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.
Removing phone number from GMB = lower rankings?
-
Hey, all! I have a client who needs for people to see her website before they call her, or else she spends 15 min explaining what's already on the site. Her Google My Business rankings are excellent for a lot of keywords (yay!), so people are seeing the number big and bold and just picking up the phone. I called GMB support to ask if removing the phone number would affect rankings, and they said "I don't think so". If this weren't a HUGE deal to the client, I wouldn't take the chance, but she feels that she's losing business by being on these calls when legitimate prospects try to call and get voice mail. So... any experience with removing phone numbers from GMB, or any other creative solutions to the quandary? Thanks so much for reading! ~ Scott
UPDATE: Well, we went ahead and tried it anyway, and our GMB listins on the 7-pack nosedived! STRONGLY recommend against this, at least with the current algorithm!! The phone number is back now.
-
Hey Scott,
That's a tough problem, but removing the phone number would not be a good solution as it is one of the 4 core pieces of NAP+W data that Google and customers need to see about any local business. I wouldn't trust a business with no listed phone number and expect most customers would feel the same about this.
I like Bryan's common sense suggestions on this. What I would like to add is that your thread has made me curious as to what it is about the client's business that is making it so confusing to customers that they need a 15 minute explanation before they understand the business model. Maybe the very best thing to do here would be for you to coach the client into whittling that down to a 4-5 sentence explanation that takes less than 1 minute to explain. Think along the lines of an elevator pitch. No business should require a 15 minute explanation, if we're just covering the basics.
Likely, what the client is experiencing is that it's necessary to then move forward from the basic explanation to the conversation that leads to discovering the fitness of a prospect and then closing a deal. While there is no way to avoid putting in this time, again, it comes down how the conversation is managed. I am thinking back to my own early days when I found it frustrating that I would spend a great deal of time listening to customer's issues and explaining my service, only to discover many minutes into the conversation that their budget did not match my fees. What I eventually learned from this was to mention my rates within the first couple minutes of the conversation. At that point, I would either hear,
"Oh, I can't afford that."
or
"That sounds reasonable."
This helped me determine whether a further investment of my time in the discussion was appropriate. It may be that your client is struggling with something like this and needs to refine her communications so that she can tell the difference between a good match and a poor one within a couple of minutes of answering her phone.
One other suggestion ... have the client answer the phone and then put the customer on hold for 30 seconds. In that 30 seconds, run an automated on-hold message with music and voice disclosing the key components of the pitch. By the time the owner then takes the customer off hold, they will have heard the basics.
-
I can think of 3 options that may help:
- This is the sort of thing for which a secretary or assistant is really best. They can assess which calls would be necessary to forward to her, while taking the secretary's/assistant's time to explain what's on the site for those that aren't. Growth comes at a price, and it sounds like your client is at that point.
- Your client gets a second phone line, which would be used as the number shown on her website's contact section (or wherever those who've parsed the site would see it). Those calls could be forwarded to her original number, and so long as she gets a service that tells her which of her lines is getting the call, she can know (to some degree) which calls are more worthwhile.
- She can set up an automated message that directs callers to visit the website for information before following through with the call. This may deter some business, however, so this option would require weighing the current time lost with the possible lost business.
I hope that helps you out!
-
In my opinion it would be a bad trust signal to remove the phone number from this page. If you wanted to do it however, you would just go into the "manage my page" option and delete the number. Here are the instructions.
Again, this is not really best practice, and can have some negative effects. Consistency across the web is important, and I would think it is even more important in any Google Property.
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
-
Local Landing Page Optimization and Multiple GMB Listings
Hello, We’re building out a site for our business that has close to 100 office locations in different cities. Many of these are ‘partner brands’ that we have acquired under our brand. Similar to a franchise model. We want to be able to help users find offices near their location. Each office will have it’s own landing page with a physical address and contact information. We know we’ll have to build out unique copy and markup customized to the office/location. We’ve already read through https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages as well. We’re also considering ‘silos’ to build out pages for each location. To preserve authority and avoid cannibalization; our thought was having each location as sub-folders off of our domain (i.e. domain.com/locations/Partner#1/). The other option would be using a sub-domain (i.e. Partner.Domain.com/) which we noticed competitors doing and treating each sub-domain as their own independent site. Is all of the above the correct strategy? Any further suggestions? Should we fill out a separate GMB for each office and should they all use the same brand name? (in other words “BrandA” vs. “BrandA” - Brooklyn Office). In addition to GMB; would each location need local listings created (also all under the same name)? Any help or insight would be very much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance. Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R0 -
Way to see clicks on GMB Products
Hey! I just added products to my Google My Business page. The company I work for does experiential entertainment so you cant actually buy the products but you can buy tickets to them on the website so I added them as a product with a Learn More button. Is there a way for me to see how many people clicked "Learn More"??
Local Listings | | danieldaher0 -
GMB best practice for chiropractic office (individual vs. business pages)
For a chiropractic or other doctor's office with multiple doctors, should each have their own personal Google My Business page page AND a business page for the practice? If they just have a business page now, is it worth creating a page for each of the individual doctors? And what if some of them have different focuses (like a acupuncturist and chiropractor), does that mean you should make individual doctor pages when you otherwise wouldn't bother? And IF we should create pages for the individual doctors, should they all have the same address and website since they work in the same practice. Curious if there is a best practice for this... has anyone seen positive or negative results with or without the individual doctor pages? Thanks!
Local Listings | | Mike-i0 -
How Do I Remove Address from Google Business Page?
Not very up to date in handling local listings, so here's my situation. I have an office that is not going out of business, but instead going virtual. So that physical address will no longer exist but the team is intact. So I am dealing with the Google Business Listing page for this office at https://business.google.com/ In the "Published on" section, it has Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+. I want to remove it from Maps and the address from this account. There's an address for this store, but editing it only seems to allow changing, but not removal. There is also the option of "Mark as Permanently Closed", but surely that isn't the best option since that will leave a nasty red "PERMANENTLY CLOSED" in the results when searching. What's the best course of action here?
Local Listings | | nbyloff0 -
[Local Search] Do you get penalized by using a Google Voice number for each seperate business location?
My client is expanding and opening up separate locations and I will be getting all their online business listings up and running. The client wants to use a single 1-888 number for all locations, however, it was my assumption that they would need a local number for each location to improve their ranking. Could I suggest using free Google voice numbers that get forwarded to their 1-888 number or will Google discredit us for this?
Local Listings | | aedesignco0 -
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 | | OrendaLtd0 -
Google Places - Remove Completely vs. Permanently Closed?
This is a bit confusing to explain so bear with me please. We have a client that used to have an old law practice with a partner. The site and backlinks were very large and it had a lot of domain authority. It also had a very large citation profile and history. The two lawyers have since split, but there remains multiple Google Places listings out there for the old partnership. We have fixed the one showing the old business practice name, but not the one that he setup for his personal name. One of the biggest hassles is that the old location he setup has his attorney name in the actual listing. The issue is that we cannot close the old listing (we tried this), as it comes up permanently closed when you Google his name. If you search for his new Law Firm, the correct business listing that we have set up will show. The new listing also includes his name and has over 50 five star reviews. We hoped that the large amount of legitimate reviews would get rid of or at least suppress the old listing, but it is not happening. So I am a bit confused as to what to do. If we close the old listing Google shows the red "permanently closed" listing when you Google his name. We cannot update the old listing information to show his new address as then it will compete with the new listing that we setup that shows all the positive reviews. The old listing was not created by us, and the new one was. The new one shows when you search for his Law Firm name in Google, but not for his personal name i.e "NAME HERE ATTORNEY" or "HIS NAME and LOCATION" Interested to hear your thoughts. The only way I can think to fix this is to contact Google directly and see if there is a way to permanently delete the listing from Google maps, but I am not aware that this is possible.
Local Listings | | David-Kley0 -
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!
Local Listings | | wcksmith10