Google Local Storefront or Google Service Area?

[David-Kley]

We have been seeing some strange things happen in Google local after the most recent update. We used to show up in the maps all the time and have made no major edits or changes to the profile.

Now when we search for our services, we show up high in the organic results, and not at all in maps (local listings). We have our profile setup as a service area since we do meet with people and provide services at their location, but also have checked the option that we also serve people at our address.

I am wondering if the recent update favors actual storefronts when people are searching for services. Any ideas? Technically all the actual work is provided at our location, and the service we provide at the service area locations is based upon consultations. If we switched it to an actual storefront listing could that possibly help? Our profile is fairly strong, and has reviews, long history of posts, etc.

What gives Google?

[LindaBuquet]

"We did this to let people know that we come out to their location, and also to try to expand our reach. For example, if you were searching for an SEO company in Chesterfield, that is an area that is about 30 mins from us. I'm not sure our local office listing would "carry" that far out, and thus the service area was created as a test."

Service area and service radius have absolutely no impact on ranking. It's been tested, proven. Typically you'll only rank in the city your are in. Unless competition is low and you are very strong, then sometimes you'll rank in other cities, but service area settings don't play a part.

"I'm not sure that the bot would take that long to recrawl the listing, and I would have thought that it would have happened by now if that was the case."

Sorry, not talking regular bots, like the ones that crawl sites. Maybe bot is the wrong word. But with Local listings you can have a violation for years without an issue. Then you make a minor edit and it seems to trigger a recheck of the listing to see if it stands up to current guidelines, then it gets wacked.

You had another question I got via email but it's not showing up here so copying:

"I had a question about this, as even though we had quite a few mentions of the city and service they were spread out throughout the description and not bulked together in the traditional definition of keyword-stuffing. If what you were saying about the description having no part to play is true, how would that have had an impact on the LBL drop?

Help me understand, my mind is a sponge right now ;)"

Description is not a RANKING factor. But the algo looks at it as a signal of spamminess. Spammers have lots of patterns that the algo can pick up on, this is one of them. So a non-spammy description can trip a filter if it follows the same pattern of overly repetitious keywords.

In that short description, count every single time any word is repeated more than once. I did a quick scan and counted 25.

Mike Blumenthal has also said mentioning city even twice in description can cause a 10 point ranking penalty. I have examples I could show at my forum, where the description was not spammy or KW stuffed, but the city and KWs were repeated multiple times. They clean up description per my recommendation and pop right back up.

But again all that was pre-pigeon. After, it seemed like lots of really spammy ones were getting away with it. So may no longer be an issue.

But like I said above, if it does not help and if customers will never see it and if it could maybe hurt AND if your ranking was suffering, why not clean it up? Nothing to lose.

[LindaBuquet]

Sorry David, I'm not seeing the description cleaned up at all. Is it cleaned up in dash but it's just not showing live yet?

[David-Kley]

I had a question about this, as even though we had quite a few mentions of the city and service they were spread out throughout the description and not bulked together in the traditional definition of keyword-stuffing. If what you were saying about the description having no part to play is true, how would that have had an impact on the LBL drop?

Help me understand, my mind is a sponge right now

[David-Kley]

Linda,

Thank you for your insights into this issue. We have cleaned up the description, and now it appears to rank again. This is simply maddening lol, especially when you see all the keyword driven URL's and old-SEO-world tactics that still work in our area. I can't imagine what it's like trying to rank in a larger area such as Chicago or NYC, although I'd enjoy that battle to the top.

We try to practice white-hat to the core, and it is very frustrating when we see other companies submitting to link farms, using stuffed content and other methods and still ranking well. Doing it the right way is definitely more time consuming, but I feel it is the best for a sustainable result.

I'm not sure what caused the drop. We were showing up for over a year in the number one position, and I don't have to explain what that can do for validation to potential clients when you have the number one LBL and organic.

Now that it is working, I wonder if we should still make the change to deleting the service area and sticking with the local address. Linda, your thoughts? As I'm sure you are aware, sometimes when you shake up things in Google it can have the adverse reaction you were expecting.

"I looked at your images and you have a big VERY nice professional agency office. So I don't understand why you set up a service area. Again SABs don't rank lower per se BUT miscategorizing your business could cause a problem. You don't do the work onsite like a plumber and do have a commercial office, so don't think you should have service area at all. There is no reason to. No way it would help and could in fact hurt."

**We did this to let people know that we come out to their location, and also to try to expand our reach. For example, if you were searching for an SEO company in Chesterfield, that is an area that is about 30 mins from us. I'm not sure our local office listing would "carry" that far out, and thus the service area was created as a test. A test that for a long time was working well. I'm not sure that the bot would take that long to recrawl the listing, and I would have thought that it would have happened by now if that was the case. All speculation of course, but it is an interesting point to consider. Thank you for your kind words about the office, as I have personally spent many hours trying to get it "just right". **

Miriam and Linda, thank you for all your help and insight regarding this issue. It has been truly helpful and educating. When I first had this question there was no doubt in my mind of where to ask. Literally said to myself "Just put a question up on MOZ, they will know" lol.

*sorry for so many edits. The text editor is not playing nice tonight

[LindaBuquet]

Thanks Miriam,

No I have not seen a ranking penalty like that for not hiding address.

And you bring up good points about the history of SEOs and Google Miriam and this is an industry that's under higher scrutiny.

I was coming to stick my neck way out and suggest something I've never suspected before. But lo and behold I double checked your ranking for "St Louis SEO company" and you are #1 again.

So all that aside. I looked at your images and you have a big VERY nice professional agency office. So I don't understand why you set up a service area. Again SABs don't rank lower per se BUT miscategorizing your business could cause a problem. You don't do the work onsite like a plumber and do have a commercial office, so don't think you should have service area at all. There is no reason to. No way it would help and could in fact hurt.

So even though you are ranking again right now, I would still clean up that description to be on the safe side and remove the service area settings and see if that helps your ranking become more stable.

[MiriamEllis]

Linda - thank you for catching my mistake! I should have typed 'was' not 'is' in speaking about Google's behavior with hidden addresses from a historical standpoint. My error! I've corrected it.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi David!

Great tip from Linda regarding the description. She has documented this previously and knows her stuff Thank you for letting us know which business this was for, as well.

Okay, so ... clearly, you have a staffed, physical office and, ideally, should be able to mark your business as also serving customers at your location. The only thing that could possibly go wrong with this is if Google does not believe that your industry should have addresses displayed. Google has behaved somewhat uniquely over the years in regards to SEO/web design firms. For a long time, the only way to get these to display in packs was to add an 'in' to your query ... like 'SEO company in Denver'. Finally, a year or two ago, they changed their policy on this and started showing normal local results for this industry.

What we can surmise from this is that Google has been especially sensitive regarding spamming in this industry and, possibly, that they view most SEO/design firms as virtual rather than brick-and-mortar. So, you can mark your business as serving customers at the location, but ultimately, it will be up to Google to decide whether they want to display your address or not.

And that brings me to a question I'd like to ask Linda, based on her experience with her forum: Linda have you ever seen a case in which Google went beyond simply hiding the address for a business that legitimately deserved to have it displayed (like David's company) and simultaneously punished the business, rankings wise? I've not seen this - but I thought I'd ask if you had. Love having you pop by!

[LindaBuquet]

Hi David, didn't know if it was for you or a client and the 1st post didn't show your company name, so thanks for clarifying.

FYI a listing can be fine for a long time, and then a bot does a recheck and finds a problem that had been there for a long time. So you don't necessarily need to change something for rankings to go south - just so you know for future reference with clients.

OK now others may disagree but I've done consulting for numerous companies where this was a problem and correcting it caused the listing to pop right up.

Look at your description on your G+ L page and how much KW repetition there is. City repeated 3 or 4 times. Main keywords including the KWs in your name repeated several times.

Now have to say that may not be it, because KW repetition like that USED to cause a ranking penalty, but after Pigeon hit it did not seem to any more.

But cleaning it up won't hurt because: 1) Description is not a local ranking factor at all, so keyword stuffing won't help. 2) Google has removed all links to G+ L pages so customers will likely never even see that description either.

So I would totally strip out all keywords especially city and business name. Just do a short benign paragraph with benefits etc. not mentioning all the services.

Try that and see if it helps.

[David-Kley]

Linda,

Thank you for your reply and in trying to help. Let me give some details:

We offer SEO and optimization services in the St Louis area. Currently, our listing is set to be a service area, but we also include the checkbox that we serve people at our location. We have an office building that is fully staffed for people to visit and discuss their business goals in detail. The office is where the majority of our work is performed, but we also offer consultations and meetings at the client's location (hence the service area we are willing to drive to). The service area includes other areas around St Louis up to a 30-mile radius.

We made no listing changes and very few site changes that would have dropped us from showing in the maps (LBL) area. We still show up there, but you actually have to open the maps view and scroll down the list using the more information or more businesses link that Google provides. The site changes that were made were primarily visual, and the site load speed etc remain the same.

If you do a search for "St Louis SEO company" we used to show up as the number one listing, and also as the number one organic. The organic has stayed the same. The LBL has more depth than that of our competition and includes longer descriptions, more links to associated profiles, and images. This is why I am wondering what happened? Why did it move to a lower position when it was static and remained there for months on end?

This is why I am wondering if we should revise the listing to say that we only service people at our office, and if that will influence the LBL display. From our research, it didn't matter where you were typing it from, and it always showed up in the top three. Even if you searched from a further location from our office.

[LindaBuquet]

Hi Miriam, thought I'd pop in on this one, hope you don't mind. Thanks for linking to my forum thread about duplicates.

Hi David,

It's actually no longer true that hiding your address and using a service area hurts your rankings over brick and mortar. But Miriam is right, it used to be true a couple years ago.

For one example Google: plumber san marcos ca. All 3 that rank on top have address hidden. The ones that rank lower have address showing.

"but also have checked the option that we also serve people at our address."  That will show address which could be a violation depending on the situation.

What industry and what service?  And what type of location do you have? Is it your home? Is it an office with a sign for your company? Is it an office that's staffed full-time to receive walk- in traffic?

If you answer those I can advise further. But bottom line, if you need to hide your address on your listing, you really need to comply. It's a major violation if you don't.

But I agree with Miriam too, there could be something else that caused the ranking drop, because the service area setting would not be the problem.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey David,

Could you specify which recent update you mean? It might help the community pinpoint this better. Here's what I can tell you:

1. Google was actually typically believed to favor physical addresses over SABs. This has been the feeling, historically, so if you do serve people at your address, definitely specify this.

2. Your explanation of no longer appearing in the local packs is raising some flags, for sure. Are you not able to find your listing anywhere in the local finder view? Not sure what this is, please see: https://moz.com/blog/where-did-google-local-go-the-google-places-api-change-made-simple.

Things to investigate would be duplicates (http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-duplicates-merges/38281-critical-google-local-dupe-research-tips-new-tool-new-trick.html), guideline violations (https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en) and active competitors who have simply surpassed you.

In your shoes, I would absolutely be doing a full audit (https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit). Disappearing from the local results entirely is almost a sure sign of a serious problem. I hate to give bad news like that, but fortunately, you've noticed something isn't right and can start investigating ASAP. Wishing you good luck on this!