Best address to use on Google business listing for youth sports program
-
Hello, Moz Community!
I'm helping a friend with some local marketing for his youth sports program. He trains his kids at a community center and a public park where court times are managed by the city.
His address in his Google business listing is currently the community center, but that is shared with multiple businesses including the community center itself. I know he needs an address that is unique to his business, but he lives outside of the city in which his program is located.
Our goal is to boost exposure in the city in which his program is located.
Since 1) his business address is located outside of the city in which he conducts business and 2) the addresses at which he conducts his business is utilized by multiple businesses including the actual property owner, what options do I we have for an address that Google will recognize as valid and won't cause ranking issues?
If there is nothing we can do in the current situation, what are steps we can take to address this issue for his business?
Thanks a lot!
-
Hi Miriam,
Just wanted to update you that we were able to verify the listing! What we did was simply work with the community center to receive the verification postcard.
Our listing still shows "located in: community center" with the community center address and our business phone number, but I can no login, respond to reviews, etc.
Just incase you run into a similar question in the future!
Thanks again for your guidance.
-
Thank you again, Miriam! I'm gonna keep trying to get the postcard from the community center and see what happens.
-
Hi Tony,
Unfortunately, Google's guidelines often disappoint in that they don't seem to cover real-world realities. If you're aware of the guideline language and are communicating to your friend that straying from the guidelines could result in listing removal, then that's about all you can do. If a brand decides to stray from the guidelines, they should be aware of the risks. And finding other listings that area also straying from the guidelines will not convince Google if the listing gets removed.
You can learn more about the "located in" feature in this thread: https://localsearchforum.com/threads/new-feature-manually-add-located-in-to-a-gmb-listing.53221/ but this is typically meant to be used for something like a McDonald's located in a Walmart.
-
No worries, thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful response!
I noticed that same language in the guidelines as well. At first, I didn't think it would be possible either but ultimately I can't imagine that all youth sports programs that don't own their own facility are ineligible for a Google business listing. That would make 99% of youth sports programs ineligible.
I also noticed that the program's business listing (see attached screenshot) contains 1) a link to the community center in which the program is run, 2) the community center's address, and 3) the program's unique business phone number. This leads me to believe that Google might be trying to account for this scenario. I Googled around but haven't been able to find any information on the purpose of the "located in" section in the listing so I'm left with my fingers crossed.
Do you have any thoughts on this?
We have requested the verification postcard be sent to the community center. We are hoping that we are able to confirm our listing after that mail has been received.
Thanks again!
-
great information and platform
-
Hi Tony,
My apologies for the delayed reply. I just saw your questions this morning.
The relevant area of the Guidelines for Representing Your Business on Google contains the following language under the section in ineligible listings:
- An ongoing service, class, or meeting at a location that you don't own or have the authority to represent.
It sounds like this is what you're describing, in terms of your friend having an ongoing class at a community center. Rather than the class having its own listing, Google's advice on this has historically been to try to get the eligible entity (the community center) to include mention of your class in their listing, rather than creating a listing yourself.
The only safe alternative for your friend would be if they want to become known, independent of the community center, as a separate licensed business. For example, if your friend wanted to establish themselves as a personal trainer, for hire, then they could create a listing for that using their own phone number and home address. With their address outside the city of location, you are right to guess that this means that they would most likely not appear for rankings within the community center's city, but this is the only path forward I can see for your friend in the local SERPS.
The organic SERPs are different, of course. Your friend could certainly build their own website to talk about their work and make an effort to get this ranking organically if the community center would give permission for their entity to be mentioned by a third party (your friend) on a third party website.
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 business spam query
Hello Our Business is Verified Business Listing in google, as of Everything ok, But there are around 6-7 other company Who Registered Our website as there website, so my question is How should we make them spam & make Our website verified With Our main Location only, How to make Our business Listing Secure, please Guide as, to help Resolve this issue, Thnx in advance
Local Listings | | falguni-iepl0 -
Address consistency issue between GMB and directories
We have a mortgage broker client, ABC, who shares an address with another business, XYZ who is a loans company. A previous SEO agency created GMBs for these 2 businesses using the same physical address and recently, we had to resolve this issue of duplicate address with Google. ABC was happy for us to fix the issue up by putting a unit no. "A" thus making their address "#7A Smith Street" and business XYZ now has #7B on their GMB. Our question is will this affect consistency if we were to build citations without "#7A Smith Street" but just using "7 Smith Street" which is their REAL physical address? Business XYZ has also just contracted us for SEO which means we will end up building citations for 2 businesses with the same business address (but different phone numbers). Should we actually continue using "#7A" and "#7B" for citation building even though that's not what their address is? Thank you in advance for your response!
Local Listings | | Gavo1 -
Is there a purpose to the "google my business" description?
Hi there Can someone tell me if the description serves a purpose in the google my business profile since:
Local Listings | | coolhandluc
a) It is not displayed anywhere as far as i have seen (maps, 3 pack local results, knowledge graph, organic results)
b) It is no longer considered as a ranking factor since it was abused so much Thanks0 -
Google + / Local for Business. How to SEO ?... Done the basic but no real change.
Hi All, We have set up all of our Google local for business pages which are verified and these link to the relevant branch pages on our website. The branch pages also link back to the relevant google local page. We only appear for one category on the google local pages and we have also done a large number of citations (NAP) across all locations and the text used in each of the google pages is keyword rich and we mention the city in there as well to localise it. We have a few google + likes and we have used hootsuite to publish the same content across some of the google local pages which links back to our website blog , we are not appearing in local search whereas our competitors seem to be appear for all their branches. Is there any fundamental tips or things we need to do to def. get up on the rankings.. Or any good articles worth reading ?.. I've had a look but can't seem to see anything relating a google local business bible.. thanks Pete
Local Listings | | PeteC121 -
Multiple Sites, Different Names, Same Business. Gray Hat?!
Hey there, Mozzers! I need your help. I have a new client whose new site just went live. Today, I started the process of cleaning up their business listings throughout the web. To my surprise, I noticed that a lot of the directories already had a website domain included. I called my client to find out what was going on. Turns out they already have a site with another company, targeting the same keywords. I came across this site before during competitive analysis, but never put two and two together since it has a different name, phone number and branding (logo, color scheme, etc.). I asked if he was willing to change the link to his new site (the one we're doing SEO for), and he flat out said no. He knows the site is doing well in the SERPs and doesn't want to harm its rankings. sigh His advice? Create new listings for his 2nd location. This location has a different physical address and phone number (no toll free/shared). But I feel like this is wrong. It's the same business, but we're trying to pass as another company just to get 2 sites to the top of the SERPs. This might also confuse users. What do I do? Plus, does that mean we should only include the 2nd location on the site we created and not the 1st? I already have a disadvantage since all the quality link juice is going to the other site. smh I need y'alls advice, please! -Kanya
Local Listings | | RainmanCreative1 -
Google Places - Bulk Dashboard Issues
Hi guys, We have two clients one for 45 listings and another one with 350 listings all controlled in two separate google places bulk upload accounts. Which can be managed here: https://www.google.com/local/manage/ Recently over the last 3 weeks, every time we make a address change or edit to the listing via thehttps://www.google.com/local/manage/ the edit is not changing the actual listing directly any more. And i have had to use the 'suggest a edit or report a problem' to get the address change. This is getting tedious, especially when you have 10+ stores changing address every week. Does anyone know why this is occurring? It worked perfectly before! I have asked GP support but they haven't given me a response. I'm in Australia and believe we're still on the old dashboard, screenshot below: http://postimg.org/image/he0hx0xox/ Kind Regards,
Local Listings | | MBASydney
RM0 -
Structured Data in Google Webmaster Tools
Have noticed a significant drop in structured data items and pages on GWT in the last one week. We have not made any changes and can still see that we have the rich snippet implementation in place across our site. Has anyone else noticed this drop? What could be possible reasons for the same? On 8th July we had 646,801 items showing up on Structured Data, which dropped to 227,529 on 11th July and 66,161 on 14th July 2014!! TIA Asif
Local Listings | | prsntsnh0 -
Right page to place the Schema code for global business
I have two questions: 1. Schema code for Global business: As a company which works with clients across the globe, we like to create a well defined schema that doesn't limit and appear as a Local Business to Google. I assume "http://schema.org/LocalBusiness" means a local business to Google. If we use it, will be be affecting the ranking in global searches? 2. Page and location to keep the code What could be the best place to keep the schema code in a web page? - Homepage/ About us page / contact us page and Footer links are the options. I hope applying CSS on it too wouldn't be an issue. Looking forward to learning your thoughts.
Local Listings | | macronimous0