Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Research & Trends
    3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4. Can you set up a Google Local account under a PO Box?

    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.

    Can you set up a Google Local account under a PO Box?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4
    5
    2706
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • BonsaiMediaGroup
      BonsaiMediaGroup last edited by

      I have a client that wants a Google local listing in a town he serves but does not have a physical location.  Is it an issue to share an address with an existing company?  Is is it better to use a P.O. Box? or is there a forwarding address company? Is this considered a black hat Local SEO tactic?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • rhutchings
        rhutchings last edited by

        Along those same lines, does anyone else know of any good services that will provide physical business addresses in certain locations?  I know of some virtual office providers, but only found ones that do major cities, not smaller ones.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • KeriMorgret
          KeriMorgret last edited by

          Here are the quality guidelines for Google Local Listings. Related to PO Boxes, Google says "Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed."

          http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528&rd=1

          However, they do now offer a way to list service areas for a business. Information about how to do this is available on the Google page for service areas.

          http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=177103

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • rhutchings
            rhutchings last edited by

            Cant go the PO box route.  They are cracking down on local listings.  You need a physical address. Its not a problem to share the address if you have different suite # or something in.  There are also some companies out there that you can pay to give you a virtual office address in major cities, and you could technically use that.  Remember that you will need to verify the listing, and sometimes Google will not let you do it via the phone, they will only do the postcard route, so you will need to monitor the mail to that location.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • tomcraig86
              tomcraig86 last edited by

              http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/maps-archive/thread?tid=4fa32594aadb2e9f&hl=en

              It looks like you'll have to use the real address!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • RobinJA

                Does Google and Other Search Engine crawl meta tags if we call it using react .js ?

                We have a site which is having only one url and all other pages are its components. not different pages. Whichever pages we click it will open show that with react .js . Meta title and meta description also will change accordingly. Will it be good or bad for SEO for using this "react .js" ? Website: http://www.mantistechnologies.com/

                White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA
                0
              • Jacksons_Fencing

                Does Google want contact numbers in the meta description?!

                Reading up it seems like there's complete free reign to enter what you want in the meta description and they are not considered a direct ranking signal However I have added contact numbers to the meta descriptions for around 20 reasonably high ranking pages for my company and it seems to have had a negative effect (taken screen grabs and previous rankings) More strangely when you 'inspect' the page the meta description features the desired number yet when you find the page in the serps the meta description just does not feature the number (page has been cached and the description does not carry on) I'm wondering whether such direct changes are seen as spam and therefore negative to the page?

                White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jacksons_Fencing
                1
              • David-Kley

                Can a Self-Hosted Ping Tool Hurt Your IP?

                Confusing title I know, but let me explain. We are in the middle of programming a lot of SEO "action" tools for our site. These will be available for users to help better optimize their sites in SERPs. We were thinking about adding a "Ping" tool based in PHP so users can ping their domain and hopefully get some extra attention/speed up indexing of updates. This would be hosted on a subdomain of our site. My question is: If we get enough users using the product, could that potentially get us blacklisted with Google, Bing etc? Technically it needs to send out the Ping request, and that would be coming from the same IP address that our main site is hosted on. If we end up getting over a 1000 users all trying to send ping requests I don't want to potentially jeopardize our IP. Thoughts?

                White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley
                0
              • ColeLusby

                Can the disavow tool INCREASE rankings?

                Hi Mozzers, I have a new client who has some bad links in their profile that are spammy and should be disavowed. They rank on the first page for some longer tail keywords. However, we're aiming at shorter, well-known keywords where they aren't ranking. Will the disavow tool, alone, have the ability to increase rankings (assuming on-site / off-site signals are better than competition)? Thanks, Cole

                White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ColeLusby
                0
              • tjr

                Sitelinks Search Box impact for SEO

                I am wondering how the relatively new sitelinks search box impacts the SEO rankings for a specific site or keyword combination - do you guys have any experience or bechmarks on this? Obviously it should help on getting more real estate on the SERP page (due to adding the search box), but do you also get extra goodwill and improved SERP position from adding it? Also, is the impact different on different type of terms, let's say single brand or category term such as "Bestbuy" (or "coupon") or a combination term "Bestbuy Apple" (or "Dixons coupon")? Thanks in advance!

                White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tjr
                0
              • kirmeliux

                Thumbtack Blatantly Violating Google TOS?

                Hi, We have a business registered on Thumbtack so we receive their newsletters. I'm aware that review sites offering a "badge" or verification logo which links back to your profile is nothing new. But the email I received from Thumbtack is a fairly blatant attempt to game Google for popular keywords. I was just curious on your thoughts about this. I believe it was Overstock who did something like this and got slapped by Google pretty hard for a while. Could Thumbtack be heading down the same path? Image: http://i.imgur.com/FWPnmEP.jpg

                White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kirmeliux
                0
              • esiow2013

                Does Google crawl and index dynamic pages?

                I've linked a category page(static) to my homepage and linked a product page (dynamic page) to the category page. I tried to crawl my website using my homepage URL with the help of Screamingfrog while using Google Bot 2.1 as the user agent. Based on the results, it can crawl the product page which is a dynamic. Here's a sample product page which is a dynamic page(we're using product IDs instead of keyword-rich URLs for consistency):http://domain.com/AB1234567 Here's a sample category page: http://domain.com/city/area Here's my full question, does the spider result (from Screamingfrog) means Google will properly crawl and index the property pages though they are dynamic?

                White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow2013
                0
              • penn73

                Penalised by Google - Should I Redirect to a new domain?

                Last month my rankings dropped a couple of pages on Google and am no longer receiving as many visits from Google as I used to. It's coming up to summer which is the time my business naturally picks up yet I can't fix this problem. I have a crazy idea of redirecting my established site onto a new domain in hopes that the penalty would be removed. I have tried removing any manipulative links yet my ranking are not coming back. Anyone had success in redirecting to a new domain?

                White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn73
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.