A few questions regarding listings in Google Places
-
For an SAB (Service Area Business) with a hidden address -
Can you have more then one listing?
Can you use a free Google Voice number?
Can you forward the number to a main number?
Can the listing be in an office building? Such as a rented space...
For a non SAB listing with the address visible -
Can you use free Google voice numbers for each listing and forward them to one main number?
-
yep - so if you have a service location in Dallas, TX, and the location-specific page on your site for that location has a URL of www.YourDomain.com/dallas-cleaning-services (using your cleaning example from earlier)
you'd then have the URL for that Places/+ Local listing use that specific URL
-
Good discussion going on here, guys. I just want to clarify one point in this discussion, as I'm concerned that some of the advice may confuse others. It has been stated in this conversation that:
If you're wanting to show up in the Map Pack for local results in various cities, you HAVE to have a "real" physical address in that city. You can't hide the address and have any hope to rank.
I respectfully disagree...with part of this. Yes, you must have a real physical address in the city in which you're hoping to rank locally, but for service radius businesses, it is certainly possible to rank while complying with Google's hide-address law. In fact, some Local SEOs have observed that complying with the hide address rule can actually boost local rankings. Conversely, failure to comply with the rule has resulted in estimated thousands of listings being closed by Google.
So, yes, you need the address as your foothold in the city, but if you serve clients at their locations rather than your own, hide that address. And don't worry about rankings being put out of reach by complying with the law. They are actually far more secure for you if you comply.
-
Thank you,
This is what I was looking for. As far as setting up the local pages (I will mark these up as well) Should we link to the exact page for each location in the places?
-
That post is from March, and there have been several major changes to the +Local system since then - most importantly, Places went away and became Google+ Local at the end of May...
But now I get you - you're a service business only - you're only using the address/phone number for verification purposes... people will never go to that location.
In that case, you DO have to hide your address - BUT, you still have to have a real physical address in that city. Without a legit address, you'll never have any hope of ranking.
The multiple locations part of the question only comes into play if you're talking multiple cities. In that case, you're fine - but if you're trying to show multiple locations in a single city (because you have multiple service vendors there), you're going to run into problems, unless you have unique phone numbers and addresses (and unique location-based landing pages on your site would help a lot here too)
If you're ONLY a service business and customers never come to you, you will have to hide the address - but also make sure you don't try to do any merge with a Google+ Business page - until they change the rules, you aren't allowed to do a merge with an SAB.
-
"If you're wanting to show up in the Map Pack for local results in various cities, you HAVE to have a "real" physical address in that city. You can't hide the address and have any hope to rank." I don't think this is true, however if you have a source I would love to read it.
I have real physical addresses, the point here is that if you are a service only you MUST hide your address. Read: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap
My question is based on multipule service locations.
-
Why does Google do lots of things that don't make sense?
If you're wanting to show up in the Map Pack for local results in various cities, you HAVE to have a "real" physical address in that city. You can't hide the address and have any hope to rank.
Now I understand the phone issues. Your best bet would be to find some business phone service that lets you have unique local numbers for each city that all forward to a single phone. That way, you've got "real" local numbers but still a single point of contact for the business. If you want to verify each location by phone, you'll have to be sure that there's no automated answering system, or you're going to have to rely on postcard verification.
You're also going to need to have multiple location landing pages on your website. Each city will need its own page on the site, so that the unique address and phone number info will match the map listing.
Remember - you don't have to list yourself as a "service area business" - you can still have an address at a specific location, even when you send employees out to do the work. The address has to be in the listing if you want that listing to show up.
-
hmm...
Perhaps I need to explain this in a way that does not look so crooked.
Here's the same question in an ie format.
Ok so lets say I am a cleaning company and I hire people to clean houses for the entire state. I want to use every location that each employee lives in/services. Each location will have a unique hidden address and number but same business name.
The reason we need to forward the number is because we are generating the business for the employee and we will have no way of keeping track of the deals that come in unless we pick up the phone.
Is a servicing company not legitimate. Why does Google Places have the option to hide an address if we can't use it?
-
We have physical addressees, the question is can we have multiple addressees for one business with a few adresses hidden?
- if you want to go for local rankings, you can't have hidden addresses. Places/+ Local listings won't show up unless they've got an actual physical address that isn't hidden. Also, if it's a single business, but you're trying to make it show up in multiple locations/cities, you've got to have a "real" address for each Places/+ Local listing. If you use the same name, address, and phone number, you'll run into problems because it'll get tagged as a duplicate listing.
Google also offers a business phone account. Now would we need to set up the business account number since this is a business? or can we just use the free local number they provide? After all this is going to be a business...
- if you're using Google Voice, you're forwarding to a "real" number anyway - is there a reason you can't just use your real number? You'd be MUCH better off just using a "real" local number if you're wanting your listings to have a chance to rank.
No, 1 main number may only have 1 GV forwarded to it. There are workarounds with multiple forwarders though."
Any sources that can lead to help?
- again, would never suggest for any of my clients to do this. If you're setting up legitimate listings for legitimate businesses with actual locations, each location should have its own unique phone number. Just use those numbers.
-
Can you have more then one listing?
- You can't have a hidden address if you want to play in Google Places (now Google+ Local). Don't get a PO Box either, it's got to be a physical address if you want to be able to rank locally.
Can you use a free Google Voice number?
- You can - but we always suggest that our clients use a real phone number. Having a "real" local phone number in your listing is a huge relevancy signal - remember, Google knows that your GVoice number is really just forwarding to another number. Better to play it as safe as possible. It's also important that you have the same local phone number in all of your local citations AND that the same local phone number is on your website.
Can you forward the number to a main number?
- Again, you can - but that doesn't mean you should. Why would you not just use the actual business number? NAP consistency in your citations is a huge factor in ranking locally. If you have a main number, use the main number.
Can the listing be in an office building? Such as a rented space...
- as long as you have a unique address (with a suite number or some identifier to set your biz apart from others in the same main building), you're fine
For a non SAB listing with the address visible -
Can you use free Google voice numbers for each listing and forward them to one main number?
- definitely not - again, Google knows where those numbers are being forwarded to. If you have multiple locations for a single business, each location should have a unique phone number. Use that location's number in the Places/+ Local listing, and make sure that the URL on the listing is pointing to a unique landing page for that location that has the same unique local phone number.
-
Can you have more then one listing?
"You need an address to get listed in Google places. Consider getting a PO box."
We have physical addressees, the question is can we have multiple addressees for one business with a few adresses hidden?
>Can you use a free Google Voice number?
"Yes, you just need to disable screening so you can verify over the phone (or choose postcard option)"
Google also offers a business phone account. Now would we need to set up the business account number since this is a business? or can we just use the free local number they provide? After all this is going to be a business...
Can you use free Google voice numbers for each listing and forward them to one main number?
"No, 1 main number may only have 1 GV forwarded to it. There are workarounds with multiple forwarders though."
Any sources that can lead to help?
-
For an SAB (Service Area Business) with a hidden address -
Can you have more then one listing?
You need an address to get listed in Google places. Consider getting a PO box.
>Can you use a free Google Voice number?
Yes, you just need to disable screening so you can verify over the phone (or choose postcard option)
Can you forward the number to a main number?
Yes
Can the listing be in an office building? Such as a rented space...
Yes
For a non SAB listing with the address visible -
Can you use free Google voice numbers for each listing and forward them to one main number?
No, 1 main number may only have 1 GV forwarded to it. There are workarounds with multiple forwarders though.
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
-
What is Google supposed to return when you submit an image URL into Fetch as Google? Is a few lines of readable text followed by lots of unreadable text normal?
I am seeing something like this (Is this normal?): HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Autoboof
Server: nginx
Content-Type: image/jpeg
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Last-Modified: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:23:04 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=1209600
Expires: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 15:23:55 GMT
X-Request-ID: v-8dd8519e-8a1a-11e5-a595-12313d18b975
X-AH-Environment: prod
Content-Length: 25505
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:24:11 GMT
X-Varnish: 863978362 863966195
Age: 16
Via: 1.1 varnish
Connection: keep-alive
X-Cache: HIT
X-Cache-Hits: 1 ����•JFIF••••��;CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 75
��C•••••••••• •
••
••••••••• $.' ",#(7),01444'9=82<.342��C• ••••
•2!!22222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222��•••••v••"••••••��••••••••••••••••
•���•••••••••••••}•••••••!1A••Qa•"q•2���•#B��•R��$3br�
••••%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz���������������������������������������������������������������������������•••••••••••••••••••
•���••••••••••••••w••••••!1••AQ•aq•"2�••B���� #3R�•br�0 -
Questions About Link Detox
Greetings: In April of 2014 an SEO firm ran a link removal campaign (identified spammy links and uploaded a disavow). The overall campaign was ineffective and MOZ domain rank has fallen to 24 from about 30 in the last year and traffic is 20% lower. I purchased a basic package for Link Detox and ran a report today (see enclosed) to see if toxic links could be contributing to our mediocre rankings. As a novice I have a few questions for you regarding this the use of Link Detox: -We scored a domain wide detox risk of 1,723. The site has referring root domains with 7113 links to our site. 121 links were classified as high audit priority. 56 as medium audit priority. 221 links were previously disavowed and we uploaded a spreadsheet containing the names of the previously disavowed links. We had LinkDetox include an analysis of no-follow links as they recommend this. Is our score really bad? If we remove the questionable links should we see some benefit in ranking? -Some of the links we disavowed last year are still linking to our site. Is it worthwhile to include those links again in our new disavow file? -Prior to filing a disavow we will request that Webmaster remove offending links. LinkDetox offers a package called Superhero for $469.00 that automates the process. Does this package effectively help with the entire process of writing and tracking the removal requests? Do you know of any other good alternatives? -A feature called "Boost" is included in the LinkDetox Super Hero package. It is suppose to expedite Google's processing of the disavow file. I was told by the staff at Link Detox that with Boost Google will process the disavow within a week. Do you have any idea if this claim is valid??? It would be great if it were true. -We never experienced any manual penalty from Google. Will uploading a disavow help us under the circumstances? Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it!!! Alan p2S6H7l
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Metatags on drupal question
Hi Im quite inexperienced on drupal (normally an umbraco user!) and im having some difficulty with the Metatags on the CMS. I have been applying Meta Title and descriptions to the individual pages however they only appear when i preview the page and not when the page is saved. When i go into the metatag section located at /admin/config/search/metatags i am given a list of settings including Global: Front Page and Node. Im sure the reason it keeps defaulting the metatags back is to do with this but im not sure what to change to apply my own Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheZenAgency1 -
Google images
Hi, I am working on a website with a large number (millions) of images. For the last five months Ihave been trying to get Google Images to crawl and index these images (example page: http://bit.ly/1ePQvyd). I believe I have followed best practice in the design of the page, naming of images etc. Whilst crawlng and indexing of the pages is going reasonably well with the standard crawler, the image bot has only crawled about half a million images and indexed only about 40,000. Can anyone suggest what I could do to increase this number 100 fold? Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardTay0 -
A question of rankings (with actual domains)
Working with the main site featured in this Open Site Explorer comparison (you'll need a pro account to view this), and have been for quite some time. Recently we've slid behind Ebay (huge brand, I get it), but the other competitors don't really make sense to me. Main phrase is pontoon boats, and maybe I'm too close to this, but we seem to be in the best shape overall in terms of the domain, the page itself, and even our social media is pretty successful (we're closing in on 5,000 likes and have a pretty engaged audience). More internal linking is an opportunity, but I'd like another set of eyes (or several for that matter) to weigh in on opinions. I'm a bit stumped. Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
What Sources to use to compile an as comprehensive list of pages indexed in Google?
As part of a Panda recovery initiative we are trying to get an as comprehensive list of currently URLs indexed by Google as possible. Using the site:domain.com operator Google displays that approximately 21k pages are indexed. Scraping the results however ends after the listing of 240 links. Are there any other sources we could be using to make the list more comprehensive? To be clear, we are not looking for external crawlers like the SEOmoz crawl tool but sources that would be confidently allow us to determine a list of URLs currently hold in the Google index. Thank you /Thomas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sp800 -
How to get my blog listed as United states based in google search?
I am from India.I find that when i search here on google.com or google.co.in some of the blogs operated by Indians are listed as United states next to search results.How is it possible and how can i do it for my blog? Help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ivmagnuvi0 -
Crawl questions
My first website crawl indicating many issues. I corrected the issues, requested another crawl and received the results. After viewing the excel file I have some questions. 1. There are many pages with missing Titles and Meta Descriptions in the Excel file. An example is http://www.terapvp.com/threads/help-us-decide-on-terapvp-com-logo.25/page-2 That page clearly has a meta description and title. It is a forum thread. My forum software does a solid job of always providing those tags. Why would my crawl report not show this information? This occurs on numerous pages. 2. I believe all my canonical URLs are properly set. My crawl report has 3k+ records, largely due to there being 10 records for many pages. These extra records are various sort orders and style differences for the same page i.e. ?direction=asc. My need for a crawl report is to provide actionable data so I can easily make SEO improvements to my site where necessary. These extra records don't provide any benefit. IF the crawl report determined there was not a clear canonical URL, then I could understand. But that is not the case. An example is http://www.terapvp.com/forums/news/ If you look at the source you will clearly see Where is the benefit to including the 10 other records in the Crawl report which show this same page in various sort orders? Am I missing anything? 3. My robots.txt appropriately blocks many pages that I do not wish to be crawled. What is the benefit to including these many pages in the crawl report? Perhaps I am over analyzing this report. I have read many articles on SEO, but now that I have found SEOmoz, I can see I will need to "unlearn what I have learned". Many things such as setting meta keyword tags are clearly not helpful. I wish to focus my energy and I was looking to the crawl report as my starting point. Either I am missing something, or the report design needs improvement.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanKent0