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.
Google is associating the wrong address with my website in SERPs
-
I've dealt with submitting address change information to Google (and Yelp, YP, etc.) when they have somehow scraped the wrong address or phone number. This is a little different. I work for the parent company with multiple companies of similar names making up the family of companies. What's happening is that people are searching for one of our companies (Lynden Transport) and getting the correct website results to pop up, but the address/phone # shown below the URL and in the local results screen is for one of our other companies (LTI, Inc.). Customers should be seeing a Fife, WA address but instead are seeing one for Lynden, WA. I've attached a marked up screenshot to better those what is happening. At least customers are generally finding their way to our company but it's causing quite a headache for our customer service reps and customers as they get transferred back and forth on the phone, and confusion for customers unfamiliar with our office locations.
I've clicked on the "Send Feedback" link at the bottom of Google and explained what was happening, but beyond that I'm not sure what to do. The information presented isn't wrong, it's just being associated with the wrong company. It seems like a Google logic error and not something I can control or edit.
Any ideas?
-
Hi Ryan,
That's a difficult situation! Usually, what I've found in this situation is that you have to spend an hour or two backtracking to discover where the name of one business is being conflated with the address/phone/website of the other. This might exist on the company's website or website, or it might exist in citations, or elsewhere. In many cases, this type of conflation is what has caused the confusion on Google's part. It's really important when you have a franchise that you've done everything you possibly can to differentiate the various branches, including different addresses, phone numbers, landing page URLs or websites, content, citations, etc. Even then, Google can sometimes become confused about this scenario and begin merging down details. So, if you can backtrack to a source for this confusion and correct it, that may resolve the issue.
You can also try to contact Google directly about this (go here and click the contact us button https://support.google.com/business/?hl=en&rd=1#topic=4539639) but you may very well get the answer, "That result is generate algorithmically and we can't do anything about it." Might be worth a try anyway.
-
Ryan -
There are a lot of different ways to fix this, but I think that my first, initial suggestion would be to take control over the Google + pages for both locations, so that you can verify these addresses, and fill them out with more information.
For LTI Inc, the Google + page seems to say, "Is this your business?" (See screenshots.)
This is where I'd start. Once these pages are verified, it will be a lot easier to tie everything everything together.
I hope this helps!
-- Jeff
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
-
Unsolved Has anyone noticed the Google quote request response rate never changes?
We respond to almost 100% of our quote requests, yet every quote email that comes in from Google shows a 27% response rate and it never changes. Has anyone else seen this or have any insight into it?
Local Listings | | r1200gsa0 -
How do I rank for a different business categories on google local?
Hello, How do I appear on the local listings for google in different categories or services that I offer? For instance, we're a physical therapy clinic by trade but we specialize in orthopedics, sports medicine, and lower back pain. Thus, how do I rank on google local for these types of services? Currently, we rank for physical therapy but we also miss out on a big part of our business by not ranking for these listings on local. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Scott
Local Listings | | scottgray06200 -
Google My Business - Service Area - Use Zip Codes or City Names?
Google allows you to choose up to 20 locations as service areas, and you can choose based on cities, counties, or zip codes. I'm trying to determine if zip codes, cities, or counties are better to select for our GMB profiles. We are located in the US. I am thinking it's best to use all 20 areas allowed on a profile as long as they are relevant, generally giving Google all the info they will let you provide is best. I also am leaning toward using zip codes because it also includes the city when you choose by zip code. For example: Entered the zip code 21009 and the service area selection provided was: Abingdon, MD 21009, USA Entering the city/state returns a selection of Abingdon, MD, USA I also think it may have to do with how people search and find your business as well? Does anyone have experience with this? Best practices? My google searching has not turned up any reliable info.
Local Listings | | WadeBayMgmt0 -
Google My Business for Municipalities?
I'm working with the City of Lakewood, WA, on an image campaign that overlaps a bit with some SEO goals. If you Google "Lakewood, WA", in the knowledge panel to the right of the search results is an image of building on fire. I'm not sure where this image comes from or why it has been selected as the image to represent the City of Lakewood but its been there for a while. If this was a small business, I would simply claim their Google My Business page and feed some good images into it. Problem solved. But Google doesn't offer an option to "Claim this City". LOL. Can you create a GMB page for a municipality? Does anyone know the right thing to do here to make this picture go away and give the city more control over its own image?
Local Listings | | TheKatzMeow2 -
For Google's Structured Data, should I change my listings from Product schema to Local Business schema?
I was reading Google's Structured Data spec, and I'm considering changing the schema of our listing pages from the Product schema to the Local Business schema. Is this a good idea? To give you a little more info, the pages that I'm classifying are listings for physical spaces that our website rents out for activities, such as meetings. Here's an example of a listing: https://www.peerspace.com/pages/listings/550ddcde2f352d0800fc186b Our goal is to add the proper schema.org tags to the page so that our spaces show up in local searches, such as "meeting space in San Francisco." The problem is that when we add location microdata (addressLocality, addressRegion, etc.) to our current "Product" schema, Google tells us that "Products" can't have a location. However, we aren't quite a "Local Business" either, since we don't publicly share our space's street addresses—only the space's neighborhood/city/state for privacy reasons. As a result, we get an error from Google's Structured Data Tool as a "Local Business" page because "streetAddress" is required for Local Businesses. Should we switch to the Local Business schema anyway, even though we get structured data errors for streetAddress? Or is it better not to include the location information in the microdata so that we don't have errors? Does Google penalize you for incomplete tags? Any input is appreciated!
Local Listings | | stuartstein0 -
Having two GMB listings at same address
We currently have two verified GMB listings at the same address - I "inherited" these when I joined the company, and was considering merging them, as I am aware it is generally not recommended to have more than one listing per company per location. However, the two listings highlight two different sectors of our company so I decided to keep both and optimised them as best as possible by completing the information, adding pictures etc. One of the listings uses our legal company name, one uses our name that we trade under as an e-commerce business. The listing with our legal company name links to our corporate website and focuses on installations we do, while the listing with our e-commerce business name links to our ecommerce website and focuses on products we sell through there so they differ a bit from each other. Both serve the entire country, so they are not targeted specifically toward local searches. The following differ: Business name, sector, website
Local Listings | | ViviCa1
The following are the same: Address, phone number, opening hours So far we haven't had any issues, both are verified and show up in Google, but recently, we have had the following notification pop up: Fix locations with duplicate addresses__Use shop codes to differentiate locations that have the same address. Click each location and give it a unique address or shop code, or remove it. I'd appreciate some advice as to what would be best in this situation. Should I just add shop codes to differentiate the two listings in order to be able to keep them both? If so, what purpose do these shop codes have, how should I format these and will these be publicly visible within our listings? If you would suggest merging them, how could I ensure that it shows up whether people search for our e-commerce business name or for our legal business name as these are different? Thanks in advance!0 -
Using same business number on different websites
Hello, I have number of websites in different locations with different business name and address with verified listings. However, I am thinking to use the same phone number on all the websites as it is difficult for me to keep track of all the numbers. So, is it okay to use the same phone number on different websites with different business name and address? Waiting for your thoughts. Brian
Local Listings | | BrianBotts.0 -
2 phone numbers in our SERP snippet are incorrect. How do I fix it?
At the special rich snippet at the top of the SERP, we have 5 phone numbers, but 2 of them are for something specific and need to be removed. Do you know how to do this? I've looked up the 2 phone numbers and they appear to only be on PDF documents. Any ideas?
Local Listings | | FOTF_DigitalMarketing0