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
-
New Google Update on 21st April
Hi We all know that the mobile update is coming on the 21st April and if your site isnt mobile friendly in Googles eye you will be removed from the mobile index. Will this affect tablets. Most of our pages are mobile friendly but there are a few which arent. However these are tablet friendly. I havent heard Google mention about tablet rankings. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Google Seeing 301 as 404
Hi all, We recently migrated a few small sites into one larger site and generally we had no problems. We read a lot of blogs before hand, 301'd the old links etc and we've been keeping an eye on any 404s. What we have found is that Webmaster is picking up quite a few 404s, yet when we investigate these 404s they are 301'd and work fine. This isn't for every url, but Google is finding more and I just want to catch any problems before they get out of hand. Is there any reason why Google would count a 301 as a 404? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB170 -
Question about Google Search Results
I have a question regarding google search results. I have a website www.911signalusa.com when you type this into google search box the URL comes up repeatedly. I have several competitors here is one of them www.emergencycity.com when you type in their name it only come up as the first result. How did our SEO guys make this happen? I have another site tha when we type in the URL it only comes up as the first result. However when you do site:www.------.com All of these site are indexed in Google. It is not causing any problem we knoe of but it appears to me that our 1 site has it better? Or is it that maybe there are very minimal links to the site? Thank you for your time and consideration in answering my quesiton.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scamper0 -
Google + under Google business domain email account
Hello there, I have a quick and straight question and I am hoping to find answer here. What do we do with a G+ profile that was set up through a business domain's email account that is used by more than one person? We want to use the company name, but we can't as it is considered personal email account although it is under business domain verified by Google. Is there a way that we ask Google to change it and allow us to use the name of the company or should we just deactivate it? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | montauto0 -
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 -
How to promote some links on google
Hi our site is http://www.mycarhelpline.com If people search on our site in Google by typing - Mycarhelpline they see links - why mycarhelpline, contact us and about us how can we put some other key pages by replacing above pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
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 -
Will this get penalized by google?
I had a thought recently, and perhaps it is a pretty bad thought, but i don't see the flaw in it, or how google would really detect it, so please correct me where I am wrong here. Say we ran some sort of marketing campeign and through that campeign we created about 100 extra pages on our domain. A lot of these pages are heavily shared on facebook, twitter, google+ etc. These pages also have several backlinks here and there. Now this campaign is over and so these pages no longer seem relevant to us. If we were to add 301 redirects to all these pages, to three different (and unrelated) internal pages (our primary targets) would this pass all the accumulated link juice on to those three target internal pages? Or would this behaviour get penalized by google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0