide an accurate business address (including a valid street address) and phone number.

I cannot turn up Bing's guidelines for some reason, though their FAQ is here: http://www.bing.com/businessportal

While I cannot find them, I am pretty confident that their policy is similar to Google's and Yahoo's, in that they want physical businesses, not virtual ones, in their Business Portal.

Regarding How Google Can Tell You're Virtual:

I imagine they have a variety of strategies. One I've heard discussed is that they can tell via streetview, if something looks fishy to them. Another would be what you are saying about your company on your website, and what others are saying about you. If your business model is clearly virtual, chances of fooling Google are slim to none.

So, I'm afraid this isn't the answer you're hoping to hear, Ilya, but my advice would be to work on your organic SEO rather than trying to fit your virtual business into the Local box, because it's just not the right platform for what your company offers.

My pleasure, Abi. Good luck with the work ahead!

Hi Jake,

I'm sorry I didn't see your question earlier. It didn't make it into my notifications somehow.

So, if I'm understanding correctly, this is a construction business that specializes in townhome construction. For businesses like this, these things are possible:

• Does the business have a unique (not shared) physical address, even if it is a home office, and do they have a dedicated local area phone number? If yes to both, then they are completely right for Local SEO.

• Google will see the business as being chiefly relevant to its city of location. So, if the builder were in San Francisco, his best shot for true local rankings will be for San Francisco-based searches or searches containing the geo term 'san francisco'. He will not be likely to obtain true local rankings for any city but his city of location, nine times out of ten. There are some exceptions.

• With his business name, street address and phone number, this builder is able to list himself in Google Places/Google+ Local, but only one time. He may not create additional listings for his service cities. He is allowed to have only one listing per physical location.

• Because the business serves clients at their locations (unlike a brick-and-mortar store), the business MUST choose the 'hide address' feature when creating the Google listing. Google does not want anything but brick-and-mortar businesses to show their address and it is estimated has penalized thousands of businesses for failing to comply with this rule.

• Again, because the business goes to its clients, it is not eligible at this time for a Google+ Business page. Don't create one. If you already have, Google wants you to delete it.

• The business can then go on to build citations in all of the various local business indexes, but again, only for its city of location...not other service cities. If there are any citations with bad, old, or varying addresses, business names or phone numbers on them, they must be corrected. Consistency of citations is key to rankings.

• On the website, the NAP (name, address, phone number) must be identical to what is published in Google's local index and in citations across the web.

All of the above goes toward getting this business high rankings in the lettered/pinned local results.

For service cities where the business builds townhomes, but where they have no physical office, there are several options the business can pursue in hopes of gaining ORGANIC (not local) rankings.

• Create city landing pages on the website that showcase the builder's work in these other towns.

• Pursue social media campaigns that raise awareness of the company's work in these other town.

• Earn/build links to the city landing pages.

Remember, everything you publish on the site should be unique. Don't duplicate content across the city landing pages. Write up projects, take photos, show videos, display testimonials and other good stuff to make each page unique. Again, the goal of this work is typically to gain organic rankings for the other cities where the builder serves, but isn't located. That being said, it is sometimes possible for this work to achieve local rankings, most typically if the business works in a non-competitive market, in a non-metropolitan region. But, mainly, keep the two goals separate (local rankings for the city of location; organic rankings for service cities).

Be sure to follow all of Google's rules (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528) and keep up with the news on the Google+ front as it is constantly changing.

Hope this answer helps, and again, I'm very sorry you didn't receive the fast reply you should have.

Hi Abi,

We're glad to have you here! I want to be sure I'm understanding your question. Yes, that rule is still true about Google only counting the first link to a given document. I believe you are concerned that if your menu doesn't say Auto Locksmith Boston, you will somehow be losing out. While it's good to have optimized items in your menu, you don't want to look spammy. This would look spammy to me in a menu, and I bet it might to Google to:

Auto Locksmith Boston

Auto Locksmith Portsmouth

Auto Locksmith Truro

Auto Locksmith Plymouth

It's just too repetitive. So, what can you do? You can create a main page for your locksmith services in your city of location. The goal of this page will typically be to attain high LOCAL rankings. You can then create city landing pages for your service radius cities, but don't stamp them out cookie-cutter fashion. Find something unique to write about your involvement in those other cities, and don't just list them in the menu like I've shown above. Write something interesting, helpful and cool. The goal of these pages will typically be ORGANIC rankings, because you're unlikely to locally outrank competitors in neighboring cities who have their physical shops there.

So, you are a single entity offering this single service...Auto Locksmithing. That deserves one page. But you can write up your service cities, too, so long as what you're doing is unique and useful.

In sum, I recommend that you menu contains a link for Auto Locksmith Services, and then you have a separate area of the menu showcasing your work in different cities. I do not recommend making a menu like the one above.

Hope this helps!

Happy to scatter warm, fuzzy feelings wherever I may. Your answer was excellent!

Hi Perfect Pitch Concepts,

Bede has pretty much said it all in his awesome response!

I'll only add, as you build out those new pages on your website, make maximum effort to make them totally unique and helpful to the user. Don't take the shortcut of publishing duplicate or thin pages. Find great things to write about regarding your client's involvement in his new service areas.

Hi Dan,

LCnetwork's second response does a really good job of clarifying the situation and your opportunities.

For more reading:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/08/10/google-business-pages-to-merge-or-not-to-merge-that-is-the-question/

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/11/28/having-issues-with-your-glocal-social-merge-my-advice-dont/

Hi Adrien,

There are no two ways about this, in my opinion: consistency is all. Telling Google that a single phone number relates to 4 different business names will almost certainly kill the business' chance of earning good rankings because merged and duplicate pages will sap all the strength of the profile. Tell the client that they need to pick a single name and go with it and that citation cleanup will be critical to you getting them in the clear with Google.

In your further discussion with Matt, you ask:

Yet I wanted to discuss some avenues to give a business all chances to indicate to the engines - and to people - that some business names used in the past belong to them.

The only way I would recommend doing this would be on the website, in non-indexable text (such as image text). If you put it in markup, Google will index it, thus confusing their ability to understand and trust the NAP of the business.

So, if it's essential to have Bob's Plumbing (formerly known as Bob's Kitchen Repair and Bob The Bathroom Guy) explained someplace, put it somewhere on the website in non-indexable text, but not any place else and not in any format that can be crawled.

That would be my best advice.

Funny thing about Google....in the real world, businesses do have situations like the one your client has, but Google's system is not designed to handle this type of complexity. They want 1 name, 1 address and 1 phone number. Anything else is too convoluted for them.