Managing Google Map Location for a remote wilderness lodge
-
Hi all, I’m working on a Google Maps and Google Plus issue for a client who runs a unique, very remote wilderness lodge. The lodge isn’t located near any road -- you have to fly 100+ miles on a small plane.
Their mailing address is a PO Box in a dingy little town 100+ miles from their actual mountain location. Therefore, Google maps and Google Plus think the lodge itself is located in this little town, and it shows them there on maps. That’s bad, because the kind of guests who come to this remote lodge wouldn’t want to stay in that little town.
We would like Google to understand that the lodge’s location is not the same as its mailing address. We have the GPS coordinates for the actual location.
My question is: how do I get Google Plus and Google Maps to correctly show the lodge pin at its GPS location on the map, rather than in the town that hosts its remote PO box?
Thanks for reading! Any insights?
-
Hi Bzmark,
Thanks for the clarification. The reason I asked is that it isn't permitted to create a Google+ Local page for a non-staffed vacation rental. Sounds like you're in the clear, as far as that's concerned, with this lodge.
I feel that Tim has correctly assessed this situation. There are multiple issues here.
-
P.O. boxes are not allowable addresses, so at some point, someone created a Google+ Local page (and likely other citations) for a location that is in violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines.
-
Google's local product is mailing address-based - meaning that it is intended to feature data about businesses with physical addresses at which mail is received and to which humans come. While humans do come to this lodge, mail apparently doesn't come to it, taking it outside of Google's definition of a true local business and making it an unlikely candidate for local inclusion.
-
Since the lodge doesn't receive mail at its remote location, it would be impossible for it to receive a postcard for the purposes of verification, again, making it ineligible.
So, I think where you are at right now is that your client's business name exists within in Google's local product when it should never have been included in the first place, lacking a mailing address that would be legitimate in the eyes of Google. The client's location is being misrepresented by Google, and there isn't a clear path for cleaning this up, because there is no genuine mailing address to substitute in a cleanup campaign.
If the wrong location is misrepresenting the business and misleading customers, you could try to get the page deleted, but I think the best thing to do here would be to go through the Google MapMaker and Google And Your Business fora to see if you can make direct contact with Google staff for guidance with this matter. Typically, I would be sending you through a troubleshooter like this one (https://support.google.com/places/) but as you don't have a legit mailing address, it won't get you very far.
I think your only hope is direct contact with Google staff, who may either help you remove the listing or may allow you to edit it in some way. They won't be happy about the P.O. box, of course, but they may have some solution for you that will ameliorate the fact that the business is currently being misrepresented and is potentially misleading customers.
In the meantime, I do like Tim's suggestion of creating a custom Google map to embed on your website so that, at least, the website is properly directing guests to the location.
In sum, the business model is not appropriate for inclusion in Google's local products and your task is to do all you can to prevent potential guests from being misdirected.
-
-
Thanks for your suggestions! I have a feeling this is the way I'm going to end up going. If so, I will post back re: what works.
-
Hi Miriam, thanks for asking. It's a hotel.
-
Hi Bzmark,
May I ask for a little clarification on the business model. By 'lodge' do you mean a hotel (i.e. a staffed location to which guests come) or is this a one-off vacation rental (i.e. a single, un-staffed cabin out in the woods)? Please clarify.
-
Hey there,
That's a tough situation and to be honest I don't know exactly what you should do. Technically, you shouldn't be able to create a Google Places page for a business that only has a PO Box. They do this because they only want to list businesses with physical locations, but you do have a physical location - it's just somewhere else.
Anyway, I have a couple ideas. One is to edit the pin drop on your listing. If you edit the address for your listing, there should also be an option to edit the marker location (see attached). Just drag it to the appropriate spot.
If that doesn't work, you could try logging into Google Map Maker, requesting an edit to your location information and then leaving an explanation for the reviewers.
And if that doesn't work, you could just create your own custom map. This wouldn't change the information Google has about the business but at least you would be able to link to it from your website and show customers the actual location.
Hope this helps!
Tim
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
-
Why do SEO agencies ask for access to our Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager?
What do they need GTM for? And what is the use case for setting up Google Search Console?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NBJ_SM0 -
How does an accurate and active Google My Business profile impact a company that does all of its work nationally/internationally through remote consulting?
I'm trying to convince a client of the importance of their Google My Business profile and other listings. But because they are less concerned about local since they are a remote based B2B coaching group they don't see it as a priority. Any resources to help me unpack the importance?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanc10 -
Reclaiming Ranking positions in Google
We have a website we are working on that was ranking well in Google but since having a hosting upgrade has completely dropped in rankings. When a hosting upgrade was made, the developer added an incorrect robots.txt file that restricted the site from being found, hence resulting in lost rankings. We have since sorted out that issue so the robots.txt is OK. However, ranking results have yet to be reclaimed. We are unsure why these rankings haven't rebounded back, as it has been a while now. The site is https://www.brightonpanelworks.com.au. We have since also attempted to add a sitemap however to help the site be better crawled and to regain rankings, however, it appears that sitemap generators are having problems creating a sitemap for this site and we are not sure why. And we are not sure whether this may relate to why Google has not picked up on pages and ranking results have not be restored. If you have any ideas as to how we can reclaim rankings to the strong positions they were in previously, that would be much appreciated. We believe we may be missing something here that is not allowing webpages to be picked up and ranked by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
Fix Google Index error
I changed my blog URL structure Can Someone please let me how to solve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Since when did Google get case sensitive?
We are currently ranked #2 locally (NJ) for "IT support", and #27 for "it support". This is a fairly recent development - like today. I know "it" is a stop word, but I have never seen this before. The funny thing is that this is the only "IT" search where this happens. Most of my keywords contain "IT". What's up with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
We are ignored by Google - what should we do?
Hi, We believe that our website - https://en.greatfire.org - is being all but ignored by Google Search. The following two examples illustrate our case. 1. Searching for “China listening in on Skype - Microsoft assumes you approve”. This is the title of a blog post that we wrote which received some 50,000 visits. On Yahoo and Bing search, we rank first for this search. On Google, however, we rank 7th. Each of the six pages ranking higher than us are quoting and linking to our story. 2. Searching for “Online Censorship In China”. This is the title of our front page. Yahoo and Bing both rank us third for this search. On Google, however, we are not even among the first 300 results. Two of the pages among the first 10 results link to us. Our website has an average of around 1000 visits per day. We are quoted in and linked from virtually all Western mainstream media (see https://en.greatfire.org/press). Yet to this day we are receiving almost no traffic from Google Search. Our mission is to bring transparency to online censorship in China. If people could find us in Google, it would greatly help to spread awareness of the extent of Internet restrictions here. If you could indicate to us what the cause of our poor rankings could be, we would be very grateful. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GreatFire.org0 -
Google badge extracted to SERPs
It's a while ago that (i thought) I read the following information on the Google badge. Here https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/ we have the implementation guide, however I was under the impression the Google badge could be thereafter extracted into SERPs so the user could follow etc... direct from SERPs. I can't find anything confirming this. I think that it might clash with authorship data which does a similar job, but where a site page is not relevant to authorship at all, I would have thought linking back to the G+ page from SERPs was a sensible option. Can anyone confirm the Google badge can appear in SERPs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richcowley0 -
Domain Favoured by Google
Hi there, We have just launched our website in Ireland .ie and was wondering would the .ie website be favoured by Google over a competitor with a .co.uk or .com domain? Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780