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.
Facebook Locations - Good or Bad for Local Rankings?
-
Our company has multiple (3) offices, including our headquarters, and each has its own Facebook page. Other than the primary company page, the other two locations have only been claimed and do not have posts, reviews, check-ins, etc.
Now, Facebook recently granted us access to Facebook Locations, which, if I understand correctly, would remove 2-out-of-3 office pages and add a "Locations" tab to our primary company page where people can see the other offices.
_See Starbucks Example: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Starbucks/locations/?ref=page_internal _
I've read mixed reviews regarding using the Locations feature, but nothing definitively answers whether or not this would negatively affect local rankings.
Does anyone have firsthand experience going from individual business pages to a single parent business page with Locations? Is there any trustworthy documentation out there about this?
-
Hi Johnny,
I'd like to be able to give you a 100% certain "yes" or "no" answer on this, but Facebook's lack of documentation always makes me say "I think", instead of "I know", for fear I've overlooked some hidden thing about their system I don't understand.
In this case, I "think" you should be fine so long as you are consistently designating the same location as the company headquarters so that its phone number and address are always the same across FB and the web.
But, you might want to ask here, in case you get a different opinion: https://www.facebook.com/help/community
-
Yes that is exactly correct. So I would have the same phone number for the brand page as well as one of the location pages.
-
Hi Johnny,
So, is what you're describing something along the lines of:
-
I have a multi-location business, and one location is the headquarters
-
I want to use the HQ's phone number on the brand page
Is that it? Please, let me know if I'm not quite following, and also, just to confirm, you are talking about Facebook, yes?
-
-
Thank you for this information. I am implementing locations for several clients as well. One question I have regards phone numbers. Can I use the same phone number for the brand as I use for one of the locations? When I do, Moz shows this as a duplicate. However, there is not another phone number to use, and I hate to omit the phone number on the brand page, as sometimes that is the page people find first. What have you done in that situation?
- topic:timeago_earlier,3 months
-
Hi Jen,
Thank you for the great insight! Also, thank you for clarifying (in another forum) that "Locations does not consolidate all of your pages into one page. It just knits them all together ... and you still have local Facebook pages."
I can see that Facebook Locations has a lot of benefits and it appears to have worked well for your clients. However, you mentioned that moving to the parent-child structure means the primary corporate page would no longer have an address or reviews.
While I understand Facebook's logic for having location-specific reviews, especially for retail stores and restaurants, I'm not sure how well it would work for a medium-size B2B business with only a three locations (two of which are manufacturing facilities).
The questions that come to mind are:
- If we were to switch to the parent-child framework and lose the reviews on the primary page, where do they go?
- We'd also lose the address, so would we need to create a new Facebook Business Page to replace that location?
- Currently, when you Google search the company name, the primary location page appears in the Knowledge Panel with Facebook reviews. If we switched, I'm assuming the Knowledge Panel would still show an address (since it's probably through Google My Business) but no more Facebook reviews. Is that right?
- We only have three locations - a headquarters and two other "offices", which are really manufacturing facilities / warehouses. We aren't really looking to acquire reviews for those manufacturing sites nor would we expect our B2B clients to be reviewing them. Does Facebook Locations still make sense for us?
I apologize for all the questions. Still just trying to wrap my head around all of this!
- Mike
-
Jen, thank you so much for contributing your findings to this thread. I'm so happy you have a resource you've linked to. Fantastic!
-
Hey Mike,
I've implemented Facebook Locations for a lot of clients. A clarification: the Locations structure doesn't change the number of Facebook pages you have or remove any existing local ones. It just allows all of them to be visible on a locations map on your main page. You still have a local Facebook page for each of your stores/locations.
In our experience, our local rankings have gone up (though that could be from a number of factors, not just Facebook). But the fact that each Facebook page in the Locations framework is called "Brand Name (city name)" makes it easier for local Facebook pages to be found in local search. Also, local Facebook pages have store-specific reviews on them, and Google is now bringing FB reviews into search results.
Here's some more info we've written about it:
https://www.reshiftmedia.com/facebook-parent-child-framework-what-it-is-and-practical-applications-for-franchisors-and-multi-location-businesses/https://www.reshiftmedia.com/facebook-locations-updated-with-name-reviews-changes/
Good luck!
Jen @ Reshift Media - topic:timeago_earlier,13 days
-
Good luck, Mike, and that would be great if you would share anything you learn with our community. Thank you!
-
Hi Miriam,
Thank you for taking the time to research this! I agree that this does appear to be uncharted waters since no one seems to answer the question directly. I'll take your suggestion and post in the Facebook help community and update this thread if I get anything of value. Crossing my fingers that someone else in the Mozverse can help!
-
Hey Mike,
I have been looking into your excellent question a bit for the last two days, and while there are good tutorials out there about implementing Facebook Locations (like this one: https://sweetiq.com/blog/how-to-claim-facebook-locations/), what I'm not finding is trustworthy documentation of downsides, and I have one concern about this.
One of my colleagues and I noticed that Facebook's API is not seeming to return the locations of businesses using Facebook Locations, unless you add a city name to your query. This seems a bit odd and I don't know what to make of it, and don't have the resources of time at the moment to explore whether this behavior of Facebook's API could have further-reaching effects on search. For example, does this mean that apps/directories that pull from this API aren't going to return your multi-locations in their results? How does this impact Google results? Etc., etc.
I think you've raised a question that deserves a full study, and I'm sorry not to be able to surface one for you. I think you may have surfaced something that's in uncharted waters, and I'd love to see an enterprising Local SEO explore this topic further. In the meantime, you might consider posting in Facebook's help community to see if you can get any anecdotal replies from businesses who are implementing Facebook Locations, to see if they've noted any peculiar or negative impacts of going that route instead of going with individually building out pages one-at-a-time.
-
Hi Mike,
Yes I do have experience with that as our company has also several branches.
What you should do, probably in this order and that is in my opinion by far more important is the following:
- clean up your local citations (company, name, address, phone no, etc.) and use them consistently everywhere
- add each of your branches to Google My Business (GMB, thats a strong signal to Google)
- add JSON LD schema markup to your page: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/local-businesses (you can do that also for different branches
More information on the topic you can find in this new section: https://moz.com/learn/seo/local
I didn't know of the Facebook Local thing honestly. Not sure if there is a clear mapping of a business with the according address/cities. I checked the source code of your Starbuck example. Facebook also uses JSON LD (schema markup) so they might do exactly what I suggest in point 3 for their Local Businesses (not completely sure but I don't have time to check that in depth...) in the background.
With point 1 + 2 you should already achieve a lot, point 3 is nice to have.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Cesare
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
-
Local Ranking with No Physical Address in New Service Area - How to Rank?
OK, SO, I am a wedding company in Maui, Hawaii and have an established business on one island with a physical address. http://simplemauiwedding.net We have started a new team in Oahu, Hawaii http://simpleoahuwedding.com and we provide service there and have a full team in place. How can I rank for Local Search on that Island with no physical address? I would love to hear some proven strategies. Thank you 🙂
Local Listings | Dec 13, 2017, 6:00 PM | photoseo10 -
How do I rank inside the knowledge panel in the "people also search for" section?
Hello fellow Mozzers, In Google's knowledge panel there is a section at the bottom that says "people also search for" and a list of competitors is displayed. I'm hoping to get some information I can use to get my client listed there on top of the local organic results. The more SERP presence, the better. Attached image should provide clarity to those who are confused. I suspect I know the answer to this question, but since I can't find a source to verify my beliefs, I'm crowdsourcing. Thanks in advance! NhoihY1
Local Listings | Mar 17, 2017, 10:13 PM | brettmandoes0 -
Google My Business - two locations but same name and phone
Hello, I manage SEO for an orthopaedic practice and I'm wondering what to do about their GMB listings. They have two locations, but I'm starting to think we shouldn't have separate GMB pages for the two locations because of the advice about other GMB questions I've been reading on this forum. I read a helpful response that said you must ensure the following if you want to create separate GMB listings: Unique name Unique address (even if only a suite / office number) Unique phone number Clearly different categories on Google My Business I can only ensure one of those - unique address. The business has the same name, phone number, and categories at both addresses. What should I do about this? I would think it's important to list both addresses so that patients can be guided to the appropriate location, but is there a way to do that with just one GMB listing? Thank you, Susannah
Local Listings | Oct 5, 2020, 2:31 PM | SusannahK.Noel0 -
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 | Dec 21, 2015, 7:02 PM | Jo_Da0 -
Citation building for multiple locations
Hey everyone, I think i've got a good handle on citations, but had a question regarding multiple locations. I'm going to be doing citation building for a local lawyer, and he's got 4 locations. I'd like to build citations for each of his locations, but I was wondering if the business name needs to change? Ie. If I am building citations for Town 2 and Town 3, should the business name be listed as "Company Name Town 1" for the first location, and "Company Name Town 2" for the second? Or is it fine to use the company name throughout all citations, and just change the location/phone number to the location based info? I'm just worried about Google seeing differing info, but the same company name, and possibly penalizing me for it. Thanks in advance!
Local Listings | Mar 18, 2015, 3:38 PM | RCDesign740 -
Best Local Citation Building Services
Hi, have any of you ever used a local citation building service? Are some better than others, any recommendations? Any bad experiences or companies to avoid? I'm fairly new to the process and it looks like there's a lot of snake oil salesmen in this vertical, so any and all insight you could give me would be great! Thank you in advance, I look forward to hearing feedback from all of you!
Local Listings | Dec 16, 2014, 4:08 PM | maxcarnage0 -
Is there a way to get your local SERP by zipcode?
I have multiple stores across various zipcodes and i'm having difficulty trying to provide an average Positioning on SERP by region. I do know that your SERP varies by region because different areas use different vernaculars. Does anyone know of a way that I can provide a SERP for keywords/terms by county or zip code?
Local Listings | Oct 23, 2014, 9:32 AM | rpaiva0 -
Adding multiple locations business to directories
We have multiple locations business.
Local Listings | Jul 12, 2014, 4:38 PM | VicMark
Adding each location business info to directories. There are same services and everything for each location. Should we keep the same description for all listings or different for each location?
Should we indicate Home Page URL (with 800 number, no address in footer) or location URL?0