Does each listing in Google plcaes need a seperate URL?

[E2E]

Hi

We have a client who has several car dealership fracnhises located located across two suburbs - so we are creating a places listing for each (with a separate address and phone number).  My questions is should each location also have a separate URL (the dealership only has one website covering all locations).  The Google guidelines state that you must;

Website & Phone: Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.

• Use a local phone number instead of a call centre number whenever possible.
• Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or “refer” users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business.

Really appreciate any feedback!

[MiriamEllis]

Greetings!

Thanks for coming to Q&A to ask your important question. This interview with Eric Enge is over a year old now, but his advice holds true, in my opinion:

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml

The part of the interview relating to your scenario is this:

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?

Carter Maslan: I can tell you what I think the ideal end state is, and there are various levels of getting there. Ultimately, we would like to have the store-specific page known so that people can just click through and see today's specials and any kind of adjustments for that particular day. We would love to have all of that information on a direct click to the most specific page for that location.

That’s what we encourage, but there are still a lot of chains and things that just link to their top-level domain. I guess it's a split answer. We want to get to a store specific page, but we are not uniformly there across all of the businesses.

Eric Enge: Could that potentially be encouraged by making it a ranking factor, for example?

Carter Maslan: Yes. I guess there are two sides to it. If you create a store-specific page that really just has an address, it wouldn't be as helpful as having some genuinely good content on the page that the user would really appreciate having as the first click-through experience. That’s what I think we need to work through.

We don't want to arbitrarily tell people that they must create a store-specific page, because we are really just trying to find the most useful page for that business. That’s why I am not so definitive on the store-specific page or not. I really just want what’s best for the retailer, store or businesses, first and foremost giving the user what he would want to see when he clicks on that business.

Eric Enge: Say you have a store-specific page that lists specific and individual things about just one store location. Depending on the kind of business that could be an inventory list that shows you've got extra stock?

Carter Maslan: There is a chain of stores that carries yoga equipment that my wife really likes. They have special yoga instruction, carry special brands, and host lectures on some special days. There are all kinds of things that the retailer does that relate to that specific store location, and there is also a general corporate catalogue page. So this is not black and white, and even though we want to encourage it, it's not that there is a definitive guidance saying companies need to have that page.

Eric Enge: Obviously it’s good if there is a quality page with information unique and specific to each location.

Carter Maslan: Yes, that's great. If we know that there’s good information about that page, then that helps on search and the snippets that we can show on the search results, because we know that the page is referencing that place. It does help even if it ends up not being the page that you list as your primary homepage. If there is good content that we know is content about that place, then it helps us do a better job with query results.

If a company has a page that's store-specific and talks about its class schedule, and there is one that says its holding Tai Chi class tonight and someone is searching for places to do Tai Chi, then that helps us to score it. If a lot of people have found that page helpful about the Tai Chi class, then when people search for Tai Chi we would know that that location has something to do with Tai Chi.

Now, bear in mind that Eric was stating this as an opinion of best practices rather than an official statement from Google, but barring having a distinct website for each of the franchise's locations, yes, having a unique page for each business will be a good idea. And, of course, each location must have its own local area code phone number and street address. This will qualify each branch to have a unique Place Page which can then link to its respective landing page on the website.

Parting advice - do make an effort to make the landing pages unique. Don't just cut and paste copy, changing the address and phone number. Write unique copy about each business!

Hope this helps!

Miriam

[duncan274]

There is a definate advantage of haveing two places pages and it seems legitimate to have two seeing that you have two locations. I think the idea above about a unique page within your existing site , would be useful.

[NewGlobalVentures.comSEOTexas]

I would definitely recommend each one having their own especially if the URL's are different!

good luck!

[AlanMosley]

You can have one listing per business address. There have been cases where Google will merge listings, in one case 2 lawyers in the same building had their listings merged into one even thought there were not connected.
http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

[wojkwasi]

I haven't encountered any problems with using the same address accross different cities / places listings

You may like to consider setting up separate "branch" pages with some details specific to each dealership - it would enhance usability and you could point the website field to the different pages:

• www.carstore.com/contact/suburb
• www.carstore.com/contact/suburb-east
• www.carstore.com/contact/suburb-north