Tracking Phone Numbers in Google My Business Listings and Beyond
-
Hey all,
Wanted to run something by you. I am getting pressed to use tracking phone numbers for all of our GMB pages for over 100 locations across the country. Has anyone done this for their own listings or for their clients? Because I will have to do it for GMB, this means I will be sending these same phone numbers out to the other major directories and data sources around the web.
The phone numbers do contain the local area code for each city and do directly connect our customers to their specific location without any kind of redirecting.
How is Google looking at this? I have read before it is a no-no but have also read it is not a big deal. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
-Ben
-
Hey Joy,
Yea it definitely is pretty much impossible to get that to populate. We are trying to work through some options with our tracking company since we want to be as consistent as possible. Thanks so much for your help it is much appreciated and I turned to different possibilities thanks to your advice!
-Ben
-
Ben,
If your goal is to replace every single phone number online with the tracking number, that's fine. In my experience it is almost impossible to keep the old phone number from re-populating since it's published in offline sources (like the phone book).
What I was recommending would be good if you wanted to isolate/track JUST the calls from GMB.
-
Hey Joy,
Thanks again for helping out with this. So what if you are using tracking numbers that stay static, also have the real local area code in each one and send the user directly to the office with no redirects?
Essentially they have all of the real characteristics of the real office number except it's a tracking number? How would Google really know, or see that as inconsistent if we blasted that out to all of the aggregators through a platform like MOZ Local?
Thanks!
-Ben
-
I've never tried it for Bing so I'm not 100% sure. I would not suggest doing this on Yelp.
-
Thanks for answering again Joy!
Yea this is definitely risky territory. We track EVERYTHING here so even if we had amazing local pack results across the board it would mean very little if we couldn't track it. I am for sure going to try the secondary number in GMB.
Would you say to do the same thing for Bing as well? We also want to use tracking numbers for Yelp where we draw a good amount of traffic and engagement from.
Thanks!
-Ben
-
Hey Ben,
There is a secret to doing this that won't mess up your NAP consistency or ranking. What you need to do is move the "real" phone number to the secondary phone line inside Google My Business and then use the tracking number in the main phone number slot.
Whatever you do, don't use the tracking numbers on any other 3rd party citations.
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 Listing Doesn't Appeare on 3Pack anymore
Hi, One of my GMB listing suddenly stopped ranking in the 3Pack Results. It used to always rank in 1st or 2nd position in the 3Pack results, Suddenly since 24th May it completely Flatlined, I don't know why but It doesn't show up in the results, or when I click see more. It completely vanished for that term locally. My Listing is based in Brisbane, QLD, Australia and it doesn't show up for that term in The Brisbane area. But when the Location info is Australia and not Brisbane, Australia it shows up again. I don't know what is the problem in this case... Any Suggestions will be much appreciated.
Local Listings | | Moxoms10 -
Google Crowsourcing Missing Places
You may already have seen this in the past week or so, but it's new to me! Check out this screenshot from the bottom of the Local Finder for a search for 'electricians houston': http://screencast.com/t/NKW3KuxIuPo I saw this first referenced by Issac Hammelburger at Phil Rozek's G+ Community and see this as yet another Googl-ish thing to do, crowdsourcing data. They are trying to make it easier to add GMB listings, undoubtedly for owners who have never heard of Google My Business, but I've not yet tried the feature out. If you click on the ADD A MISSING PLACE link, you'll be able to input core data about a business. There's also a link to claim the business present. Has anyone here in our super Local SEO community tried to add a business via this new feature? Are you seeing it in a lot of local finders? What do you think of it?
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis3 -
Citation verifications with phone trees
We have several clients whose practices have phone trees enabled for their primary number, which means we aren't able to send automated verification calls for Google, Yelp, ExpressUpdate (Infogroup), YellowPages, etc. Sometimes our clients are able to temporarily disable their phone trees, and sometimes said site's support teams manually verify for us once we have proven our association with the businesses. We just wanted to reach out to see if anyone had alternative solutions or workarounds, since phone trees usually cause a significant hangup. Thanks!
Local Listings | | copyjack0 -
International customers for local business
Hi I have a vacation rental in France. My customers come from the UK/US, France, and Spain and as such i have three domains. www.domain.com (French) en.domain.com (English) es.domain.com (Spanish) I first set up a Google+ page which was tied to my French website and it's descriptive text and KW are in French. I subsequently set-up 2 more Google+ pages (English and Spanish, each with their respective domains and language specific KW) for the purpose of showing up in local searches in the UK and Spain, which is starting to working. I'm I going in the right direction? is this a crazy idea since they all have the same local address? Thank you for sharing insights regarding how to handle a local business with multilingual customers.
Local Listings | | pgcosson0 -
How to show on Google Maps for specific areas close to me?
Hi there, Im wondering the best approach to get more consistent listings for google map searches (the pins on the map) for a business.
Local Listings | | Ampweb
Here is a small overview. My client provides storage services in London. His business is very local as customers will only want to use them if they are from surrounding local suburbs within the City. His business is showing on the map for some of the suburbs close to his business, but it does not actually show when you search for the closest location (suburb) that his business is located in, or other local suburbs. What would be the best approach to ensure google shows a pin for his search results when users search for all close-by suburbs to his business address? Is this possible or will it just happen over time? He already has landing pages on his website for each of his suburbs that he is trying to target, eg: "Self Storage Camden".0 -
Is there something that I can do to get my listing back in Places?
My Google Places listing is not showing as of Friday. The business name is Emerald Coast Carpet Cleaning in Shalimar, Florida. The area that I'am trying to show for is the Fort Walton/ Destin area. All my competitors are still showing in Places but mine is not. I am still seeing it on the map though. I didn't change anything in the profile in the past 14 days. Is there something that I can do to get my listing back in Places?
Local Listings | | ReviveMedia0 -
'People Also Searched for' appears on some but not all local businesses, why? (Google Local Knowledge Panel)
I have a client who does not want the 'People Also Searched for' section on the Google Local Knowledge Panel to appear. I informed her that this is a standard part of the search presentation and that we cannot change. She then pointed out that the 'People also searched for' does not appear on her competitors' Google Local Knowledge Panels. (See the attachment for comparison) This raises a couple of questions: Why are the local businesses different? Can I change the content of her panel? I would appreciate any feedback. google-local.jpg
Local Listings | | sirgeorge0 -
G+ Local Business Page vs. Brand Page Problems
I'm struggling a bit with a Brand page vs. Local page on G+ and wondering if anyone here has had this same problem and found a solution.... This is related to a business that has a does have a physical address for a head admin office, but they provides a financial service to people across Canada over the phone. So although the business has an address and local phone number for admin purposes, it doesn't want people showing up at that address and definitely doesn't want to be considered a "Local" business. However, Google automatically creates the local listing in google maps, which the business has claimed but otherwise does not want to maintain. Instead the business has a Brand page on G+ (not local) which it has linked to the domain and actively maintains as their G+ business page. The trouble is, Google is associating showing the local listing as the rich snippet in in their organic result instead of the Brand page. Is there anything the company can do to further help Google associate the Brand G+ page with the website instead of the local listing? I already tried removing the link to the website from the local listing in hopes that would dis-associate it with the domain. That got rid of the rich snippet, but now the local listing shows up as a separate organic result just below the main company website, which is just as bad or maybe worse. To confirm, the website IS linked to the BRAND page using rel=publisher, and the brand page does have a verified link to the company domain. Thanks for the help!
Local Listings | | PlusROI1