Would duplicate listings effect a client's ranking if they used same address?
-
Lots of duplication on directory listings using similar or same address, just different company names... like so-and-so carpet cleaning; and another listing with so-and-so janitorial services.
Now my client went from a rank around 3 - 4 to not even in the top 50 within a week.
-- -- -- Would duplication cause this sudden drop?
Not a lot of competition for a client using keyword (janitorial services nh);
-- -- -- would a competitor that recently optimized a site cause this sudden drop?
Client does need to optimize for this keyword, and they do need to clean up this duplication. (Unfortunately this drop happened first of March -- I provided the audit, recommendations/implementation and still awaiting the thumbs up to continue with implementation).
--- --- --- Did Google make a change and possibly find these discrepancies within listings and suddenly drop this client's ranking?
And they there's Google Places:
Client usually ranks #1 for Google Places with up to 12 excellent reviews, so they are still getting a good spot on the first page.The very odd thing though is that Google is still saying that need to re-verify their Google places.
I really would like to know for my how this knowledge how a Google Places account could still need verification and yet still rank so well within Google places on page results? because of great reviews? --- Any ideas here, too?
_Cindy
-
Glad to be of help, Cindy. Good luck!
Miriam
-
Miriam,
Thank you very much. I believe I am starting to see the whole picture of possibilities for this drop in rank. And excellent info about Google Places.
I do need to visit the Places help forum and add it to the list of resources!
Much appreciated.
_Cindy
-
Hi Cindy,
I would definitely suspect either a penalty or a bug of some sort in regards to the drop from #1 to not in top 50.
What happens when you do a direct business name or phone number search within maps.google.com for the business? Are you able to find their Place Page, or, possibly, getting a 'Do Not Support' message.
Check out this thread at the Google Places Help Forum to see if you recognize your problem in it:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/technical-issue/9JszqkewMVU
Regardless of this, you have clearly identified problems with the business that need to be fixed ASAP. There is no question in my mind that the data confusion could be precisely what has caused the ranking drop. Data consistency is the number one requirement of a good Places record, but, a business can get by for months or years with high rankings and bad data. Then, one day, it all goes away. This is something I see being reported constantly in the Google Places Help Forum, and the major lesson is that if you find problems, make every effort to clean them up as swiftly as possible. Then, once you've cleaned up the record to the best of your ability, you need to wait for the effects of what you've done to settle in. So, it becomes about patience.
Hopefully, the client will give you the go-ahead to get cracking on this. Good luck!
-
Perfect, thanks Cody, helps a lot.
And thank you for advice on matching contact page and Google Places!
_Cindy
-
In the local search realm, you want to have every directory listing exactly the same as it appears on your contact page. This allows search engines to associate those listings with your business without a doubt. As a good practice, I'd go ahead and make sure they all match, especially Google Places vs. your client's Contact Us page on their website.
Also, Penguin hit directories pretty hard. There is no penalization going on from what I have read, but there has been some major devaluation in links. It's likely the case that your client is not getting nearly as much weight from the directory links as they once were. Check out the link profile and see how many of these there are. I would imagine more reputable links now need to be acquired.
About the places listing, I'm not sure why that would occur, but it really doesn't matter for the end result here. If the Big G says you need to re-verify I would do it. It's a quick thing to do and that can't be helping their rankings.
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
-
What's the best way for users to upload their images to my wordpress site to promote UGC
I have looked at lots of different plugins and wanted a recommendation for an easy way for patients of ours to upload pictures of them out partying and having fun and looking beautiful so future users can see the final results instead of sometimes gory or difficult to understand before and after images. I'd like to give them the opportunity to write captions (like facebook or insta posts and would offer them incentives to do so. I don't want it to be too complicated for them or have too many steps or barriers but I do want it to look nice and slick and modern. Also do you think this would have a positive impact on SEO? I was also thinking of a Q&A app where dentists could get Q&A emails and respond - i've been doing AMA sessions and they've been really successful and I would like to bring it into out site and make it native. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
Why are my URL's with a trailing slash still getting indexed even though they are redirected in the .htaccess file?
My .htaccess file is set up to redirect a URL with a trailing / to the URL without the /. However, my SEOmoz crawl diagnostics report is showing both URL's. I took a look at my Google Webmaster account and saw some duplicate META title issues. Same thing, Google Webmaster is showing the URL with the trailing /. My website was live for about 3 days before I added the code to the .htaccess file to remove the trailing /. Is it possible that in those 3 days that both versions were indexed and haven't been removed even though the .htaccess file has been updated?
Technical SEO | | mkhGT0 -
My blog page isn't ranking in Google
Hi, I noticed that my blog page on my site isn't in Google when i search for full URL link http://www.asggutter.com/blog/ instead i see page that isn't even working asggutter.com/sitemap.xml screen shot http://screencast.com/t/6OVFLwL8nTL How i can i fix that. Thanks
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
How can I use a keyword based domain to rank for my existing site?
Hi everyone, From my understanding if your keywords are in your domain name it can help you rank for the keyword. My site www.pixelchefs.com was affected from the latest Google Algorithm changes, as I used my main site as a testing ground for all my back linking. Our site was a single page with Jquery slide, late February the same time with the Google algo changes we uploaded our new site, larger site with lots of pages and info. Result of that was that home page has PR3 and all other pages PR0. Well I don't really depend on Google for any work as most of my work comes from referrals.......but While searching for names for my private page I came across the domain name www.DesignOrlando.com, The specific keyword gets 22,210 view per month according to Google analytics and also contains part of the keyword for all the keywords I am after. I want to use the domain name for my main site but i am not sure what is the best way to forward the domain so Google can start reading my site as DesignOrlando.com Any Suggestions will be very appreciated.
Technical SEO | | alex_pixelchefs0 -
Mobile site rank on Google S.E. instead of desktop site.
Hello, all SEOers~ Today, I would like to hear your opinion regarding on Mobile site and duplicate contents issue. I have a mobile version of our website that is hosted on a subdomain (m instead www). Site is targeting UK and Its essentially the same content, formatted differently. So every URL on www exists also at the "m" subdomain and is identical content. (there are some different contents, yet I could say about 90% or more contents are same) Recently I've noticed that search results are showing links to our mobile site instead of the desktop site. (Google UK) I have a sitemap.xml for both sites, the mobile sitemap defined as follows: I didn't block googlebot from mobile site and also didn't block googlebot-mobile from desktop site. I read and watched Google webmaster tool forum and related video from Matt Cutts. I found many opinion that there is possibility which cause duplicate contents issue and I should do one of followings. 1. Block googlebot from mobile site. 2. Use canonical Tag on mobile site which points to desktop site. 3. Create and develop different contents (needless to say...) Do you think duplicate contents issue caused my mobile site rank on S.E. instead of my desktop site? also Do you think those method will help to show my desktop site on S.E.? I was wondering that I have multi-country sites which is same site format as I mentioned above. However, my other country sites are totally doing fine on Google. Only difference that I found is my other country sites have different Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop site, but my UK mobile site has same Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop. Do you think this also has something to do with current problem? Please people~! Feel free to make some comments and share your opinion. Thanks for reading my long long explanation.
Technical SEO | | Artience0 -
Do you get credit for an external link that points to a page that's being blocked by robots.txt
Hi folks, No one, including me seems to actually know what happens!? To repeat: If site A links to /home.html on site B and site B blocks /home.html in Robots.txt, does site B get credit for that link? Does the link pass PageRank? Will Google still crawl through it? Does the domain get some juice, but not the page? I know there's other ways of doing this properly, but it is interesting no?
Technical SEO | | DaveSottimano0 -
Thumbnail-based navigation like YouTube Sidebar - they don't use ALT tag
Notice on the YouTube sidebar, each video has a thumbnail and a title. But, for the ALT tag, YouTube simply uses the word "thumbnail". In the past, i was using a keyword phrase for my thumbnail ALT tag. I thought I was being clever. But is this superflous? We note that the A tag on the YouTube items, encompasses the SPAN that is the video + title. Does Google associate the text of the title as valid "anchor text" despite the existance of other info in that span --- e.g. like View Count and the User Name of the video creator? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | anthony-3054420 -
What's the best way to deal with an entire existing site moving from http to https?
I have a client that just switched their entire site from the standard unsecure (http) to secure (https) because of over-zealous compliance issues for protecting personal information in the health care realm. They currently have the server setup to 302 redirect from the http version of a URL to the https version. My first inclination was to have them simply update that to a 301 and be done with it, but I'd prefer not to have to 301 every URL on the site. I know that putting a rel="canonical" tag on every page that refers to the http version of the URL is a best practice (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394), but should I leave the 302 redirects or update them to 301's. Something seems off to me about the search engines visiting an http page, getting 301 redirected to an https page and then being told by the canonical tag that it's actually the URL they were just 301 redirected from.
Technical SEO | | JasonCooper0