Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why is the incorrect city name being appended to search results when that search is done from a completely different city? Screenshot Included
-
Hi Guys,
This is weird. When searching "generator rentals" from within Vancouver/Lower Mainland and on a mobile device, our organic listing is ranked #1. That is the good news.
The bad news is that for some reason the title returend is: Generator Rentals & Temporary Power Distribution - Edmonton". The "-Edmonton" is dynamically added, but I have no idea why. Edmonton is in a completely different province than Vancouver... over 720 miles apart.
The only thing I can think of is that there is some sort conflict with our Google places account. You see, we do have an Edmonton branch. I have setup two branches... one for the Coquitlam/Vancouver branch and one for the Edmonton. And as far as I can tell, both are setup correctly.
A screenshot from my iPhone has been linked (http://imgur.com/9YvyLDB).
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you,
Jarrett
-
Hello Miriam,
All excellent points. I will be making some modifications to existing content today and begin writing requirements for separate city landing pages.
Thanks so much,
J
-
Excellent answer Dirk... thank you. I will make some tweaks today.
-
Hey Jarrett,
Three things immediately come to mind regarding this.
-
Your Edmonton location is simply more powerful in Google's eyes than your Vancouver location. Does it have more content, more citations, more reviews, an older web presence or other things along those eyes that could be causing Google to consider the former location more authoritative than the latter?
-
You have NAP inconsistency, causing your two locations to be confused with one another. To start troubleshooting this, take different elements of your name, address, phone number and website for the two locations and put them together in Google's search. For example, you might find the Edmonton address mixed up with the Vancouver phone number on some platforms, and this would need to be fixed.
-
Your website should have 1 unique page for your Edmonton location and another unique page for your Vancouver location, featuring complete NAP and relevant content. Your Google+ Local pages and all of your other citations can then link to these instead of your homepage, helping to keep these two locations more separate. I wasn't seeing these landing pages on your site, but if you already have them, they don't seem very visible.
Hope these are some good starting points to consider.
-
-
Hi,
First about the city added to the title. Google does this on mobile so that it's easier for the searcher to see if the business is nearby. If I search for "bakery" on my PC - it shows the normal titles, if I do the same thing on my mobile, it's adding the city.
About the wrong location: to be very honest I am not really an expert in local SEO. When I check your site however, it's seems to me that you're not really making it very clear to Google that you have two locations, and what your primary location is. You mention the two addresses on your home page, one with Alberta office, the other one with B.C. (and you assume that Google will know that B.C. stands for British Columbia).
Check this article on local SEO: https://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo - it contains a lot of tips & tricks on how to make it very obvious to Google what your location is.
Hope this gets you started & maybe that other Moz members with more "local search" experience could add some additional tips.
rgds,
Dirk
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
-
Incorrect Image is Displaying on Google My Business Knowledge Graph - Need Urgent Solution??
Incorrect Image is Displaying on Google My Business for our company. We have updated new image on google business But still, Google is fetching and showing old image on the google my business knowledge panel. What will be the right fix for this? Our site URL : www.yolobus.in
Local Listings | | AnkitS.19900 -
How do I rank for a different business categories on google local?
Hello, How do I appear on the local listings for google in different categories or services that I offer? For instance, we're a physical therapy clinic by trade but we specialize in orthopedics, sports medicine, and lower back pain. Thus, how do I rank on google local for these types of services? Currently, we rank for physical therapy but we also miss out on a big part of our business by not ranking for these listings on local. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Scott
Local Listings | | scottgray06200 -
Optimal URL Structure for a Multi-City Directory
I need help choosing the ideal URL structure for a multi-city directory. The current URL structure is /category which is okay because we are only in one geography. However, we're now expanding to other cities so we are reevaluating the best way of structuring the URL. The three options I have are: example.com/city/category Pro: Follows the user around with the city after the root (like language) Con: Possible short-term traffic loss. Build page authority on new URLs Pro: SEO Benefit for terms: {city category} example.com/city/ would have to be a URL and a general landing page. This would mean that /category would no longer exist example.com/category/city The website is currently set-up with /category but is now expanding beyond Toronto Pro: /category would still exist so no short-term SEO issues Pro: SEO Benefit for terms: {general category} example.com/category/ is already a URL and would display results based on proximity example.com/category (geo recognizes city) Pro: Clean URL Con: We're not Ticketmaster I was able to find major directory sites with very strong SEO doing it all three ways above. City First https://www.yelp.ca/c/toronto/restaurants https://angel.co/r/toronto/marketing/jobs https://www.redflagdeals.com/in/toronto/deals/c/cell-phones/ https://www.bizbash.com/new-york/venues Category First https://eventup.com/venues/new-york-ny/ https://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/Restaurants/Toronto+ON https://www.weddingwire.ca/wedding-venues/ontario https://www.livenation.com/cities/130465/toronto-on No City in URL https://www.ticketmaster.ca/
Local Listings | | Neumarkets.com1 -
Which Rank Trackers Include Local 3-pack Rankings?
Granted the Local 3-pack is heavily influenced by the distance between the user and the business, when you actually include the city name in the search, the local 3 pack result doesn't center the map at the city in the search and not the user's location so it is much more consistent despite the searcher's location. So my personal opinion is that it is worth tracking local 3-pack when you use a keyword such as "Home Inspection Seattle Wa" With that said, which rank tracking services includes the local 3-pack in their tracking results, other than of course Bright Local?
Local Listings | | JCCMoz0 -
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
Local SEO business name issue due to aggregator
So I work for a college and we have multiple locations. My tactic has been always to keep the name the same for all of them (no city name), and then change the address and phone number for each. But there is 1000s of college listings websites out there that aggregate college and school data from the same source: the US government. Now the way that they have most, if not all, multi-location colleges listed is: "college name-city name". I can see the value in that, but I guess I'm just wondering what to do since it obviously can't be changed. Should I revert all of our listings as "college name-city name" to match the 1000s of listings that have it that way? I've been under the impression that I should leave the city/town name out of the name, but I'm just wondering what you think best practices would be? Thanks
Local Listings | | TomBinga1125
Tom0 -
Local SEO: Special charakters in brand name?
Hey guys, we run a local gym in Germany located in Nuremberg called: "STUDIO N°1 - natürlich fit". Our domain is: www.studio-no1.de We are currently working on a new website since our current Website isn't really SEO optimized. Until then I would like to start optimizing some off-page attributes. As far as I know one of the main points in Local SEO is that your firm is registered at important directories. In our case we are already registred in most of the important german directories. The problem is that our oficicial company name has a special charakter included. This means that in some cases we have "N°1" and in some others "No1! Our Google Business name for example has "N°1", facbook not (no special charakter allowed). Germanys most important site for listings: Gelbeseiten, doesn't even allow special charakters in brand names.... On which name should I focus to get all the business listings to have identical NAP informations? Does it even matter? Schould I focus on "STUDIO No1 - natürlich fit" or "STUDIO N°1 - natürlich fit"? I hope you could understand my problem. Big Thanks Jonas
Local Listings | | Jo_Da0 -
Google My Business- Will a large service area dilute local search results?
I am considering adding our actual service area to our Google My Business profile, but I don't want this to dilute our local search results. As it is, we come up in the top 3 or so when searched in our HQ's city and several nearby cities when you search for us in Google Maps (although when I look at the top 10 organic for Google for some reason when you search for these cities + our keywords Google doesn't show any local results). Our actual service area is fairly large, comprising the states of CA & Hawaii & parts of CO, AZ, and UT. I would be adding the service area by zip code rather than radius, as a radius wouldn't make any sense in this case (particularly considering the distance between HI and CA). Is it better to keep our relatively high ranking in local results? Will adding the service area not affect local results negatively? Also, do you know why Google isn't showing me local results when I look for our keywords + our nearby cities? When I look for these keywords in larger cities like LA or San Diego, Google always shows me local results.
Local Listings | | BohmKalish1230