Can this make one's local listing vanish from Google local search?
-
Hi All,
Does anyone know if selecting "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under "service areas and location settings" in Google Places can cause a business's listing to disappear from Google local search?
My interior designer client has a bricks-and-mortar location, was ranking at about #20 for "interior designer" in Portland, and now has dropped from local search. I had "No, all customers come to the business location" selected previously.
In the past week, before the vanishing, I made these changes:
1. changed the service area to "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations",
2. removed "Portland" from the description in Google Places, and
3. submitted maybe two dozen directory listings to high DA sites (using Whitespark as the tool for determining where to post).
Thanks everyone!
Zack
-
It's my pleasure, Zack. Now, if your client does serve customers at his/her own location as well as on the road, my understanding of Google's guidelines is that you should show your address and use the Service Radius Tool. I believe this to be Google's preference in such cases. I really hope reporting your situation to the Google and Your Business Forum will yield an actionable answer. Miriam
-
Hi Miriam,
Wow - thank you so much for the generosity of time and expertise in your answer. Really inspiring contribution to the community (and to me)! Having read through the various possibilities, I suspect the issue is a bug. My client does serve customers at his location (which is a bona fide, bricks-and-mortar location), so that shouldn't be an issue. I've been really careful about NAP, and would be super shocked if the client's site were red flagged.
I was concerned about the directory listings just b/c I've read elsewhere that too many citations at once can raise red flags at Google. Still, it seemed unlikely given the relatively modest directory submissions I engaged in (and the fact that they were all on high DA sites.)
Navigating Google's guidelines for local search can feel pretty fogged-filled, so I really appreciate your guidance! I'll follow-up on the Google and Your Business Forum and see where that leads.
Thank you,
Zack
-
Hi Miriam,
Wow - thank you so much for the generosity of time and expertise in your answer. Really inspiring contribution to the community (and to me)! Having read through the various possibilities, I suspect the issue is a bug. My client does serve customers at his location (which is a bona fide, bricks-and-mortar location), so that shouldn't be an issue. I've been really careful about NAP, and would be super shocked if the client's site were red flagged.
I was concerned about the directory listings just b/c I've read elsewhere that too many citations at once can raise red flags at Google. Still, it seemed unlikely given the relatively modest directory submissions I engaged in (and the fact that they were all on high DA sites.)
Navigating Google's guidelines for local search can feel pretty fogged-filled, so I really appreciate your guidance! I'll follow-up on the Google and Your Business Forum and see where that leads.
Thank you,
Zack
-
Hi Zack,
Google's current guidelines (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528) on this read:
If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option.
If you followed these steps correctly, it should not have caused your listing to disappear. However, there have been reports over the past several months from business owners who have had a similar experience. For example, Local SEO Andrew Shotland received a phone call from Google asking if he served customers at his location. This was in February, prior to the guideline update. When he answered no, his listing disappeared. See: http://www.localseoguide.com/hey-seos-if-google-maps-calls-dont-answer/
However, in cases like Andrew's, the vanishing of the listings happened because they did not choose to hide their address (generally, because Google hadn't yet clearly announced that they were supposed to do so).
Long before this, many people noticed that choosing the hide address function had the effect of instantly burying one's listing. Then, in November 2010, Mike Blumenthal reported that it appeared that this had changed and that hiding the address should not bury your blended listing, though it might still effect the Maps and 7-Packs of that time period. See: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2010/11/03/google-places-search-hiding-address-no-longer-buries-listing/
But, since the big guideline update in March 2012, (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap) this issue was supposed to have been completely fixed and hiding the address was not ever supposed to bury your listing, though I have heard a couple of remarks to the effect that it may push your listing down a couple of places.
So, if you chose the 'serves customers at their locations' and 'do not show' options in your dashboard, according to my information, this should not be the culprit in what you're experiencing. Nor should removing a geographic modifier from your business description (using geo terms in descriptions has never really been considered a good idea and at one time, was forbidden by the guidelines). And, finally, gaining citations from directories should have the effect of improving your rankings - not destroying them.
So, at this point, there are several things to consider, as I see it:
-
Your client is experiencing the effects of a bug.
-
There is an external factor at play, such as a discrepancy of information between your current NAP (name, address, phone number) and 3rd party citations such as the ones you are building for the client via directories.
-
The client has been penalized for activity Google has red flagged (it doesn't happen often, but it does happen).
I would suggest that you report the whole incident via the Google and Your Business Forum: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business
If you do not receive a response from the Google Top Contributors or employees in the 'Technical Advice?' forum, your next step would be to try to use the troubleshooter at http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs to report that the client's listing has disappeared.
I hope my response hasn't been overwhelming but the history of this issue is fairly deep. I sincerely wish you good luck in finding resolution!
Miriam
-
-
Yes, I have had this happen to our listing when I accidentally switched to "this business serves customers at their locations", our listing disappeared from google maps. When I switched it back, it reappeared in a few days.
-
If you make changes to the address or phone, Google says it will require a verification. I would check and make sure removing Portland didn't change the site from live, to waiting to be verified.
-
I've heard of #1 before. Never tried it myself, I suspect #2 is the culprit.
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
-
Can anyone recommend an SEO agency that has provided outstanding results?
We're looking to hire an SEO agency and wanted to see if anyone could personally recommend some. We do not currently have a resource dedicated to SEO, so the agency will be the driver in developing and implementing the strategy. UPDATE Our site sells custom products so while there are around 60 products, there are many variations of any given product (paper type, cover type, color, etc.). We do not have a physical storefront and we ship anywhere in the US and Canada. We are looking for SEO services, mainly link building, monitoring rankings, and on-site factors. We have a resource dedicated to content in-house so the agency would work closely with this person in building out a content strategy. We are open to agencies around the US but are located in Maryland so EST time zone would be preferable.
Image & Video Optimization | | lforemannpl0 -
Tracking Numbers and Local Listings
Hello all, had a quick question about the pros and cons of claiming a bunch of local listings and using a tracking # on our business profiles with those listings rather than our actual #. Anyone have any insight into whether this is good or bad practice and why? Thanks in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | goldbergweismancairo0 -
How do you manage phone verification when claiming listings on behalf of clients (local and remote)?
As the top competitive difference maker, Quality/Authority of Structured Citations is pretty important. That being said, I spend a good deal of time manually running around to different citation websites and jumping through their hoops to get my clients' websites listed properly. I've been using getlisted.org to check my sites, and a lot of the citation sources out there require phone verification. Now I was wondering how you professionally manage the phone verification step for your own clients. I've found it a bit difficult getting my clients to reliably get the PIN numbers for me. I've even had problems with clients checking the mail for the post cards that get sent! At this point in time, I try to schedule a time (not during business hours preferably) to go into the location and answer the phone to get everything verified in one shot. For remote clients however, I just have to hope that they are on board with answering their phones and getting the PIN numbers back to me. Lastly, how do you manage to reduce the amount of sales calls that your client receives from these listing sites? I currently register accounts under a separate email address, for example, webmaster@domain.com. This cuts down on the email marketing spam, and it obviously helps me stay in control of the listings. How do you handle the phone calls though? Especially from some of the more aggressive companies like Yelp? Personally I've just been 'briefing' my clients on how to respond to these sales calls, and I've educated them on the importance of these listings so they aren't too annoyed with the assault of sales reps calling their business constantly. Are there any magic words that my clients can use with these sales reps to make them stop calling? Sorry for the long post, if you've made it this far thank you for reading!
Image & Video Optimization | | IronSummitMedia0 -
Google places - We currently do not support the location
Hi My Google places listing has vanished from the local search results, and when clicking on the 'see your listing on Google' link from the Google Places dashboard I am getting the message We currently do not support the location What is causing this is it due to another listing with the same address? I have now deleted this extra listing which is now showing as suspended until I enter the pin which will remove it. But what other steps do I need to take to get the listing back on google places search results?
Image & Video Optimization | | ocelot0 -
Google Places: "this place is permanently closed" what next?
All, I'm working on a duplicate Google places listing issue. One of the listings is accurate, verified and has been reviewed by quite a few customers. However, we have a problem with an old address that still shows up in Google maps and seems to be the cause of poor performance for the accurate listing. The old address listing was deleted but may not have been removed using best practices based on what I've been able to read here at SEO Moz. The old address listing has been flagged by Google with a notation: “this place is permanently closed.” My question is what happens next? Do listings that have been flagged as permanently closed eventually drop out of the search results Or do I need to take additional action? It appears that once a listing has been flagged as permanently close you can no longer report a problem so that route seems to be unavailable.
Image & Video Optimization | | JSOC0 -
Google Places - Category Question
Hi All. Just wanted to double check something with you folks. I've always been under the impression that you should complete the first category option in Places with a default category from Google's list of options, followed by 4 categories of your choice. However, does the 1st category need to be a default option or can it be any one of the 5? Also, do you think anything is gained in the rankings by adding a category of your own choice as the 1st category? There's nothing in the Quality guidelines that suggests the 1st category needs to be a default option, so I thought I'd throw this out there... http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?answer=107528
Image & Video Optimization | | PerchDigital0 -
Targeting Local Search Terms
I normally advise clients never to optimise around keywords with very low or even zero recorded Google search volumes. However, if the core keyword has decent volumes but the organisation is serviing specific towns/cities/locations would you consider it valid to optimise for : core keyword + focused location (even if this has zero search volumes). The Google Places results are obviously highly relevant but depending on the core keyword you sometimes get the 3-box places at the top but sometimes in the middle of the natural results.
Image & Video Optimization | | bjalc20110 -
Links from Google Books
Hi Interested in your views on this and any references to research on the subject Using Google Books recently I have discovered multiple citations of a web site I produced years ago in a whole load of publication. Really quite touching to find these 10 years afterwards I imagine that this must have a positive effect on search engine listings for this site. The site has really good listings still. Has any research or any announcement been made by Google about this. Pushing this a bit further ; An advertising hoarding has a web site address http:// ... would Google StreetView pick this up and could it be used as a signal too ? Neil PS No I don't sell adversing hoardings 😉
Image & Video Optimization | | NeilInFrance0