Is specifying a floor descriptive enough for Google Places?
-
Hello everyone,
I have a quick question regarding Google Places. I have a client who operates her business in a building with multiple other businesses. This address is completely legitimate and our client provides fitness services at this location. We have asked her for a more specific location, but she does not have a suite or room #. The best we can do is the floor #, but there are other businesses on her floor as well.
Would this lack of specificity affect her ability to rank in local results? There are 4 other businesses at the address. If we provide strong and relevant citations, will this be enough?
Thank you and my apologies if this has been asked before. I searched the previously asked question but didn't find what i was looking for.
-
Hi Robert,
Thanks for coming here with your good question. There are 2 important issues here.
- As First points out, sharing an address with other businesses is problematic. If your client's address duplicates that of even one other business, you can expect troubles ahead. Google will likely merge the info of the two businesses, meaning that your client could end up with the other business' phone number, reviews, or analytical data on her listing. So, sharing an address is out, unfortunately. The only exception to this included in the Google Places Guidelines (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528) is this:
Some businesses may be located within a mall or a container store, which is a store that contains another business. If your business is within a container store or mall, and you'd like to include this information in your listing, specify the container store in parentheses in the business name field. For example, Starbucks (inside Safeway).
But, it doesn't sound like your client is within a container store or a mall, so I would not consider this truly applicable to the situation.
- I cannot recommend using a floor number. Even if the client has a distinct business name and phone number, I feel merging is going to be a likely outcome. Here is an excerpted user comment one a Mike Blumenthal post (http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/19/the-long-and-winding-tale-of-trying-to-fix-a-merged-listing/) regarding a merged business:
"We have had this problem for about a year and Google won’t fix it. They say it will be fixed but is not. Me and the other law firm have joined up and are both e mailing Ashley with the same case no. to try and convince Google to use our user data instead of assuming we are the same company.
Since the address uses a Floor number (Not a suite number) and a mail room sorts the mail, Google says it is the same business even though the other details like the phone number, are different. We both meet clients and have offices in several locations in the Inland Empire, as we both lease from the same leasing company. That is where the relationship ends.
I think the work around maye be to add an identifier after the floor number, such as -A, or -B. So it would appear like #400-A."
(emphasis mine)
You are always supposed to use the precise street address at which the client receives mail when creating any Google Local property. You are not supposed to add or subtract anything from the mix.
So what option does this leave your client with if he/she wants to participate in Local? Getting legitimate suite numbers assigned by the post office to the different businesses on the floor would be the only open road, as far as I can see. You will need to contact the postal service in the client's area, as well as all of the other businesses located on that floor to try to arrange this, if you can. Not a great solution. But as things currently stand, without your client having a distinct address, they are lacking one of the 3 key metrics for local inclusion which are:
-
A unique local area code phone number
-
A unique physical street address
-
In-person transactions with customers.
Hope my reply is, at least, helpful, even if it doesn't automatically solve the issue. Sincerely wishing you good luck!
-
Great Point Steve! Consistency in address and phone number is very important.
-
You're also going to want to make sure that the full address in your Google Places/Google+ Local listing is the same as the address used in your online citations. I.e, you don't want to have Floor/Unit number in the Google Places profile, and then just the plain old address in the rest of your online citations.
-
To answer your first question: Yes a floor is "descriptive enough" for Google Places. There are many businesses that have a floor as their true address.
The problem is that you have multiple business on the same floor and no other unique identifier, like a room or suite #. Are the other businesses listed on Google Places and/or have other local listings on the web?
If you are the only business listed with that address you probably wont have a problem at first, but may encounter issue in the future if other businesses on that floor decide that they want to get listed on-line.
One solution will be for all the tenants on that floor to agree to a unit # system.
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
-
Link building to Google+ profile: any local SEO value?
Has anyone found value in building links to Google+ profile for local seo rankings? My gut tells me that it will, but I am not 100% sure. If it does, then does that mean that all the traditional SEO factors that would go into ranking a site organically also work for ranking locally for certain keywords? So far, I have found that the best thing for moving up rankings is reviews on Google+, but then does that make local SEO (from a high view point) just a race for high reviews and building the most citation? I am feeling like the differentiator for local SEO is UN-structured citations and links to Google+ profiles. Any thoughts? See you at MozCon!
Image & Video Optimization | | tonyflorespsa0 -
Reasons for store not showing up on Google?
Hi my client has a store which is not showing up on Google search results. E.g. if you looked up store name and store location on Google, all the stores in that particular city show up except one. Also even if you click the: More results near CITY, and State the stores listing still doesn't show up. So for some reason Google has excluded the store from Google search. But if you go to Google Maps directly, and type in the same keyword "STORE NAME CITY" the store is displayed and there. Does anyone know any reason why the store has been excluded from Google search results, but is listed successfully on Google Maps.
Image & Video Optimization | | MBASydney0 -
Google Image Search?
We get very little search traffic from the images on our site & I can't necessarily figure out why? We post a ton & tag them correctly, we've got to be missing something? We are a Wordpress blog, can anyone provide some quality articles on Image search or have suggestions that should help to get more traffic? Our site does fairly well, as we get over 100k/visits a month, so we'd really like to get more traffic from our images.
Image & Video Optimization | | seointern0 -
Getting indexed into Google video search
I have a website that has videos hosted from youtube.com embedded onto it. I created and uploaded the videos to youtube and want them on my website. My question is which would be a better option, hosting the video on my website or embed them from youtube? I currently have them embedded onto youtube but when I do a Google video search I cannot find my company's website anywhere. My videos are shown on the results but they are linked to youtube and not my website. Is there a way to get the search results to show listing of the videos posted on my website?
Image & Video Optimization | | Shawn1240 -
301 Redirect affects Google Places Listing?
Hi, A client of ours has a Google Places Listing but over the last few days we noticed that two duplicate listings have appeared with exactly the same information as the original listing. Only difference is the domain names. I did some investigation and my client says that a company cold called them recently and sold them two domain names www.bandbinbanbury.co.uk andwww.accommodationinbanbury.co.uk and it seems these two are redirecting to the main site which sits on www.hanwellhouse.com My question is can this cause that the redirected listing now appear instead of the original google places listing? Any help will be appreciated
Image & Video Optimization | | InTouchMarketing560 -
Would 2 Google Places locations help my Google Places ranking?
Hi. Our agency office is located in a "bad" zip code relevant to active businesses who would need our agency services. In a nutshell, we get really bad inquiries who can never afford our services...and it's coming directly from the Google geolocation function. We plan to relocate our offices within 1 year. Would it help us in Google Places if we created a "new" physical office location to cover up the "bad" one we are currently in? We could use a paid location like a UPS Mail Center physical address that is located within a more desiring zip code. Thanks for any input. Jay
Image & Video Optimization | | theideapeople0 -
Google Places - Under Review
Working with a new company. In the Google places listing they have two listings...obvious duplications created under the same account. Both show as "Under Review" and have been for months. SHould I try and delete one listing (tried...has not worked so far), delete both and start over? This is one of several franchises in the same area with similar names and similar issues, as well as older companies that bought the franchise and still show in Google Places with old phone number and address. Any help appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | AgileInt0 -
Why does google places keep deleting the categories i set?
I have probably set them for each of my storage locations over 20 times now. They stick for a week, only to find them have all been deleted once again. Also, why are my competitors able to choose custom categories, where as I am not?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0