Two Companies Same Address

[MickEdwards]

A client has two businesses running from the same address.  Both businesses will operate out of Unit 1.  Would it be safe to go for Unit 1 and Unit 1A.  Will that distinction be enough for Google local and has anyone had any specific experience with this issue?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Mick,

I would recommend that you actually work with the postal authorities in your region to acquire a separate suite number for the business and this should eliminate concerns. Your client legitimately has 2 businesses and should make the effort to set up a proper unique address for both. And, as you've mentioned, a different phone number is essential, of course. You should also be sure you're running unique websites with completely separate content for the 2 businesses. What you're trying to do here is to differentiate for customers and engines, as much as possible, the two companies. On the customer side, you want them to be able to correctly contact and find the two businesses. On the engine side, you want to prevent accidental merging and duplicates by being sure that two businesses are being run as unique entities, if they are unique entities.

It is generally not difficult to acquire an official suite number, but who you go to for this depends upon where you live. It is different in different regions.

Hope this helps!

[MickEdwards]

I know it's a tricky one.  Truthfully the companies do both share the same address - a parent engineering company with a specialist off-shoot of the parent as a separately trading business operating in one section of that big unit.  So it will have it's own telephone number and they both are manned and can both physically show they are operational as separate businesses, not just a shared postal address.

[Chris.Menke]

Mick,

Technically, if they're different addresses and they can receive mail at those different addresses, it should work. If it happens to be a shared phone number, as well, ahhhhh...there may be problems.   Just as google wants to be sure that when someone comes to a website, the business is verifiable, it wants to know that when someone goes to a physical address, that the business at that address is also verifiable. When you step outside the boundaries of one name, address, phone number per business location, you're running the risk of not getting verified.