Citation verifications with phone trees
-
We have several clients whose practices have phone trees enabled for their primary number, which means we aren't able to send automated verification calls for Google, Yelp, ExpressUpdate (Infogroup), YellowPages, etc. Sometimes our clients are able to temporarily disable their phone trees, and sometimes said site's support teams manually verify for us once we have proven our association with the businesses. We just wanted to reach out to see if anyone had alternative solutions or workarounds, since phone trees usually cause a significant hangup. Thanks!
-
Hi Miriam,
I'm sorry to hear that phone trees are an issue for you, as well. Yes, other than the hope of temporarily disconnecting the phone tree, our only other option that we have found is to set up an @domain email and work with a site's support with that added authority. I hope that your teammates have some additional suggestions; looking forward to your response!
Jack
-
Hi Jackson,
Yes, I'm not a fan of phone trees either, particularly as Google doesn't really like them (they prefer numbers that connect directly), and what you've described about temporarily disabling them for phone verification has been the main advice I've seen for some years on this. However, and here's something interesting, Mike Blumenthal recently reported that verification options may be emerging that could bypass phone verification: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2016/02/15/google-mybusiness-now-surfacing-web-verify-option-2/
As for replacing a phone tree with something other than a live human being who directs calls to staff, I'm afraid I don't know. I will ask that some of my teammates pop by to see if anyone has any further suggestions about this.
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
-
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 -
Is it ok to use a mobile phone number for business listings?
Hi all
Local Listings | | coolhandluc
I know the use of 0800 numbers and toll-free numbers are a big No when it comes to NAP but what about mobile phone numbers?
Will google penalise the use of a mobile over the use of a land line? Thanks0 -
Phone number inconsistencies - local search
Hi, Can you help me with something that is probably straightforward? A website which displays a different phone number to visitors to the one in the source code is using this for tracking purposes I assume? Since the phone number in the source code matches with the local citations I am assuming that there is no harm here in terms of local ranking? Thanks
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
How long have to wait for Google verification pin?
Its been 2 weeks we had asked request of Google maps for business local search. Still not received the pin. When can we expect the pin.
Local Listings | | ILDSEO0 -
Local Citation with multiple offices
We have 5 different offices and each has its own google+ page and yell page. At first they were ranking poorly and the wrong offices were coming up for searches in that town so we change the name to :
Local Listings | | EJmoz
BusinessName (Location1)
BusinessName (Location2) Etc. those listing all starting to rank top for searches in Location1 and Location2. We have now been told that it is bad for our overall SEO to have the business name appearing differently in different listings and this led me to look at Moz Local. My question is should I remove the (Location1) from the Google+ business listing so that all our offices have the same name (but obviously different addresses) even though it appears to have a negative impact on rankings? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks0 -
Different phone numbers in local listings
We are setting up Google My Business for a client who has multiple locations around the country. They use different phone numbers to track enquiries from different sources - Yell, Google+, Direct Web Traffic, PPC etc. Therefore the phone numbers can be different between Google My Business and local listings. How much does/would this affect the Local listing? It may appear that Google is penalising for businesses try to understand their customers and where they come from!
Local Listings | | Astute-Media0 -
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 -
Same description for all citation posting
Can we use the same description for all citation posting websites? Does Google considered it as duplicate?
Local Listings | | marknorman0