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.
Two businesses - using separate suite numbers
-
I have a client that has an office in a particular suite (Suite 101) at a local address. They rent the space so they cannot just add another suite number. They are going to have two websites for two different businesses run from the same location. They will have separate local phone numbers for each business. Is it too much of a stretch for them to show one as "Suite 101-A" and the other as "Suite 101-B" for their local pages? One of the businesses is very new with few citations at this point. The other has not started up yet, so we have better control of the citations that will be created.
I've seen similar questions posted, but not one that addresses this specific issue.
Thanks for any advice!
-
Thanks Wick for the extra details. This one is tricky because some of the services will overlap.
Where an SMB may see themselves as 2 different companies, Google often looks at it as a marketing ploy and sees it as really 2 divisions of the same company.
This one is a little hazy to me. I think the only safe way to even try to have 2 listings is if none of the categories cross over. So even though they both do home maintenance of sorts that cat should not cross over.
Does that make sense?
-
The primary site, and business provides services to elderly people in their homes - bill payment, home nurse visitation, home maintenance, etc. to help them stay in their homes.
The second "business" is for a general market home repair/maintenance. Clearly, they will be using some of the same resources but want to try to touch that more broad market with home repair. They will have a separate local phone number. I don't know if its the same personnel answering the phone.
Thanks for any thoughts you may have!
-
Hi Ryan,
Luckily I have not been in that situation. But I have not taken on clients personally for 3 years. So back when I did, merging would have been more of a concern, which leads me to Miriam's question.
1st off, good points all Miriam! Re: merging you are correct. I very seldom see that issue these days which is why no one talks about it, I think.
The bigger question I have for Wick is what industry is each of the businesses in?
And is it a really small company where the owner is answering both phones and is mainly the one doing both services?
Because there is a chance they may not qualify to even have a 2nd listing.
If you can answer the 2 Qs above, I can weigh in more.
-
Good question, Wick!
You know, this really does get into the murky water. We can state the dilemma this way:
-
Google wants a precise, accurate address, as Linda has so correctly referenced. Linda is completely on the money about the use of a suite number where no such suite exists falling afoul of Google's clear guidelines. If I walk up to your door and can't find Suite B, then I've been misled.
-
So, if the business owner follows Google's guideline and doesn't add a non-existent suite, then the reality has to be faced that the risk of merging and duplicates may be increased by adhering to the guidelines. This is the tough part. If I live with my sister and she runs her yoga business out of the same building I'm running my photography studio in, we are both running the risk of Google jumbling our listings up.
-
So, where does this leave us? Basically, it leaves us with possibly having problems with our presence on Google because we are abiding by Google's rules. That's a rather imperfect situation, of course, but is the reality. And it leaves me wondering things like:
-
Whether Google actually would have a problem with a suite number legally obtained from postal or local authorities, even if I don't put up a dividing wall and a second front door for the second business. Wikipedia defines a 'secondary suite' this way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_suite ; it normally has a second entrance. But is this a legal definition? And, is it Google's definition? In my hypothetical scenario, could I technically have a suite with a shared entrance and no interior partition dividing me from my sister's yoga business? I honestly don't know if there is a rock solid answer to this.
-
And, here's one Linda would be better able to answer than I, given her position as a TC in Google's own forum: in instances in which a cluster of businesses have no suites, how is Google's track record of merging looking these days? I've heard they've gotten better at this than the formerly were, but it seems like it has been some time since I've seen much commenting on this topic.
Just some thoughts. I would welcome further discussion on this thread from all community members!
-
-
Hi Linda. I've had some clients in the medical field that fortunately had their own offices--or buildings in some cases--which made this easier, but have certainly seen multiple doctors practicing out of the same suite using a ###+Letter format. Have you come across this in your work? Just curious how you handled it. PM if necessary. Thanks!
-
I'm very much a purist when it comes to the Google Local guidelines, since I deal with fixing problems all day AFTER someone has gotten in trouble.
In my mind sharing an office like this is tricky to handle. Now you likely would not get in trouble for adding a suite, but to me if a suite does not really exist, then it does not exist so it's a little like making up a fake location. Here is the pertinent part of the guidelines.
Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location.
In big office buildings you'll often see 10 businesses that are all at the same address that don't specify a suite at all, so it would look to the algo as if they are all in the same office. So maybe just skip suite on the new listing?
Just my anal-about-the-rules 2 cents.
-
Hi Wick. I've seen this behavior before and it's pretty common amongst doctor offices in commercial settings. For example, here's a listing that uses the 101A format as you're considering: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=Dr.+Barry+M+Zingler+MD%2C+New+Jersey
Just be disciplined in your presentation of the different address, names, and phones so that they always match and you should be well on your way. Also, you might want to clear the A/B differences with the building where they're renting in order to make sure no mail gets lost as well.
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
-
How will changing the phone number on my website affect SEO?
We are considering changing the phone number to our website to one of those 1-800-eat-cows. How will changing a phone number we've had 10 years affect our SEO. Do we need to change all citations, Google maps, etc etc? What if we don't? Thanks!
Local Listings | Jan 31, 2017, 8:07 PM | RoxBrock0 -
Disadvantages to Hiding Business Address on Google Places?
From a Local SEO standpoint, wouldn't hiding a business address on Google Places for Business create an SEO disadvantage in that I would expect in the local portion of the search results, there would be a bias to showing businesses that have not hidden their address as then you can place a pin on the map at the location? Or from a Local SEO standpoint does it not matter if you hide your address or not?
Local Listings | Oct 17, 2016, 4:15 AM | Jazee1 -
Google Business - Adding location into business name
Hello, I've a client that has many services in different locations and addresses with the same website and phone number. But the thing is they want me to involve location name to business name. Is there a way to add and verify as bulk ?
Local Listings | Oct 3, 2016, 5:45 PM | omeryamac0 -
Local SEO Tasks When Closing One Branch of Multilocation Business
I would appreciate the opinions of my fellow SEOs on this one. I haven’t seen any other threads on this exact subject and others that touch on it are somewhat older so I am hoping this also proves to be a good resource for others going forward. I have an existing client that I did local SEO for about a year ago. They are a propane service provider and they had multiple locations. So we did local SEO for the company primarily by updating NAPs and creating more individual content for each of the branches such as specific landing page for each branch on their website and individual listings in citations for each branch. Now they have sold one of the branches to a competitor and they need to remove all listings for it. I am trying to develop a comprehensive list of actions to take and I would appreciate any feedback on the best way to go about accomplishing this task. Here is what I have so far: Remove all mention of sold branch on client website, including specific landing page Delete any branch-specific social media accounts Some specific areas I have questions about are: What do I do with Google My Business listings for the sold branch? Do I try to delete/unregister/close them? Or should I just leave them be with an updated link to our website homepage? Should I even bother contacting the main NAP listing sites to remove the old listing or just leave it to fall off on its own? Thank you again for all your help!
Local Listings | Sep 7, 2016, 10:17 PM | Ayres-SEO0 -
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 | Sep 20, 2016, 3:30 PM | stuartstein0 -
Different Phone Numbers in GMB/onsite
Hello All! I have an issue. I have a local business with multiple addresses, In order to start doing some conversion optimization I need to know where are the leads coming from, my assumption is that part of the leads come from phone calls directly from the google my business listing that appears in the local pack and some come from the website itself. Here's where the problem lays, I cannot understand how many calls come from each platform, Google My Business analytics provides a very high number that doesn't fit with my reports (i have a CRM that can track calls), the numbers are inflated in hundreds of %. The solution i thought of was implementing a different phone number in my website to track the leads, the problem is the NAP, which will be different. Another solution I thought of was implementing an additional phone number in Google My Business, and adding that additional phone number to the local landing page, displaying the new phone number as the main number on the page and leaving the old number in the schema markup. Does this solution seems fit? do you have another suggestion?
Local Listings | Aug 17, 2016, 6:24 AM | OrendaLtd0 -
Local citations from business directories in other countries
Hi all, I normally work for clients in my home county (The Netherlands) and with local citation building I focus on Dutch websites or well know .com websites in the Netherlands. My rule of thumb kinda was, if it’s not known in the Netherlands it isn’t worth getting mentioned there. Since The Netherlands are pretty small and I think Google ain’t perfect I was wondering if it makes sense to list a Dutch business on any .com business listings that are internationally big, but aren’t well known in the Netherlands. Two reasons that got me thinking this direction: A big well known Dutch company offers a service such as Moz local and did integrate their service with several international business listing websites that I never heard off, since these business directories focus themselves on other parts of the world. Google ain’t perfect and I think they got more budget to identify trustworthy business directories with an international focus or a focus on America then with a focus on The Netherlands. So I’m wondering if it makes any sense to list a Dutch business on let’s say the top 20 international business directories (although these directories don’t have any brand recognition in The Netherlands).
Local Listings | May 15, 2015, 7:33 AM | Bob_van_Biezen0 -
2 businesses same phone number
I was wondering how I should approach a scenario where I am optimizing two different companies websites that have the same phone number but different addresses. This sounds like a weird scenario, however it is out of my control. Is treating them as two separate companies fine, or do I have to take special precautions when submitting business directories and what not? Thanks for everyone's help! As a side note, is their a way to use Moz Local with both companies, right now it is getting confused as to what business belongs to what listing.
Local Listings | Jan 24, 2015, 5:04 AM | brfieger0