Changing My Listing from an Actual Address to a SAB
-
I own a lawn care company and I currently have it listed with its actual address. I have been reading that service companies with a actual address listing MUST change their listing to hide their address and show a service area.
As you can imagine, the business is extremely seasonal and any negative impacts to my listing would hurt the company. If it makes a difference, the majority of lawn care and landscaping companies are listed with their actual address. So my questions are: (1) Should I change the listing now? And if so, what kind of impact will this have? (2) Should I wait until late autumn to change it so it can recover during the winter. Or, (3) should i just leave the listing how it is now?
Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions, I appreciate it.
-
Thanks for the responses, I really appreciate how quickly everyone helps out on the forum.
-
Hi Cestbob,
Good questions. Here are Google's official guidelines regarding addresses and SABs (service area businesses):
- Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas. If you wish to display your complete business address while setting your service area(s), your business location should be staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours. Google will determine how best to display your business address based on your inputs as well as inputs from other sources. Learn how to add service areas to your listing.
- If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option.
So, from your description of your business model, Google would want you to hide your address. This being said, I agree with Richard that they seem very lax about enforcing this and have seemed so for some time. Who knows, though? Tomorrow could be the day they initiate some plan to crack down on businesses that aren't complying with this guideline.
So, whether you choose to comply with the guidelines or not is up to you, but I do think it's important to state that none of this has anything to do with you achieving visibility in neighboring cities where you serve. Only in very niche markets or geographic regions of almost no competition can one typically expect to show up in the local pack of results for any city beyond their city of physical location.
In order to achieve non-physical location visibility the most common practice involves the development of local landing pages on the website with the goal of achieving organic (not local pack) visibility. You can read more about this here:
http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide
Remember that such pages must be completely unique and serve the needs of your customers. Hope this helps!
-
Thanks for the response Richard.
No we don't serve people at our location. I am wondering if I should change the listing because while the listing does great in the specific city where the address is listed, we are nowhere to be found on the surrounding suburbs - which is a greater part of our market. And also, I am fearful that down the road google will decide to take action against a listing like mine (and the majority of others in my industry), when the actual address is listed.
So, the potential benefit would be to have our business listed in additional service areas, the negatives could be an impact to our current favorable listing if we change it or punishment by google if we don't.
Thanks Again
-
I have changed a few without any negative impacts. Think about it, Google still knows where you are. However, if it's not really mandatory to change it then why do it? They aren't enforcing the service area, and do you actually service people at your location? Like can they come in and make an appointment or drop off a payment? I fear not having a physical address shown may affect CTR.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Creating multiple GMB listings same address?
Hi Guys, We have a medical centre which has different services like medical, dental, pathology, mental health and 3-4 other services. They are all at the same address within the medical centre. Currently, we have a GMB listing just for the medical centre. But we're looking to create separate GMB listings for each service. I was wondering if anyone has done this before and can speak from experience of the pros and cons of doing this? It seems we will have a lot more GMB listings to manage, but we should benefit more from relevant GMB searchers and this will improve our visibility. Cheers, Mark
Local Listings | | brandonegroup1 -
Google Business Listing with no physical office location
Hey, everyone! As a business owner who works from home and doesn't have a physical office location. Is setting up a Google business listing without location going to hurt my local search ranking? Should I get a virtual office so I have a physical location? Thank you!! 😃
Local Listings | | ichorstudios0 -
Good service that helps optimize and create citations to google map listing?
Hi guys, Anyone know good service that helps optimize and create citations to google map listing? Also is there recommended WP theme that helps the ranking on google map? Thanks in advance!
Local Listings | | Tariq_Jameel1 -
GMB listing not showing for local searches
Hi all, I've optimised an existing GMB listing that has been in place for over a year. The client is a yacht/boat broker and marine repair outfit based in Mallorca. When I search for terms that they 'should' be ranking for on Google and on a Maps search, they are nowhere to be found, yet their listing does show when you type in their company name. I've read lots of Local SEO guides and followed their advice but I'm not sure what I'm meant to do next?
Local Listings | | Bee1590 -
LOCAL CITATIONS - SHARED ADDRESS, DIFFERENT BUSINESS ENTITIES, DIFFERENT PRACTICTIONERS
I am trying to to boost my clients online presence through Local Business Listings but am running into a few issues that I would like to get some feedback on. First, I will provide some background information and then provide my questions that I am seeking feedback on! Your help is greatly appreciated. **BACKGROUND INFO: ** Client has little online visibility and is looking to optimize his Local Business Listings to boost his online presence. Client is a Chiropractor that just registered his own business, has a unique local phone number, his own website. The facility that the Chiropractor works out of is a shared office space, known as a "Wellness Center" This facility has other chiropractors, doctors, & massage therapists who fit the same criteria as my client. I understand that in order to qualify for a local business listings your business must meet **CRITERIA. **This is the only one he does not meet, but the way the businesses are ran, it seems like to me that he should be eligible for local business listings. Have a dedicated physical street address (not a shared address, PO box, or virtual office) I don't understand why a shared address isn't allowed. This seems pretty legit to me. And is similar to a Doctors Office with multi-practitioners but slightly different because they each have their own business not all working for one business owner. All working for themselves. Everyone recently moved and joined this wellness center. Everyone generates their own leads and clientele. One thing to note is that no other business in the wellness center currently has optimized their online presence using this address. But address is present on other business owners websites. If my client uses this address and builds his local listings, is there a chance he can get penalized if the other business owners build their business listings on sites like, yelp, yellowpages, google maps, citysearch, etc. What are the chances of him getting penalized/the entire shared office being penalized due to this shared office space. Your feedback is greatly appreciated! Thank You
Local Listings | | InternetRep0 -
Google+ Local Address not changing
Just changed a Google+ Local address, however realise that its not changing. Does it usually take time for a Google+ address to change once submitted? Would like to know the process here so that this address can change so as to ensure NAP consistency.
Local Listings | | Gavo0 -
Google+ Business Listings: Hours Displayed Incorrectly
Hi, When I do a search for our brand + location name (basically making sure we at least appear for that) the hours displayed are incorrect except when I log into our account to edit the hours they are right. Ex: Google SERP displays hours 8am - 11pm but within business listing account hours entered are 8pm - 10pm. Has anyone come across this and why would it be? Is it a case of other citations showing the incorrect hours? Thanks for your help WMCA
Local Listings | | WMCA0 -
Upstream locations to mark a business closed that will cascade to other listings services?
Working with a multi-location business with hundreds of locations, there is always a certain amount of churn (closures, new locations.) In some cases, the business owners never claim listings, or claim them in only the major local business listings such as Yelp and Google Places. Does anyone know of a good post or discussion about how to do a "cascading mark as closed" which will make its way through the LBL ecosystem eventually? In other words, is there a few upstream places to mark a business closed that will influence the consumers of their data feed? thanks!
Local Listings | | scottclark0