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.
How do you fix a Google My Business Location Issue if the road doesn't yet exist on Google Maps?
-
My core question is just: How do you fix a Google My Business Location Issue if the road doesn't yet exist on Google Maps? Do I have any other options other than to just wait on Google to catch up with reality?
Here's the background:
I work for a hospital. We just opened a clinic on a street that is real and has a U.S. Postal Address, but Google Maps doesn't recognize it, and redirects people to a house .
This is our postal address: 8343 S 168th Ave Omaha NE 68136-1677
If a patient enters the following into google maps, 8343 S 168th Ave, the location the map autofills the wrong zip code, and sends them to a home that is on S 168th Ave. (where in theory a home would exist if it had that home number). The road does exist in that portion of town.
If a patient enters 8343 S 168th Ave, Omaha NE 68136, google maps takes you to the correct location, but it automatically changes Ave to St. The verified Google My Business listing also lists it as Street, even though on the back end I've put in the word Avenue, and it shows up in the right place.
If however someone just searches by name "Chalco Clinic" the right Google My Business comes up.
This is the Google My Business page I'm referring to: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nebraska+Medicine+-+Chalco/@41.1754796,-96.1787153,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xf77aefb4e27f865!8m2!3d41.1754796!4d-96.1787153 And even though it says it's on a Street, on the back end of the claimed listing I've used "Avenue".
In case it matters, this is the landing page for the location: https://www.nebraskamed.com/chalco
-
Hey Patrick,
Coming back to give you 2 additional pro tips I got from Mike Blumenthal:
-
Get multiple people to report the issue via the "send feedback" link. This could help the job get done.
-
If you see no traction after a couple of months, go report the whole issue in the GMB forum. The TCs there can try to escalate it for you.
So nice of Mike to offer these extra tips
-
-
Thanks for the additional feedback Miriam. I'm working to implement both steps.
-
You're welcome, Patrick. So, I have 2 suggestions:
-
Short-term, change the email being sent out so that it links to a correct, custom map on your website instead of G Maps.
-
Long-term, go to your town on G Maps, and in the lower right, click the tiny "send feedback" link to report the missing street issue. It will likely take a month, but hopefully Google will act on this. Only then should you re-include the link to your G Maps map in the email.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Thanks for the additional input. I've just tried reaching out directly to Google.
-
Thanks for the input Miriam,
There is a street and an avenue, and both are currently in Google Maps etc. (But the part of the avenue where our new clinic is, is not yet in Google Maps).
The problem is the avenue portion of the road where our clinic is, does not exist in Google's eyes.
So Google changes the address, assuming that people mean the street (which happens to run almost parallel to the new chunk of avenue that just got built). If that happens people at least are directed to the correct spot (even if the address isn't right). This is what happens when someone searches by name for the clinic.
But if someone types in the full address, Google points them to a stretch of the avenue that really does exist in Google. And that's the biggest problem, them wrongly locating the building far from where it actually is. This only happens when someone types in the full address. I agree with you that few people would type in the full address. But I think the problem is they get an email with the appointment address, and click on it. That drives them to Google maps, and thus directs them to a place far from our clinic.
-
Hi Patrick!
Ooh - these can be tough! Thanks for providing such thorough details.
The good news is, the majority of your patients are unlikely to look you up via a street address. So long as their search for "Chalco Clinic" is getting them to a Knowledge Panel and a map that showing your accurate location, you're likely getting found by most of your patients. You'd also want to check to be sure that a non-branded search (like "health clinic omaha" is also rendering a listing that sends your patients to the right place from the local pack/local finder view).
When I do the searches you've listed out, it's clear that Google thinks of this geography as 168th St ... not 168th Ave. You can see that right on the map - it's being designated a street not an avenue. I want to be sure I understand ... there is just one 168th in your town, right? Or, are you saying that Omaha has both a 168th St. and a 168th Avenue? Please, let me know on that. I'll pop back by as soon as I can to read your answer.
-
How long has this been going on?
I would check the verification. Verifying over the phone will not have properly verified the physical address which clearly needs adding to Google maps. If it's the case that Google just doesn't have a road on the map then call them.
https://searchengineland.com/problems-google-business-use-phone-support-221305
Or email - see attachment
Best of luck!
Regards
Nigel
-
Thanks Nigel. The pin is in the correct place. I think I might have verified it over the phone, but even though I typed in the address, it still won't allow the correct address to visibly show. If they search the name of our clinic, the GMB pops up and everything is great. Even though the address is wrong, it still shows it at the spot I marked. But for some reason if they just type in the address, it still directs them to the wrong place.
-
Hi Patrick
If Google can't find the address then add it naturally and when asked you can move the pin to exactly where the business is. When you verify GMB location they will send a card to the address - type in the pin number on the card and Bob's your uncle.
Hope that helps
Regards
Nigel
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
-
Google My Business - Service Area - Use Zip Codes or City Names?
Google allows you to choose up to 20 locations as service areas, and you can choose based on cities, counties, or zip codes. I'm trying to determine if zip codes, cities, or counties are better to select for our GMB profiles. We are located in the US. I am thinking it's best to use all 20 areas allowed on a profile as long as they are relevant, generally giving Google all the info they will let you provide is best. I also am leaning toward using zip codes because it also includes the city when you choose by zip code. For example: Entered the zip code 21009 and the service area selection provided was: Abingdon, MD 21009, USA Entering the city/state returns a selection of Abingdon, MD, USA I also think it may have to do with how people search and find your business as well? Does anyone have experience with this? Best practices? My google searching has not turned up any reliable info.
Local Listings | | WadeBayMgmt0 -
Google My Business pages for New Construction Communities
I have a number of builders of new homes as clients. Typically, they build out a whole neighborhood at once and give the neighborhood a fancy name. We were planning to create Google My Business pages for these communities but then ran into some potential challenges. As new communities, they are sometimes not on Google's radar yet Some of them have model homes where you might take a tour with a realtor that serves the community exclusively but many don't. So here come the questions... Is there a way to make Google speed up its process of recognizing new addresses? I have to choose an address to associate with the GMB page, probably the address of model home. Is this going to create annoying problems for a buyer who someday buys that model home? Since some communities don't have a model home, I could arbitrarily assign an address of one of the neighborhood homes to the GMB page, but this leads to the same question about creating a GMB page that will exist after the builder has sold all the houses in the community. Will it be weird to have the GMB referring to someone's private residence down the road? My assumption is that claiming a GMB page would help with local ranking if someone searches for something like "new homes" in addition to providing easy driving directions to someone who has done a bit of research and Googles the name of the new home community while out driving and searching for homes. These seem to be the main benefits, but are the challenges associated with questions 1-3 even worth the trouble of trying to claim listings for these communities?
Local Listings | | TheKatzMeow0 -
Do You Know What's Triggering Your Local Packs?
Hey To All My Local Pals, Here 🙂 Recently, I watched a totally fascinating LocalU video in which Mike Blumenthal introduced a hypothesis that there may be a way to analyze what, specifically, is triggering a specific local pack. Now, Mike is stating that correlation is not causation in explaining this, but basically what he starts talking about at around 4:40 in the video is that what you are seeing rank well in the local packs may be demonstrably caused by what you see ranking organically beneath the pack, or may be caused by totally different signals. Mike says, _"If you're seeing the top 10 results are all IYP industry sites, and there's a pack showing, and the highest local site is 24 or something in organic, it's unlikely that that's what's triggering the pack. And so then you want to look at third-party triggers and see if that's what's actually triggering the pack." _ Obviously, all of us who do Local are familiar with the idea that a tremendous variety of elements contribute to pack rankings, but I am particularly intrigued by the idea of looking at the organic result beneath a pack and determining that there is little or no correlation between them, and this then driving one to look elsewhere for contributing factors. In a recent response to another thread here on Q&A, I discussed some common local pack ranking failure causes when organic rank is high. What I'd love to see is whether, if you look at some of your clients' desired packs, can you tell if organic signals are driving them, or can you see that it's not organic signals driving the pack, as Mike suggests. What, in those cases, does appear to be driving the packs? I'd be so interested in a discussion on this. What do you see? What do you think of Mike's suggestions?
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis9 -
No Location option in Incognito Search Settings
I was checking on a client ranking and went to Incognito in Chrome for the search. I went to search settings to set the location and thought I had done something wrong. I closed and went back to search settings and still no location setting. See attached. Interestingly, when I went to my signed in Chrome and set the location and then went to incognito and went to search settings, then location showed up for me. This also begs a question about why Google has this where you must be signed in to set a location in Incognito mode. Thanks for any input you have, Robert G1lS9EK.png cRRlULo.png
Local Listings | | RobertFisher0 -
Our satellite office isn't showing up on Google maps. How can we add it?
We are trying to include maps to our locations on our "Contact" page, and in taking these maps from Google, we came upon the following issue: We have Google+ listings for several of our satellite offices, which are set up through Carr Workplaces. When we look on maps, we can only find the Carr Workplace listing, rather than the listing for our business at that location. Obviously, we don't want to display the map that way on our own page; we want the map to show our business name. I realize that Google only wants fully-staffed businesses to be displayed on maps, and so whether or not we belong there is up for debate within our company. That said, we'd like to know how to make the maps listing work regardless. Thanks!
Local Listings | | ScottImageWorks0 -
What would Cause listing to fall off local search map spot?
Any reason a listing that was showing in Google between the 3 and 5 spot on local map search would suddenly disappear all together from the map position for a specific keyword?
Local Listings | | scott3150 -
Should my website link to my google business listing given that I already link from google business to my website ?
I have a website with individual Location Landing Pages for each of my Depots. I also have individual Google Local Business Listings for each of my depots. Should I have a link from my Website Location Landing Pages to the associated Google local Business listings or not ?... Given that I already have a link on my Google Business listing to the relevant Location Page on my website. I wasn't sure whether linking both ways would be more beneficial thus enforcing things better or whether it's not needed to link both ways . thanks Pete
Local Listings | | PeteC120 -
How to get a verification tick next to the URL in a Google Plus Local page?
Google Plus Local: https://plus.google.com/+PrestedHallFeering Website: www.prested.co.uk So how do I get the verification tick next to the URL on this businesses Google page? Also, even though the website is much strong then those in the map listings for Wedding Venues In Essex, whats preventing this website from appearing in there? My local optimisation knowledge is poor!
Local Listings | | jasondexter0