Editor's note: Since the publication of this post, Google has rebranded Google Places as Google My Business, and has also changed the name of their forum. The contents of this article have been updated to reflect Google's current branding, while maintaining documentation of this important happening in the history of Local SEO. Happy reading!
Last month, the inglorious septic system at my little old home in the country backed up and my washing machine erupted, drowning my laundry room and kitchen in two inches of water. I waded right into the flood at 9 o'clock at night with my arms full of grocery bags, shouted some colorful words and then went online. Nota Bene: do not operate a computer while standing ankle deep in water. Find a dry spot to crouch in first and then use Google's local pack to find a 24 hour plumber. This is what I did, and because I live in a rural area, Google showed me a set of plumbers within a radius of about 50 miles. Naturally, I looked for the closest one to home so that I might not be charged extra for the plumber having to take a long drive to get to me.
I was successful in finding someone to help me, but if my septic system goes wild in the future, I may not be able to select the business address closest to me because Google has just made a major policy change in their handling of go-to-client business models such as plumbers, maintenance men, carpet cleaners and the like. From now on, Google wants this type of business to use the 'Hide Address' function in the Google My Business dashboard. If you operate a business like these ones or are handling the Local SEO for clients who do, you need to know about this change because failure to get with the program on this could result in your listing dropping out of sight. Here's the story:
A Curious Little History
- On February 24, 2012, Andrew Shotland of LocalSEOGuide.com received a phone call from a Google employee who asked him if served clients at his listed address. He answered that he had both local and national clientele. The call ended, and the next time Andrew Shotland looked, his A-listing had vanished from Google Maps.
- Around this time, Google My Business forum Top Contributor, Linda Buquet, (Catalyst eMarketing) noticed that some posts were coming into the forum from business owners whose experience of a phone call followed by disappearance of their listing matched Andrew Shotland's, or who had simply had their listings disappear without any preceding phone call.
- Andrew Shotland started pinging the Places Troubleshooter and received a prompt email from a Google employee quoting an extremely obscure passage in the Google Places Help Files:
What are my options when defining a service area?
Don’t receive customers at your location? Serve customers at their location? Select the “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing” option within your dashboard — if you don’t hide your address, your listing may be removed from Google Maps.
Not one Local SEO I know who has written about this incident had ever drilled down to a place in the files where this information lay buried. After receiving this email, Andrew set his address to hidden, and his listing popped right back.
- Googler Vanessa Schneider began responding to Google Places Help Forum posts about some listing problems with the advice that certain business owners should hide their address.
- On March 22nd the official Guidelines for representing your business on Google were updated to include the following language:
If you don't receive customers at your location, you must select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option within your dashboard. If you don't hide your address, your listing may be removed from Google Maps.
Top Contributor Linda Buquet let me know that she was instrumental in requesting that this language be moved from the old help file out front to the actual guidelines.
The Upshot: If your business doesn't serve customers at your own location, you've got to edit your Google My Business listing ASAP to hide the address.
Why People May Panic Over This Guideline Change
Back in early 2010, Mike Ramsey of NiftyMarketing.com published his results of an experiment with the then-new 'Hide Address' function in what was then called "Google Places". He documented an immediate drop in rankings after choosing to hide his address. Others reported similar incidents, and it became standard knowledge in the Local SEO community that hiding your address was almost certain to result in invisibility. Business owners and SEOs who read about this at the time may now be concerned that Google's new policy will solicit the demise of their local rankings.
In November of that same year, Mike Blumenthal reported that the 'Hide Address' function no longer appeared to be negatively impacting the newer blended local/organic results, but that it still appeared to be affecting the 7-pack and Maps-based results.
Today, Mike Blumenthal left the following comment on my own company's blog:
"Before Venice, the hiding of your address punished your listing. Now that virtually all displays are blended and there is no longer a ranking disincentive, Google is attempting to clean up their approach to businesses based on whether a user should/could use Maps to find them."
The Upshot: It is now believed that choosing the Hide Address feature will not negatively impact any type of local-focused rankings. So don't panic!
Clarifying Your Business Model, According To Google
Thanks to Google My Business forum Top Contributor, Mike Blumenthal, I feel that I have arrived at a fairly clear understanding of how Google is now classifying different business models. I'd like to pass this information on in hopes that it will help you determine whether your business needs to hide its address on its GMB listing.
Type A
Your business is brick-and-mortar and serves all customers at its location. Show your address.
Type B
Your business is home-based and serves some customers at your home and some on the road. Show your address and use the Service Radius tool.
Type C
Your business is home-based and does not serve any customers at your home. Hide your address.
I believe these are the parameters in a nutshell.
Why I'm Not Personally A Fan Of This Policy Change
There are two main reasons that I am not jumping out of my seat to applaud this policy change. The first hearkens back to my experience with needing to find a local 24 hour plumber. If the addresses were all hidden in the local results, I would have no way of knowing which of the plumbers was closest to me. I don't want to be charged extra for a service person having to drive for an hour to get to my house because I didn't know he was 40 miles away. Instead of being able to tell, at a glance, that Plumber A is downtown and Plumber B is two cities away, I'm actually going to have to click through to their website to find their addresses. Thus, Google's change of policy has just made their local results less useful.
My second objection runs deeper. I've been studying Local for about half a decade, now, and it's my considered opinion that Google just makes the whole thing too hard for busy local business owners. I've compared Google before to a circus ringmaster, requiring local business owners to jump through a series of flaming hoops if they want to participate - and, in fact, even if they don't want to participate. Remember that Google started their local business index by creating listings of businesses without any permission from the business owners, themselves. Suddenly, the average local business owner began to become aware that there was a giant, visible advertisement of his company on the web that he hadn't authorized and that was very likely to contain incorrect data about his business. The hoop jumping began.
Over the years, business owners have had to stretch and squish themselves into a variety of odd postures to adhere to Google's ever-changing guidelines, partly out of a wish to be visible, but also out of fear that if they don't get it right, their businesses will surely suffer. While the benefits of visibility in Google's local results are tremendous, you don't have to dig deep to encounter strong, negative sentiment about their manner of interacting with the local business community.
I find it unacceptable that business owners like Andrew Shotland and others apparently had their listings zapped over a policy that wasn't even listed in the official guidelines. Wouldn't it have been more helpful if the Google employees making the phone calls had been instructed to let the business owners know they needed to hide their addresses from now own? Why punish first and then make people scurry around trying to figure out how they had given offense? There are better ways to communicate, and I feel that Google still has a lot to learn about this if they ever hope to win participation in their products that stems from love rather than the disquietude of fear.
Wow, thanks for this! I have a real estate listing and will immediately go to it and hide my address. I was worried that this would negatively impact my rankings, but you've eased my fears. I'll let you know if anything changes in the SERPS when I do this. We currently rank #1-3 for many of our local terms.
Hi Dunamis, So glad you saw this. Now, remember, if you serve ANY clients at your real estate listing, you're still fine to show your address. Most realtors have an office, but maybe yours is modeled a little differently?
Thanks so much for the comment! Miriam
Well now I'm confused...I'm looking at my Places listing and I don't see the option to hide my address. Instead I see this:
"Does your business provide services, such as delivery or home repair, to locations in a certain area?
No, all customers come to the business location
Yes, this business serves customers at their locations"
I'm not sure what to check off. We have a home office but rarely have clients in the office. We do 95% of our work on the road. Would love to hear what you (Miriam) and others think!
Hi Again Dunamis,
With your comment, you have pointed up exactly where the confusion about this is going to arise. My personal take on this - if you serve even 5% of your clients at your address (or even 1%) then you do serve clients at your location.
On your other question, if you choose the 'yes this business serves customers at their locations' radio button, a drop down will appear with a checkbox for hiding your address, or, choosing the service radius feature.
Hope that helps!
This doesn't seem to bode well for contractors who are service providers such as Omaha roofers, plumbers, etc. many of which usually have a place of business that isn't home based. (some do)
These industries rarely have customers visit their physical location even though they may have one.
Having been in the construction industry for 20+ years I can tell you that prospective customers want to know information like addresses, even if they don't actually go and visit the business. Any type of business information that is normally made public shouldn't be hiden from potential customers, not allowing service providers to display this type of information in their places listing leads people to suspect the validity of the company.
Clarifying Your Business Model, According To Google
D. Your a construction/service provider company who has a physical address for your business that's not home based but clients/customers don't visit you because they don't need too to decide to hire you.
Hi Russ,
You have pointed out the most confusing aspect of the whole guideline. In my first post on this on my own blog, I brainstormed this quick list of potential business models this change could affect. Here's my list:
Gas & Electric Companies Cable Companies Phone Companies Local Internet Service Providers Plumbers Taxi Companies Carpet Cleaners Construction Companies General Contractors Painting Contractors Fence Builders Landscapers Maid Services At-home Elder Care Providers Arborists Mobile Notaries Interior Decorators Caterers Photographers Maintenance Men Dog Walkers CSAs Chimney Sweeps Large Animal Vets Window Washers Music Teachers Tutors DJs And let’s not forget…Locksmiths
I'm sure you can add more to this list, but what we've got to reach an understanding about is whether the guideline was intended to refer to home-based businesses or all go-to-client business models. Mike Blumenthal issues some good questions on this here:
https://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/24/is-googles-new-requirement-to-hide-a-home-business-appropriate/
Highly recommend reading Mike's post if you haven't yet. Thanks for your very important comment.
The thing that happens next is Google decides any type of home based operation isn't a legitamate business and therefor ends up penalizing every listing that doesn't display their address in order to abide by the rules.
Why not just add a new field to places where the business owner can specify that they don't take walk in traffic but instead meet clients in the field. herpa derp! Oh sorry that's just to easy!
Hope Google team reads this conversation... Better, sent them some feedback. They will implement it if it is useful for a lot of users. (it is for most of us, isn't it? )
A lot of changes in last time in Google that are not very useful for business owners and users. Wondering what's next :(.
Hi Miriam,
Before today I did not know there was a SEOmoz blog so after reading this thread I signed up straight away!
I appreciate your listing of businesses that would be affected by autocratic action by Google employees... does Google have a users charter or even an omsbudman?
Having business owners that simply do not have the time or inclination to find or even read the small print about their G-places listing it makes it vital that local SEO consultants bring this to the attention of their clients.
I have a client that would like to be listed but he operates a breakdown service from home but vehicles are recovered with their passengers and chattels to their own home or garage of their choice. Why would clients want to visit his home miles off route in the middle of the night?
His website shows a mobile phone number and catchment area. He could be anywhere when he receives a call!
Thanks for giving this problem a good airing-hopefully Google will listen and learn like normal people would!
Miriam thanks for letting people know about this guideline change.
There are so many sides to this and so many related issues, but you did a great job of covering it. I'm sure I'll be blogging about it too and I think I'm going to do some before/after ranking comparison as well.
At 1st I was pretty opposed to this change BUT when you think about the fact that Google guidelines are driven by delivering the best user experience I can see the point to some degree. Example: I find a moving company on maps, drive across town thinking I'm going to their office so I can ask some questions and plan my move, only to arrive at an apartment with no one home. I get it, that's not a good user experience.
When you and I 1st talked about it, I had not yet thought about an example like your plumber sitatution though. From a user perspective there ARE lots of on-site service and repair businesses that charge a travel surcharge. So you are right, in those cases it would be helpful for users to see on a map which companies were close to their location.
Additionally if I have an emergency and a toilet is overflowing or wasps are in my house, I also want to see who's close and can get over quick.
So anyway, it's a big change and I'm glad it's at least out front in the guidelines now so people that read the rules will know about it. But as we know most SMBs don't read the guidelines, so will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Hi Linda,
So glad to see your comment, and thanks for going over the details of some of this with me this past week. The progression of events is a little complicated.
Hi again Miriam,After posting my comment moments ago I got my dander up about this issue and the attitude Google seems to convey. The attitude starts right at the top with the CEO who has stated that those who are not on board should work elsewhere. Regarding places, what I'm hearing Google tell me is - we're putting data online about you and we don't care if it's accurate or not, furthermore even if you try to fix it we'll decide if we like what you have to say for yourself, after all who knows you better than us? we could care less if you're visibility is suffering due to our mistakes for crying out loud if you really want visibility, buy some adwords.
Well put, Chris, and my dander is up, too, on this. I think it's just too complicated. The thing about Google is that I think their motives are generally good. According to Mike Blumenthal, the point of all this is to make sure that people can drive to the businesses in the index...but if feels to me like a decision was made about this without really thinking it through. I don't see the change as a generally beneficial one, because it's obvious to me that some local businesses are ones I drive to and other ones drive to me. Making the addresses disappear for half of the businesses just doesn't make good horse sense to me. Thanks for caring about this, Chris. It deserves attention.
If you read the book "In the Plex" you will understand that from the very top Google doesn't like human interaction. They believe that their systems should be good enought to do what a human does. This has made them exceptional at their core but far lacking when it comes to Customer Service. Google needs a serious humbling lesson on the value of a human point of contact for CS.
"Google's change of policy has just made their local results less useful."
I totally agree with you on this one. Personally, I find myself less trusting of a Google local listing when it doesn't have an address. Even if I never plan to visit this office I like to know that they actually have one. And like you said, sometimes you need to know where a business's home base is to decide if it's the right one for you.
You said it, Nick! Agree.
Agree. And it goes even further. Kind a feel like google lost their focus recently. Pushing all that garbage in the results, so their new products are visible.
It so does not align with what their core values have been in the past. Sad to see that others need ages to profit from those mistakes; meaning the jumping has to continue..
As usual, you explain the problem brilliantly, Miriam! (I highly recommend that anyone interested in local search - even casually - follow Miriam's blog at her website, Solas Web Design).
The question is, why does it seem to be so difficult for Google to communicate adequately with business owners? I mean, they almost seem to be purposely obtuse, like you'd actually have to *try* to be that bad at it.
You know how they say that people choose their behavior - even negative behavior - because of the response they get from it. What benefit does Google get from acting this way? There must be one.
P.S. I was going to give this a thumbs up to try and get you promoted to the main blog, then realized you're already there! Awesome! (I'll still thumb it up anyway)
Hi Lori!
So happy to see your comment. You and I are both Montessori fans. It's my theory that Google's Montessori background has led them to feel that everyone should be responsible for themeselves and capable of working independently, and that this is in tense conflict with their belief that business can be handled by an algorithmically. Algos have done an amazing job with organic SERPs...but the whole approach is wrong for interacting with local business owners, in my opinion. It's an interesting situation, for sure. Thanks so much for your lovely comment.
Hmm...well, I don't want to blame Montessori for this completely :) We also stress cooperation, respect, communication, etc. so it seems that Google is going too far in the "independent" direction and not balancing it out with other traits. Maybe posts like this will be a good wake-up call for them!
Lorisa and Miriam, I am a bit late to this post (business is berry berry good right now), but had to read it after an employee sent it to me and told me they were now ahead of me in what was happening. I had to smile when I saw the Montessori reference as I am a huge fan of the late Maria and what I have seen from that education methodology. (My 14 y.o. 8th grade son began in fifth grade after moving from an acclaimed international school). I cannot say enough about the benefits of Montessori.
Also, I had to thumb Lorisa up for agreement as to what you bring to local. Frankly, I thought I knew a bit until you came along! This is excellent and a great alert for all in local SEO or that have a component in it. I never cease to be amazed at the somewhat tangential approach that Google takes to things and, while I see the Montessori effect (and imablance), I liken it more to a benevolent dictatorship model that has arisen out of perceived necessity. As any enterprise grows, that growth impacts the vision, methodologies, and even core beliefs of the enterprise. Maybe this is from learning that some of the beliefs had flaws or maybe it is driven by exigencies (that need to circumvent a rule or belief that is driven by the stress of the moment or the belief that the need for fast action overrides the rule).
It appears that as an entity Google views itself as the purveyor of good on the whole and it believes that it must make some decisions without really having time to investigate or collaborate in order to promote the most good to the most Googlers. NOTE: I am not passing judgement here. Unfortunately, when that belief rolls down to the line person who is charged with providing the service or with invoking the rule, if sufficient training is not provided the result comes off as, well, shoving it down someones throat. For me, that is often the way I see it: "We are Google, if you want to play on our playground you play by our rules and we change them in the middle of the game sometimes." So, hopefully, Larry is reading our posts and comments....
Best to you both, thanks for breaking up a moment in which I had spent nearly 3 hours answering emails. :)
My educated guess is that they want businesses to lose ranking so that they can pay for some PPC.
Google looks to rank educational/educating/helpful sites, the goal here is to profit off of people who are marketing. By making this update under the rader some companies will probably freak out and PPC local listings.
In fact I remember before Panda many sites that lost ranking started paying for PPC, I am sure Google is keeping track of all this.
Again, just an educated guess...
Google needs a strong competitor, to help them get over their God complex. Maybe it will be Yandex.
Miriam, Thank you for this comprehensive post. This is a pretty big deal...whouldn't you think Google would bring out the trumpets for this one? It's amazing to me that this search giant relies on word of mouth to pass news of this magnitude. What on earth are they doing???
Hi Horicon,
Sadly, Google just doesn't play a local trumpet - only the tiny kazoo of the Places guidelines and it's up to all of us to check them frequently for changes :)
Thank you SO much!This is such an important update, and as someone who serves the plumbing vertical for SEO (in addition to HVAC) this was a real eye opener. We heard from a client who said they got one of these calls. We started to clue into these changes and issues, and your post has blown this issue wide open for us, and I'm sure many others.
What are your thoughts on businesses like these who have multiple Google Places listings, or those who have a couple listings because they truly have 2 brick and mortar addresses but their clients are all serviced off-site? Would the need for 2 listings go away because you can simply hide the address then use the radius tool?
Wow - I hadn't thought of that, Gridless! You write:
"Would the need for 2 listings go away because you can simply hide the address then use the radius tool?"
That is a really good question. What is the point of having 2 listings for go-to-client business models if the address is going to be hidden anyway? I can see why a business owner would now be wondering that. Here's my early-stages thinking on this...though your address may be hidden from the public, it's still in your backend record and Google knows what it is, so I'd definitely not recommend getting rid of the second listing. But, as I've said, you've raised such a valid point. Smart thinking!
Thank you Miriam for your own well thought out guidelines. Having been a home based SMB for decades I can attest to a myriad of hoops, roadblocks, and challenges in trying to compete with the B & M. To be fair though we also enjoy certain advantages. On Google; As a local SEO I'm amused that they seem to be struggling big time to get it right and work out the bugs. I've got clients showing an incorrect address for months. I've verified, used the tools, the forum, had help from Vanessa, edit/submit, done all of this again but still Google insists on showing faulty data. All the rinky dink portals can process an address change in seconds but the Googles of the world can't. Seems to me they ought to begin at the beginning with the correct info before assuming they know more about relevance. Love your work.
Firstly this is an excellent post which provides some great insight. This is an update that I was unaware of, so massive thanks for sharing!
For me Google Places has always been an incredibly confusing tool. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to run through with a client the confusing verification process or why Google has generated an automatic local listing for a client based on data from a third party website, often created with inaccurate information. With this latest update it seems I have another round of challenging client phone calls to look forward to, with the intention of explaining this most recent update.
Also great question raised by menachemp, look forward to seeing some chatter to help determine how much of a ranking factor distance is for businesses with hidden addresses.
Hi SEONorth,
I sent an email to all my clients who fit this scenario. I linked to a couple of posts in the email and did my best to explain the change. Maybe that would work for you, too. But yes, some time will need to be spent on the phone! Good luck!
Oh the Glorious and all powerful Google ..
The fact that I service on site .. (what with everybody and their uncle at times rushing into the office with their flash drives and CD-ROMS wanting something done or fixed) .. was somehow lost on Google I guess, when our *places listings was removed.
80% of our bread and butter is local/regional .. and I'm really glad that we were established way before this whole local listing deal came along with Google.
I'm not worried about any of the presumed loss. What I worry about is that Google decides these things on-the-fly, without ever bothering to call or visit.
Miriam,
thanks for this but I'm still not sure what to do about it.
There is a fourth tyoe of business, that of a consultatn who would servce customers at both their own offices and their clients' locations.
And what if you serve both local and international clients via the web? Surely Google has heard of the web and online business?
If I select the No option then I can set the local radius on the map for the areas I serve. Useful if you're covering your metro area.
If I select Yes then there is no option for the areas I serve.
While I understand your articel, I still not sure what the best option is. Both seems to be comprimised.
I agree with you that I'm not a fan of this heavy handed condition.
Hi Mark,
I *think* what you are describing would fit my description of business B:
Type B Your business is home-based and serves some customers at your home and some on the road. Show your address and use the Service Radius tool.
But what I also can see is that people with both local and national/international clientele are going to be very worried that if they set a service radius of say, 30, miles, is that going to send an overall signal to Google that they are less relevant nationally or internationally? That would be quite a legitimate question, and while the answer is probably 'no', your comment does an excellent job of pointing out the signficant grey area surrounding the new guideline.
I would like the guideline to be more explicit. Thanks for your good comment.
Just a note here: Google has again updated the guideline regarding this. Go read it. See if you feel clearer about the altered language.
Never a dull day in Local!
Great post Miriam. It's good for the Moz community to be aware of this sticky detail.
One place where this policy change can actually help is for spammy businesses using virtual addresses. It can be a deterrant to get a fake address in the center of the city because you run the risk of real customers showing up at it. Not a risk any more.
So, this is bad news for legitmate businesses, and good news for people trying to game Google Places.
That is very good point, Whitespark. Ugh. Thanks for bringing it up and now that you've written it, it seems like an obvious potential outcome. I hadn't thought of it. The big question is - has Google?
Just a word on "spammy businesses using virtual addresses", and being good news for people trying to game Google Places. I dissagree.
I know what you're saying, but consider this -
I have a client who is a very legit business owner - a 20 year house painter by trade. He chooses to live and have a warehouse in a rural part of the area surrounding Kansas City. The vast majority of his clientele live in suburban Kansas City, about 25 miles from his base of operation.
In the past, we have used his physical address in for Places and other local search directories. He has gone through a long process to start ranking for "Kansas City" and the subdivisions he actually works in due to his actual address. Last year he got a mailbox address right in the center of where he does most of his business and TADA - he finally ranks very well, WHERE HE NEEDS TO BE.
So, he is not trying to game Google, just trying to be listed where his customers are. My thoughts/suggestions on other blogs has been for Google to allow at least one, maybe up to 5(?) cities or areas that the business wants to be their primary business area. I don't really see how hiding his address is going to help him, but defining where he actually does business will. Your thoughts?
Rob, I think is where choosing your location will allow your client to rank for that area. In the past, it was the kiss of death in rankings to hide your address, but in recent updates from Google Places you don't seem to suffer a ranking loss. Citations still work as per usual b/c citations are not about location it's about trust. If they see you have them.
Personally I wish they kept the address b/c I think there is more trust in a business (even when it is a mailing address). I think mailing address should be allowed for at your door services and Google needs to re-think this. It'd be better for them to simply just acknowledge that a location is is a mailing address only or something about appointment only type business.
I think that if you mailing address is still within the same general area of your services area and that the area code of the local phone matches that area, all will be fine.
It'd be an interesting test to see if one can rank a GP listing now with a hidden address from a different city/state, but with a local number.
I also wonder than is more weight put on local phone numbers over address with Google Places rankings. Is real core main data that is important phone and business name.
More food for thought.
Google doesn't seem to be enforcing this yet. I searched on Roofers in Mountain View, CA (home of Google) and all the roofers from position A to G (except C) had address showing in the results. Obviously people do not bring their house to the roofing company's business address to be repaired, so this rule should definately apply here. Am I missing something here?
Hi PogiFitz,
This is not the type of situation in which Google has acted across the board, in one fell swoop dropping all records that don't meet the guidelines (at least, not yet). Instead, the guideline indicates that your listing MAY dissapear if it doesn't comply with the rule. Hope that clarifies this situation for you.
Hi Miriam, I asked a question earlier on in the discussion and no one replied. So I have been out and spoken to a few friends who are big in in the local space, and asked my question:
"If a business has both, clients to their office and they go out, how will Google be able to tell and not penalise when you DO NOT click - "Do not show my address"?"
Their responses have all been the same, if it is a business that Google believes only goes out to their clients offices or premises like - Window Fitters, telephone engineers etc, then you are best off clicking the "Do Not Show My Address" even though you have both occurences happening...
Whats you take on this?
Brian
Reporting from the field in SW Florida - I read this post @ 2pm EST today and went to check the results from a Google Pages services company listing I updated 48 hrs ago. The address was changed to hidden and retained the 50 mile service area that appeared with the address pre-update.
There were two changed results.
First) the Places listing moved up 18 positions and the maps listing moved up proportionally.
Second) the maps listing location marker pin which was precisely placed by a kml file is gone and has been replaced with a round bubble (tail-less pin) that is no longer geo-targeted but now in close proximity.
My client will be pleased with his ranking improvement. I followed the rules and it worked this time. lol
Hi Morepiemarketng,
Thanks for your report from the trenches. Good to hear.
Thnx for the info ! after reading this surely have to change address places from map :)
https://gfxtra.in
Hi,
Thanks for the heads up! I hadn't even looked at the map listing in a while and also noticed that I had to change some oter details.
This is why my husband and I have a subscription to Angie's list. We may only have one major home repair every two years..but believe me..it pays for itself. Mary Kay
Thanks, that was interesting - we're still a 'type A' I think but we will keep an eye out for some of our clients.
Thank you for that great post!
But what should I do, if my bussiness serves customers in whole europe but also has a local store in only one city?
So, 70 % of our business is e-commerce, 30 % local. Should we now set a huge radius? Or should we hide our address?
Thank you
Hi G. Petermeir,
Presumably, your local clients are coming to you from nearby locations, right? You shouldn't set a huge radius and you shouldn't hide your address, if this is the case. If all your local customers come to you, you should not use the service radius tool. If you are going to your local customers, you should use the service radius tool. Your local marketing is reflective of the local part of your business (the in-person transactions at your store) not your continental e-commerce business. Hope this helps!
Thank you for your answer.
But let me get that right: We deliver throughout Europe AND people near the local store can buy items.
If I select: "No, all customers come to the business location", I fear, Google will punish the online-shop, because it may think we are only a local store.
If I select: "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations", it would be true, because we DELIVER goods to their locations. But we would have to set a HUGE radius (= Europe).
As our buisness is both, a local store AND an e-commerce business, I want to have punishments neighter for the local store nor for the website. But the main target is, to increase traffic to the online shop.
So, sorry for me not understanding it right, but should what option shop we set? Thank you very much.
Hmmm... this begs the question - will it no longer help to have multiple places listings for different cities in a metropolitan area? If the business is a go-to-you business, then according to this update they should hide their address, so it would then seem to be a waste of time for a business owner to manage multiple listings in the hopes of ranking better for each individual city... or does "The Google" still see the address in the background and use it for ranking?
Thanks for a great article Miriam, this applies to a lot of the clients I deal with here in the UK so about to update their listings. Very informative blog site as well.
Excited to hear about any successes that come from this.
I heard about this yesterday. It is amazing this information isn't more widely known.
I also agree with your opinion of Google penalizing without prior notice. I sailed to an island south of Florida where the running joke was the Dictator would throw 10 people in jail for 20-years then announce their crime a month later.
Deindexing sites certianly gets people's attention but it does damage long term loyalty.
Thanks for all the work.
Heres another question. With no physical address, how can a customer choose you in Google Places to leave a Review for your company? Is that affected by this at all?
Thank for your sugestion
That last paragraph was one of the best things I have ever read in regards to Google and the way they do business. It may work now, but it is not sustainable long term to operate out of fear.
Hopefully they will read this and realize that their decisions effect lives for the better or worse, and they need to make decisions that are fair. Maybe this is a pipe dream, for anyone that has been in this business long enough...
OK, so how is Google actually going to know what business does what? My clients have both clients visit them at their office and serve at their location. So obviosly I do not want to hide address, however, my concern is that Google will do a blanket - well this business is obviously one that goes out to clients, and they have not hidden address so DELETE?
Thoughts please guys :-)
Brian
Is this just an American thing so far? I can't see any option to hide addresses in any of the UK listings I manage...
Christopher
You need to click the roundable that says "Business Serves Clients at their location"
Then there is a tick box that says:
"Do not show my business address on my Maps listing"
If u need any help give me a shout, I'm in the UK too
Brian
Hi Christopher,
From what I've been able to ascertain from colleagues in Local in Europe, this has not been added to the guidelines yet. However - this does not mean that that policy is not in place. Forewarned is forearmed. Remember, folks were punished in the USA before this ever made it into the Google Places Quality Guidelines. Right now, I believe only the USA and Canada are seeing the revised guidelines, but it's my opinion that the policy is actually global.
Great Info. I believe, since my company is in the middle category, that I've not gotten slapped on this yet, but I have many clients that will be effected. Really appreciate the heads up and will keep watching for further up-dates as your information on this blog is very reliable and timely. Thanks.
In fact, I am locked out of those listings, and all other various related, duplicate, and derivative privacy deletes.
Hello i am Darren Butt I enjoying reading your articlesIm looking forward to read morepost from you.
Hi Miriam,
Google Places have little credibility. Given there is no moderation of reviews, and how near impossible it is to remove fake ones, why would anyone take these listings seriously?
A disgruntled seo company we once hired actually posted a fake negative review on our places page from one of their other customers accounts, without their knowledge. The account holder who was subject to identity theft by the dodgy seo removed the review. But we have a few other negative reviews which I am certain were not posted by members of the public. The language is similar to the known fake one I mentioned. Have flagged with google for the past 6 months and received no response or outcome.
And yes, we do have positive reviews outweighing the bad but I still want them removed because they are fake, and prospective customers dont know they're fake.
Our lawyer has contacted the seo who denied posting the remaining fake reviews.
And I know, I know someone is going to say "even if you get them removed the dodgy seo will keep posting more". Maybe true, but we have legally warned and put them on notice. The problem is evidence of future reviews and googles complete lack of moderation or care for small business reputation. This situation I find sickening because it makes us feel really vulnerable.
Is there any practical way to get fake reviews removed without litigation?
> Google Places have little credibility. Given there is no moderation > of reviews, and how near impossible it is to remove fake ones, why > would anyone take these listings seriously?
The majority of people don't have any background information on issues similar to what you just mentioned and trust google places. Also the places listing show up in the prime spots for a number of queries and so do the stars from the reviews. A lot of people trust that star rating initially and don't think how it came to be, etc..
> And yes, we do have positive reviews outweighing the bad but I still > want them removed because they are fake, and prospective customers > dont know they're fake.
Don't get me wrong but this sounds weird. You're practically saying that you want only good reviews because they MUST be true and the bad ones are fake. I think it's hard to prove that (except for obvious stuff like using the exact same terms / order / etc, which I am sure Google already has some algo in place to identify.
It's basically the same problem all UGC shares. It can be manipulated much more than "conventional" content. There you have to pay the gatekeepers if you want to manipulate.
Not true. If it transpired that the positive reviews were also fake, then I would not want those either. I'm more suspicious of negative reviews though and I admit that's my bias as a business owner. In any event, the negative 'reviews' are not mere sour grapes from upset customers. They are malicious attempts to defame our reputation by a sick and unprincipled excuse for an seo company who didn't get their way with us financially.
I have a client who is a plumber he was in the top 7 of the maps for all his keywords. Google contacted him had him remove the address and resubmit. He did that and they took 8 months before they showed his listing again after repeated emails requesting it be re-included as it meets their rules. However two weeks later he dropped out of the top 7. The worst part is all his competitors list their address on their map listing except for 1 and they are all in the top 7. Google should hit them all up in a niche not just one or two and let the rest ride the free ride.
I had my business listed for almost two years and was back and forth between the number one and two positions on the map listing. Lots of positive client reviews, and getting tons of traffic from both organic and Express ads I ran. One day I got a phone call asking directions to the "shop" which I unfortunately explained was only a mailing address. Never mind that I *do* service customers in the immediate area surrounding this address, and could in most cases even physically appear there on short notice if needed. That day my listing was removed, and nine months later even though I now have a physical office with a full time receptionist on duty I can't get it restored. Seems there is some mysterious "engineering problem" that is being worked on behind the scenes and that "some day, but we can't tell you when your site will be reviewed and if it meets our terms of service it will be restored." Every couple of months I check in, and am informed that I am "in the queue for review"... In my opinion, considering the juice that maps can give to a business, there should be a paid option that provides some level of customer service and accountability. As it stands, a listing can vanish overnight, and associated traffic with it and there is no recourse.
This article is spot on, and very helpful. I have a listing that is a service, and have a website that ranks on the first page for five keywords, but could not figure out what was wrong. I had two problems that others here could encounter. One was the address not set to (hide the address). The other was a problem with the categories. After adding everything to the listing I could think of but a blood sample, my listing was still showing 86%. The categories were hurting me also because adding more than one was causing it to show the last one I picked which was the ones I did not really want to show. Later on, after trying it several ways, I noticed if I added three categories it went to 100%.
The problem is for some people, the other categories do not really reflect what you really do, or want to use to define your search.
The most aggravating thing I have noticed is businesses that have not even claimed their listing with no website, no web presence at all in the top of the list. And 3 out 7 were not even in the town I was searching for the service.
That is why this article really nailed it, and wonder why people even use Google anymore when you really are looking for local business. It is insane.
Thank you for posting this.
Dear Staff and SEO people,
I'd like to extend this discussion and arguments, to this behavior.
Looks like that the recent google localization processes, does affects also the websites that DOESN'T deal / have to do with google maps and places.
There is the point of the local service provider / business owner that focus on the local business, but there is also the counter part: those services that carries by the mean of national couriers and those services that can be delivered through the internet contacts.
The example of Mrs. Miriam who wrote this useful article, is pretty matching: why to search one plumber in NJ while we are in FL? (I'm exaggerating, but this gives the idea)
So, let's say I'm a plumber in NY, I DON'T have any google places account, but I do have my nice little website: when a New Yorker citizen searches for a plumber, I'd like to be listed in the first results and I may either reject the idea to be listed in Miami!
On the counter side, let say I'm a freelance web developer or web designer, that exactly for the opposite reason, I don't want to appear on google places at all: my service is a tele-service, so where ever someone searches for "freelance webmaster", I want to be listed in the first results, no matter if the search is made in Alaska or in Texas!
The point is this: we have made some cross checking searching for some keywords searches (just and really few) and looks like that this distinction is NOT considered.
The distinction I'm talking about is between MUST BE LOCALIZED services/business (there are tenth of examples, I tell you another: let say you are living in Maine... would you buy your new car in California?) and NATION WIDE remote services/business.
The help to LOCALIZED/LOCAL BUSINESS/SERVICES comes from google palces, who is local and likes to result ONLY in local searches, may focus on google places an maps... but WHAT ABOUT NATIONAL SERVICES? <--- Please note: forget about the issue "google maps and places", let's talk about those national business that don't even care about google maps: they want to be found in SERPs they DON'T care at all to be found on google palces.
Well, the above said point is that: basing on our tests, it is obvious that local shops delivering some generic services on some type of "service", penalizes those companies focus-ed on that kind of "service", one service that they would/could realistically provide in a better and more professional and effective way, but goes to be listed in the second page, because the first page may result filled of local websites generically providing that "service" (sorry for the long period, I hope this gives you the idea). In our point of view, in the mean time, this penalization, penalizes the person that makes the search, because they may stop to first results and finish to be served by some one that only claims to be able to do that job, job they may only know in theory, while the only job they have been able to do is to place the right phrase on their website.
ADDITIONALLY: what about one NATIONAL service or business located in a low density living area against those located in NY or LA? Why it should survive, while the others could get a lot of visits?
The conclusion is:
( and AGAIN, for a moment, forget about google places, here I'm talking about companies that DOESN't have any google palces account, but only their website, google analytics and webmaster tools ) How to setup the html code to specify to the crawlers and bots that "this" website is NOT for LOCAL business but instead it is intended for NATIONAL business?
Could this "game"/trick have been done to force the use of ad-words?
The other is: do you have any info regarding the whole above reasoning? I mean, any practice to make the website to appear as NATIONAL?
Anyway, google developers, should think a little about this, because like the crazy idea about rich snippets (see schema.org) (crazy because it would make the HTML code so huge), @ google they would better to provide some "TAGs" to allow to distinguish the website area pertinence,
exactly as for the show/hide address and service radius tool on google places.
something like :-)
where 0 miles, mean unfinished
service within 200 miles
set miles amount of your interest :-)
maybe to be set in the site verification .html file or where they would prefer...
or (a bit longer to do) they should classify all the activities/services/consultants/business and "decide" their "area pertinence"
wouldn't it be nice?
Thank you for any opinion and reply
Robert
If my business serves people nationwide in the UK (a classified website) should i have a Google Places listing or not? I don't want Google thinking we're a local business as we're an online nationwide business. We currently have a Google Places listing but i'm thinking of deleting the profile. Any advice would be greatly appreciated before i take the plunge....
Hey guys,
Great post about google places, I run a small plumbers website at www.plumbersbournemouth.co and i am trying to really boost it up on google so I decided to put it up for google places one day to try and get it on to the front of page 1. I am glad I read this article when I did, I have now hidden my address to help me :)
Thanks SeoMoz
Hi Miriam, Thanks to you and Mike Blumenthal and Mike Ramsey for this excellent information. A related issue is selecting a radius -- do you know if Google prefers businesses selecting a relatively small radius? The temptation would be to select a relatively large radius, but I suspect Google might do something like divide a reputation metric by the area of the circle. Am I being too careful? Thanks again, Paul
I know this blog is a couple of yrs old now, but I'm wondering if this is still Google policy?
I've just seen my business lose almost all of it's information including it's description and address. We deal with clients mostly at their address, however we do, although rather rare, deal with clients at our address for private photo shoots. I've contacted Google and had absolutely no reply, and now I don't even appear in google searches. What is the best way to contact google? There isn't even an option to hide my address.
Hi,
What do you suggest for a fly in fishing lodge? The lodge is located in northern Canada and it is accessible by float plane only. The location of the lodge does not have an address.
However, we have two addresses to receive postal mail. One address for the months that the lodge is open and one address is used when the lodge is closed for the winter. Postal mail is flown from the P.O. Box addresses to the lodge in the summer. In the winter, the mail is forwarded to the owner's home.
Is there a way to show the true location of the lodge? Do you have advice on this type of situation?
Thank you for you help,Tricia
I own a carpet cleaning business in New Orleans Louisiana and I have always done the SEO work myself( Writing articles and filling our directory's) and I had great success.. It only took me about 4 months to reach the top for my #1 keyword (new orleans carpet cleaning).... well about 8 months ago google deleted me because they claim I should have hidden my address due to the fact that my business services customers at THEIR location... even though we have a rug warehouse and customers bring their rugs to us. ANYWAY after months of getting re listed and then deleted 3 TIMES We finally are back with our address hidden but we have dropped down to 6th Place...I know I may be sounding greedy I really need to be in the top 2 or 3 to get very many phone calls. Can anyone help?
Hi Miriam,
I read this back when you first wrote it and didn't have any problems with it, however with the debacle of moving Places over to Google+ Local I find I have to revisit it all over again.
(Re-enter the circus and start hoop jumping.)
My places listing has gone into Pending after years of being OK.
Google+Local seems to be totally dysfunctional. Even though I have G+ page, Google says it can't find it.
I also have G+ verification on my website and Google still can't find the business.
Reviews have completely gone.
I've done everything Google tells me to do and I've been totally screwed over for a business listing.
I don't think this issue is over, not by a long shot.
Thanks for the awesome blog and i deleted my address. Hopefully my business listing will pop up again soon since I just notice listing has been deleted. I agree 100% to the comments regarding Google's lack of humanity toward small business. While I am greatful for the tools they provide for advertising, they also are killing my business in peak season this fall now that it is not found on searches and in pending status. I hope more and more people start blogging these common issues we are having with Google's lack of communication and access to fix the problem. There is no reason someone should have to wait several month to get business relisted. Maybe they will wake up if enough people complain. As one person here mentioned, Google needs strong competition for them to loose their "God Complex." Imagine if they keep getting more powerfull and control and dictate all information if an evil CEO took over one day. Let's continue to fight darkness with love.
By the way, to all you paying members of SEOmoz: is it worth being a paying member? Are the tools here effective and useful? Does it optimize your listing and give you a return on investment?
I feel for you. It is one of those things that when you know how they work, you can't believe anyone would put any type of faith in it. But sadly most people will take whatever the big G tells them. A friend of mine told me on another forum that one of his clients competitors edited a lot of their local citations and google place profile as closed.
He was able to get the google places listing back, but I am sure he had to spend all day going around to places like yelp to make sure the business was listed as open for business. Negative SEO was always possible, but this new penguin update has just made it too easy for the bad guys. Think of how many people are trying to do SEO by themselves on their own site with the best of intentions and they are tanking. Now imagine if they were actually trying to make it fail. Negative SEO should not be this easy.
By the way if you ever want to read some glaring fake reviews. look up any hotel on trip advisor. Some are clearly written by the hotel sales office. Other are written by customers who think they are the mafia. Because they know if they complain enough during their stay, write a negative review, that the General Manager is going to invite them back free of charge because of 'all of their issues'
This is a great article and perfect timing. Just creating a new google places page for 1st Impression Marketing, https://www.1stimpression-marketing.com and since they fall into the middle category of some customers at home/office and some on road, will list address but use radius. Thanks, your a life saver, this is great actionable info!
Hi Miriam,
Hopefully you are still responding to people on this post. :) We run a business that serves people in the US and Canada (not to mention elsewhere), and we do not currently have a Places listing. We sell inventory that is shipped directly to the customer that can be ordered online, and/or over the phone. No one ever comes to our place of business, and it is our home as well.
My question is... Is there any reason to have a Places listing? Would it help us, hurt us? What recommendation would you have if we did in fact set one up?
Thanks!!!
Blake
I would be more bothered if G places actually sent any meaningful traffic to sites, rather than the measly 1% or less CTR - and that's in a hungry niche!
I've noticed this in more than one local niche over the last couple of years. It was worth the small amount of time to list your site in the beginning, but now I just don't bother with it really, never mind any scary Google changes :)
Maybe it's different for other people, but my research into other people's experiences tells me otherwise, I guess people skip down to normal serps - could explain the advent of blended serps.
Awesome article!
Just found out, my companies google places account has been suspended due to "quality guidlines".
As of a month ago this wasn't the case, so here I am.
How would a Hotel be viewed by google? I'm not sure if google relates to my business as a "service"
very useful article... i didnt know all these... its not a very transparent policy which would create barriers for the type c business people...
The article mentions my own major complaint about all this: that most of my customers want to know where I am.
Problem is, most people don't understand the difference between a red circle or a red lollipop on Google Maps. Also, if the customer is not looking directly at the Map but trying to judge distance by looking at the addresses, they'll skip over the ones with no addresses showing.
Worse, the service closest to them might not be on Google Maps at all because Google's knocked them from the Maps for not being a brick-and-mortar shop. And if Google has bumped them from the Maps once, then if that business manages to figure out how to get back on, then Google will just knock them right off again even if they're obeying the new rule and hiding their address. (This has happened to me three times now).
The article mentions an idea about Types A, B and C services. That contradicts the email exchange I had with the Google employee that was investigating me the SECOND time that I complained to them about this. Here's the email to me from the Google employee: "Thank you for contacting Google. I mentioned that your business was not mobile business and did not have to hide your address. So I would like to confirm, at the address of XXXX, you do have a contact with your customer and serves them constantly at the location? Let me know."
I don't know what the "I mentioned" phrase since this was our first contact. But I answered to emphasize that I had NEVER said it's not a mobile service but just exactly the opposite, and as a mobile service I HAD in fact hidden my address BEFORE I had been removed from the Maps. She eventually got it sorted in her head, and then on the Maps, and I was temporarily restored to Google Maps.
But notice the bit about "do have a contact" and "serves them constantly at the location". That strongly suggests to me they want you to be either 100% one way or the other about this, no "sometimes they come to me, sometimes I go to them".
This information about the new rule is still rare. It's there in the Guidelines but even Google Employees who work to answer these complaints still do not mention it to anyone. If you do much searching about "We Currently Do Not Support The Location" you still find SEO's, and Google Employees too, discussing a "bug" in Google's system and advising people to hold on and Google will eventually get around to solving the problem. The best advice out there (the one that I have to resort to once each month), is to report to Google: https://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs
Click on "Incorrect info on your Places listing?"
Then select "I have verified my listing in my Google Places for business account."
Then select "My listing no longer appears on Google Maps or is incorrectly marked as closed."
Then give them your "official email address used to manage this business on Google Places for Business" and "complete physical address of the listing in question".
I usually note in the entry field that this is the Umpteenth time this error has happened.
So far they've responded within a week after submitting the report. But as I've said, there's no guarantee that in 2-4 weeks afterwards it's not going to happen again. Then again. Then again. Etc.
I just decided to do a little experiment. We have remote office listings in nearby cities and a while back Google called us to try to ferret out ones that it then went on to deprecate completely from the listings. However, they're still active as entries in our Google places acct. To try a little experiment, I just went to one of those that had disappeared from search results and added a PPC campaign for it with "Adwords Express". I speculate that that listing will suddenly reappear in the SERPs. We'll see...
I want to comment about your review system for your Google business listing. I am a small business owner in Toronto and rely heavily on Google to reach to my potential customers. However like any business you will have an unsatisfied customer who will be hell-bent in destroying you. As a business owner you learn from your mistakes, improve and move on. However you’re rating system allows it so negative reviews will linger on forever on a business listing, scaring off future customers, even though as a business you have improved. Literally one negative review can seriously hurt your business, while 3-4 can destroy your business (even if they were made years ago!) This is not an exaggeration, ask any small business owner, our Google listing literally makes or breaks us. Now I’m not saying don't allow negative reviews at all, future customers must be warned of companies with poor ethics, however I believe there should be a time limit for these reviews. After several months (or a year) a company should be given the benefit of the doubt that they have improved and the negative reviews be removed so the positive reviews may reflect the new status of that company. I hope you deeply consider what I'm saying, I have taken every measure to learn from my past (improving our system and letting go of employees that have caused a negative image) but I am still paying for those mistakes today! Please Google hear me out, its time you stand for the small business owners that so heavily relay on you and apply these solutions. You can reach me at [removed by staff]. Thank you for your time.
Hi James,
Thanks for your comment! Just a quick note that this blog is not connected with Google, and they may not be reading the comments on this post since we're not affiliated with Google. We removed your email address so you wouldn't get random spam there.
If you have a business that is neither model - e.g. an e-commerce site that does not receive customers at a physical location, does not go to customers, all business is transacted across the web - does this mean a Places listing is useless, or would there still be some search benefits to having a listing marked without a business address visible?
Here, thank very much, please complain about all these listings of mine, they cannot be removed by me, by any known means.
PVC Computing
SOS Students Offering Services
Slots A Juices
Juices A Plenty
Commerciatek, Inc.
Executive Offices
All in Saint Louis County.
"I can't believe they are so friendly as to delete your listing for you" Thanks very much.
This was very timely and invaluable. I had recently submitted my personal Google Places listing and was conflicted over this decision. My listing was even denied because of the location. Thanks for sharing great content!
Thanks for the great post. I am experiencing multiple problems with Google Local too and this certainly helped clear one of them up. The strangest thing I have noticed is that the Google Places Listing is different from the Organic Search Listing address. The Google Places is correct, but the live listing never sticks no matter how many times is it updated or they call the owner. I agree Google needs to step this up. Very good points.
Hi Miriam - this is a very interesting post - thanks for bringing this to the attention of myself and the rest of the community. I wasn't aware of this change, but this is a great heads up!
Hi Miriam,
Useful bit of knowledge I would say.
For the last months we've been working on some (.nl) websites featuring a powerful local search function for just these businesses and the like, channeling nationwide demand back to the local area. So this is of value to me. thanks
JW
Hi,
I have online ecommerce site and I operate it from London office and we deliver shipment in whole Europe. We don't provide any physical services from our office to the customers.
Should I hide my business address from my Google place listing?
Pleaes let me know.
Hi Hexpress,
Virtual business are not local. The e-commerce business model you describe would not really qualify as local in any way.
Hi MiriamEllis,
Thank you for your attention.
Then how can I get benefit from Google place listing, if I want to target UK market specifically in Google place?
Do let me know your suggestions.
All suggestions are highly appreciable.
Google is actually changing its different product policy for quite a long and this time its Maps... In my opinion doing this might help the small business owners as when there will be no address available all businesses have the equal chance to win the game and anyone can get the leads... but at the same time these results might hurt the users as discussed above.
I do understand that Google is a business but what they should realize is the fact that they business is dependent upon happy users and if they are not happy there are alternate available as Yelp is already doing a very good job!
@Miriam, great post really inshightful info, but here I'm bit confused; if I'm going remove all address for google or any where, then how the customers will find me? or that was the way for local optimization.
Hi Manojpallai,
If customers come to your address, then you are a type A business and do not need to hide your address. This is for businesses that do not have customers come to them. Hope this explanation helps!
Miriam
Great post, Miriam! Google Places needs a lot of work in general, not only in the policies as you pointed out, but throughout the entire tool as well. When will we be allowed to have multiple admins on one listing? Google puts very little effort into making Places easy for business owners. It can be a crucial part of ranking but so many business owners overlook it just because they don't understand it.
"Google puts very little effort into making Places easy for business owners."
Couldn't agree more, Tim. They have made substantial improvements over the past year, but yes, communication is nowhere near where it should be. Agreed. Thanks for your comment!
Thanks Miriam. I've already made changes to some of my clients Places pages because of your post. Cheers.
Great post! We actually have a client who recently dropped off Google's local results, and we've been trying to find out what happened ever since. We'll have to investigate this issue and see if we've found our culprit.
You might also try looking at the Venice update as a culprit as well. It went largely unnoticed, but is really affecting many local listings.https://www.seomoz.org/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update
It would be a shame to see the history of a places listing dissapear due to this. Thanks for the heads up I'm sure you've saved people much aggrevation!
I have another question...As mentioned in the article, Google is occasionally calling businesses with local places listings to ask questions about the local business. In some cases, the listing has been removed because the response on the phone was not satisfactory. The question, I believe was whether or not you service clients at this address.
So, should we be instructing clients that they may get this phone call from Google? In my case, my husband, who is in no way an SEO would be the one answering the phone. As he is a realtor, if he was asked if he serviced clients at this address he would say "no". However, as mentioned before, clients do occasionally come to the office to sign paperwork.
I'm going to instruct him that if Google calls and asks if he sees clients at this address, to make sure he says yes. Is there anything else they are likely to ask?
Hi Again Dunamis,
Andrew Shotland's post, which I've linked to in the article, summarizes his conversation with the Google rep. I'd expect it to go something like that and haven't heard of other questions that might be asked. Your question is a good one, though.
It doesn't make any sense to me, one of the criteria for selecting a local tradesman is location, particularly if you live in a rural area. The local results have now lost some of their added vlaue.
Great post! Bookmarked and will make changes accordingly! You have done a very good anlysis of Google's analytics . But the type C business is not clear to me. Hope anyone here can help!
Thanks!
Thanks for the update.
This Google update assumes that only customers are looking for my address. We operate a warehouse that ships products for our web store. We don't want customers to come by - but sometimes we let them.
But that doesn't mean we don't have anyone looking up our address. We have truck drivers and delivery drivers of all sorts coming through our warehouse almost daily. I know for a fact that some of them have found our physical address location because of Google Maps and/or Google Places.
What to do here? On our Google Places it clearly states that we are a warehouse only and do not service customers at this address. But I do want to keep our address and map online because customers are not the only people who come to our warehouse and need our address online in an easy to find place.
laurentmunier,
You raise more issues that need to be considered. I'm just not sure the guideline is spelled out well enough for every situation.
What Mike says here is totally applicable to your sitution and I think he's asked Google to clarify or re-write. See the 2nd and 3rd paragraph under #4.
https://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/24/is-googles-new-requirement-to-hide-a-home-business-appropriate/
In part Mike wrote: "Many businesses have a physical location but do not receive customers at that location. They do however conduct business meetings there, receive vendors there, do employee interviews there and need to be able to be found on Maps. And one would think that Google would want to be able to provide driving instructions for those locations and did not mean to exclude them with a rule."
Wow! This is good to know! We have several tradesmen who this will apply to. Thank you for your post!
Thank you, Andy and CloudBloomers. Hopefully, this post will reach lots of people in the coming week who otherwise might not have noticed the changed.
Thanks for the heads up! I could see a lot of small businesses missing out on this message and losing out massively. Not very transparent of Google I must say.
Yikes! I wasn't really looking to have my to-do list added to on a Sunday afternoon, but I really appreciate the heads up.
Thanks, MJhunt and Redpoint. That was my main concern, too - that people wouldn't know about this change. In the coming weeks/months, if a Place Page vanishes, this will be one of things for Local SEOs to investigate as a possible cause. Appreciate your comments!
Miriam
Miriam,
Nice post! So important to note this change. Pretty major update for a lot of small businesses. hope they are getting the message before they lost their listing.
Nice blog post. I read read about this on Mike Blumenthal's blog earlier this week. I don't think whether you show your address or not should affect your rankings either way. I think that it should be optional.
Great post, really insightful in a SEO world where everyone says Local is a must - which causes an increase in spam!
Nice post on Hide Address in Google Places from @seomoz @mblumenthal, @localseoguide. Also from Google Places quality guidelines, "Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing" .
Thank you for sharing this post. I am updating right now. Like your blog-site too!
Thanks, Brian and for the kind comments about my site. Would you believe, right in the middle of writing this article, I'm up to my neck in a redesign of my company's site? The site is now about 90% done but the redesign of the blog is only half way done, so if anyone clicks through to see who I am, I apologize for wonky things going on on my blog right now :)
Hi, In the end of the day if you try and make your local presence something it is not then Google will crack down, especially people who tried to use PO boxes in the past to make address. Recently I have done some huge Google Places projects in the range of 800-900 listings a piece for Asia Pacific (all physical addresses). If you step within the guide lines and have accurate listings you really have nothing to worry about. I mean we even had a "Google Places Local Specialist" come into our agency with some advice on setting it all up his thoughts were pretty much the same, if you try to cheat the system they will crack down.
Hi James,
That sounds like a very big project in Asia! I agree with you 100% about walking within the guidelines. This change of policy is a little different, in my opinion. There's nothing shady about go-to-client business models, of course, and Google's arbitrary decision that it's more useful not see addresses just doesn't make sense to me. I'd never think of going to visit a carpet cleaning company, a plumber or an electrician, but I would like to know if they are in my town or miles away. For me, at least, the lack of display of the physical location makes me feel less informed and less trusting. I'm sure that's not what Google wants.
Mike Blumenthal has posited that Google's point with this is to ensure that people can drive to the places listed in Maps. That's fine, of course, but it presumes that I'd want to drive to every local business, when that just isn't the case because so many do their driving to me. I'd really like to see Google reconsider the usefulness of the new guideline.
But another issue with Google Places is that it is a product where I believe their are less than a handfull of people in the whole world working on it! It is a push product so you push the data to check checked in india and they check it, If you deal in large scale bulk uploads like I normally do it is very easy for issues to happen and the only way you get help is if you go direct via Google contacts.
But yes I do not agree with what is happening with the details in your post, have you tried to email the support or your google reps to ask what is happening? I would question it with them first to see what is actually going on?
Miriam, I get it and agree with you. There is also trust in seeing an address (even if it's only a mailing address). They could of made some other notes on the listing to make clear the business is a at-your-door service. Most business (like the home improvement trades) it's common sense to most folks, but I understand not all businesses may not be clear.
Ah... good old Google Places. Not always well thought through.
Glad you posted this! I don't have any clientst that meet the criteria for this, but it is still very valuable information in case we ever run into it.
I so wholeheartedly agree that Google's communications over Local are not great. Local is messy, constantly changing, constantly confusion and frequently buggy.
For example, even after several communications and attempts to claim and close listings, we now have 2 listings in our old location, two in our new, reviews split between listings and we only ever created one ourselves!
Google expect us to jump through hoops, but when it comes to local, they won't jump through their own hoops to keep things useful and consistent for those searching for business, which surely ought to be the key principle in the matter?
Great post! I've been running into a lot of problems with Google Places and Maps lately, and have been getting very familiar with "Ashley from The Google Team" due to countless emails regarding a specific case where not only did my client lose all 9 of their Reviews, but the entire Google Places listing disappeared. We republished and reverified the Places Page, was told it was Live and the problem had been fixed, and yet Google Maps still does not show our local business and we are still having problems. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have a local client who depends on local traffic go through this for no apparent reason.
Sadly, Linwright, your client is one of countless local businessses to have issues like these. Having an 'Ashley' to talk to actually represents a major improvement on Google's part in communication. Once, there was almost nobody to speak with at all. Wishing you luck in getting this cleared up. I empathize with the headache.
Hi Miriam,
It's so thoughtful of you to pass on the important update. It's quite tough to adjust with the new Google places guidelines as physical address of a local business is the key for local optimization. I am seeking to hide my listing address as soon as possible, but am still in a confusion about the effects that could take place, if we remove the physical address of the business. If anyone have made any changes so far, please notify me about the result. Although, it is better to loose some rank rather than getting popped out.
@metapilot- As you have commented that you have already made the necessary changes, did you saw any changes in ranking or are they same as before.
Now this is something which will surely going to annoy business owners and the seo companies... Apart from the obvious reason that a listing without an address will be nearly of no use, one thing which we need to note here is that the confusion which is under process.. Now, business owners and seo companies need to start thinking that in which category their business fall.. And I am sure that it will be a hard time to do that.. One of the comment above with real estate listing, they do haev customer interaction at the "Home Office", though very little, but i guess, in coming days, we may see a new guidline from the google which talks about the customer interaction in percentage.. if you have 10% of customer interaction at your office, you are not eligible for the address thing in places. When annouced about the "Not Provided" thing in google analytics, i thought that this is the best "worst" selfish move from google, but i was wrong... they have so many others in their policies... Lets go the clients, understand thier "Customer Interection" and update the places listing.. Otherwise google will punish us...
One other observation: we have multiple offices. This appears to have affected some, but not all, in our Maps listings. It doesn't appear to have made any difference in our SERPs for organic search results. I've always thought that Google is a bit schizophrenic about search results in SERPs and in Maps. For example, if you search for "Home care in Carlsbad, CA" our company is listed in second place, but if you perform the same search in Maps, we show up in 11th place (top of the list on page 2). And yes, "Home Care" is one of the categories selected for our Carlsbad office "Places" listing.
To experiment, I just changed the Places listing for our Carlsbad office to have it hide our address. There was no immediate change in our Places listing placement. I'll check again tomorrow to see.
- Tim
PS - the above stats were produced while I was NOT signed in with my Google account.
This is a big deal for us in the In-Home Elder Care industry. It's really, really tiresome how Google changes the rules frequently and capriciously.
Dear Miriam, Thanks for sharing this. Realy great and useful post. I am considering to do it.
Thanks for the excellent Post.
I have a little quandry because one of my clients has a tour company. They don't serve people at their location, they actually pick them up in three different locations.
I'm thinking Type B, to include all pick up locations in the radius, but would like some confirmation. What do you think?
Thanks for all the super comments, everybody! I'm so glad this article was helpful to so many people.
Thank you Miriam for continuing to keep us informed of Google Local updates and how it can affect businesses..and what to do about it. Will continue to follow your well written blogs.
And what about the other 95% of businesses (brick-n-mortar...not 'home-based') who serve customers within a radius AND at their physical business locations...This was not well thought-out at all.
Great article. I did Local SEO for some clients a while ago and had the same experience - I saw their listing disappear when I chose the "hide my address" option. I'm glad to know that this is hopefully no longer the case. I also strongly agree with your closing sentiments regarding the way Google is confusing small businesses who are not always internet savvy and who barely have time to fill out their Google listing, let alone jump through whatever new hoops Google wants to put into place. Will be passing this article along.
Thanks
Now here's the kicker. What is a company can't have their address at their home office, and they do not have an official place of business, but the offer services onsite at the customer's facility. Now what does the lowly business guy do to stay alive? Google will suspend your account if you have a P.O. Box, like UPS Store. True Dilemma.
Wow! This is quite a change, and I've already sent this post out to a number of contacts. Hopefully will help us all from having our Places pages delisted.
Sleuths like you help us to stay on top of these changes. Thanks Miriam!
Google has developed some amazingly confusing tools over the years and places is by far the most confusing of them all. why my listing isnnt showing after two weeks because int needs to be reviewed is beyond me. Thanks for this advice. now Inll change mys address to hidden.
As a small business owner who has been trying grapplee with local SEO, I agree the Google Places algorithm is needlessly arcane. You post is right on point on how to respond.
Nice article.. any thoughts on what would be best if you have an office but your main business is done over the phone/web? Obviously local is not meant for this type of business but better to have one than not!
Hi Amy,
Virtual businesses do not qualify for inclusion in the Google Places index. If you don't do any business face to face with clients, then your business model is not local. Hope that clarification helps.
Thanks for your response. We do sometimes have clients come to the office but the majority of the sales to customers are done over the phone. With the Venice updates and local search becoming more important I though it much better to have local listings than not bother, plus we are appearing in local search by the looks of the stats, so it appears a bit of black area. Maybe something Google needs to look at!
Thanks for sharing this info, Miriam.
Does anyone know if this policy is in place outside the US yet?
Hi Saffyre9,
I've just put this question out into the Local SEO community to see if the policy has become global. If it isn't yet, it is probably coming soon. Good to be prepared.
Hi Again Saffyre9,
I wanted to come back to update my reply to you. So, it looks like this has not been added to the guidelines outside the US/Canada...however, do not understand that to mean that the policy doesn't exist. I would say that if you are in Europe or elsewhere and your listing vanishes, I would add this to policy to my list of possible suspects. Google began punishing listings for this issue before it was put in the official guidelines. I wouldn't be surprised if they acted similarly elsewhere.
Absolutely. I'm actually in Canada, but haven't heard any Canadian local SEOs talking about this yet, so suspect it isn't here yet. Will have to keep my eyes and ears open on this one.
Again, thanks for the post and bringing it to my attention.
Very insightful blog post there - I hope Google will get Places sorted out, it has always felt a bit like a dogs dinner to me.
So is address (and distance from centeroid) still being used as a ranking factor if you hide location?
I would imagine so. Google still needs to know your address even if you hide it to determine how close you are to the city centriod no?
Hi Menchamp,
That's an extremely smart question. I am not sure of the answer. Post-Venice, location sensitivity appears to be playing much less of a part in rankings. We need to see more of this in action before we can start drawing any useful conclusions. Really, a good question.
Hi Guys,
You're right this is an excellent forum to talk about different information concerning advertising for SMBs. We already have our hands full with so many different things, wearing different hats and so forth. I am posting a reply that I got back from a rep at Google below which I thought was quite interesting as I fit into the service at the customers' location criteria:
The policy (which is not new) is more like this: If your business travels to its customers and doesn?t have a consistent customer-facing location, you should apply a service area or service areas to your listing. You should also check the box to hide your business address if customers cannot make face-to-face interaction with your business at the address listed. To learn more about service areas, check out this article: https://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=177103 In other words, if you have a business that travels to your customers, and you operate your business from your home, you should hide your home address. Does that make sense? This is not a new policy, and has been enforced for quite some time.
I hope this helps with the posts here. Keep it coming we all need the help.
Hi Cleanup,
Thanks so much for posting your email from a Google rep. Is this quite recent?
I'm surprised by the Google rep's reply saying that the policy is not new. Really surprised, actually. It's been news to me and every Local SEO I know. Interesting response you received. The service are isn't new, and somewhere buried in the help files there was a mention of something about this, but it was only added to the guidelines in the last couple of days. If that doesn't make it 'new' I don't know what does.
Again, thanks for sharing the reply you got. Quite a surprise.
"I'm surprised by the Google rep's reply saying that the policy is not new."
That's the rub. I believe this was INTERNAL policy and being enforced for awhile without being publicized or put in front and center in the guidelines where people could find out about it. None of us knew about it until Andrew's situation came to light.
First of all thanks for sharing this post and next thing i want to know that whether this change is global or it just happened in some specific contries cause i have just checked some of my clients listing and it is same as they have listed before with proper address and phone numbers
and it is really ridiculous if we are listing on "Google Business Listing" and address is not there or can not be seen
Unbelievable. Proceed with caution.
Thanks so much for the commentary - I have a bunch of local clients who will no doubt be impacted. Interestingly enough, the "hide my address" button does not always seem to work as advertised. One particular client whose Google places account I set up matched similar criteria (operates from home, performs service at client sites) and I checked the box. He called me irate a few weeks later when a handful of people showed up at his home after seeing the address on Google. I double checked, and sure enough it was displaying, despite having checked the "hide my address" box.
What do you think prompted this change?
David,
I have actually heard of cases like the one you are describing before. I'm not clear on what causes them. Would recommend you search the Google Places Help Forum to see if you can form a theory based on similar incidents.
I couldn't agree more. I've recently noticed 2 other big "social" websites who automatically put up a profile of you and/or your website, and then YOU have to be the one to come and claim its reputation. It seems like people are compelled to act due to being afraid of their reputation being initiated and controlled by a third party. That sucks hard core. To Google's credit, however, many companies unfortunately abuse the "Places" privilege using un-owned business based addresses to SEO in different or nearby markets. Can't blame Google for deterring that.
Hi Todd,
Yes, Google has their hands full dealing with spam. It's egregious. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.