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im am compelled to use brightlocal as moz local is useless to me in new zealand, I came across this discussion looking to see how trustworthy brightlocal is, seems it might the solution

Hi, Launching a new website on your domain can be challenging, especially from an SEO perspective. There are a lot of things that need to be "ticked off" before you press the launch button. I understand that your new website is already live, so I'll adjust my recommendations below based on that to try and help: Ensure that Google Analytics and any other tracking codes from your old website have been copied across to the new site. You can use the wayback machine to check the code of your old website if you have lost any of these. Complete technical checks on things like: a) www and non-www versions - do they redirect correctly? b) Is there an XML sitemap in place? Has it been resubmitted in Google Search Console? c) Is the new website mobile friendly? d) Check page speed e) Is the site launching on HTTPS? Are redirects setup correctly? f) Are canonical tags in place? g) Test web forms and ensure they work correctly h) Check for any 404 errors in Google Search Console i) Ensure NOINDEX and robots.txt block is removed on the new website j) Request a recrawl in Google Search Console k) Ensure any Goals in GA are reconfigured to work on the new site l) Add an annotation in GA to mark the launch of the new site Recreate any high ranking/high traffic pages from your old website. Open Google Analytics and select a date range for 2-3 months BEFORE your new website went live. Have a look at the top landing pages on your website. For pages that were generating a significant amount of organic traffic, ensure they are replicated as closely as possible on your new website (including meta tags). For other pages on the new website, ensure content and meta tags have been optimised. If this was done previously on your old website, you can copy across your previous meta tags and look at modifying your content. Using the same method in point 3, get a list of URLS from your old website and ensure they all 301 redirect to your new URL structures on a page level. Hope this helps! Thanks Matt

Hi Tyler You would simply direct the traffic to each of the folders/cities so the cost of Adwords could easily be assigned to each separate office. There is nothing else to worry about Regards Nigel

Hi Attic, Kris is correct that you can alter the settings in your Google My Business dashboard so that Google won't display your physical address, but this will not change the type of knowledge panel you're receiving. It will still be a local knowledge panel. Kris - thanks so much for the excellent advice to Attic about changing these settings. On the city centroid tip, this phenomenon has been largely replaced by the user-as-centroid phenom. You're right that the city centroid did appear to exert influence at one time, but these days, the location of the user tends to override any other centroid concept which was previously in effect.

Hi Lina, What does the street signage for the business say? That's typically the answer. But definitely do go through Google's guidelines with a fine-toothed comb, as they offer specific advice for multi-department and multi-practitioner companies (a common scenario in medical practices). Please, read the guidelines and let the community know if questions remain after that.

Hi Bee, So, yes, this definitely looks like Possum. When I search Google Maps for "Yacht Broker Port Adriano Spain" I see that there are numerous similar business in this location and that when I zoom in on the map, Marlin Marine Services does appear. So, a listing does exist for this business, but it simply isn't being judged by Google to be deserved of showing at a non-zoomed-in level. So, this brings us right back to my earlier comment regarding the need to do competitive research to discover the top competitor's strengths and your client's weaknesses so that you can create a plan for improvement. Hope this helps!

Thanks Miriam.  I too am doing some research on the correlation.  It seems like common sense but I was something to prove it.  I'll be in touch with my findings.

Thanks for responding.  Do you know any reason why somebody not see it? Thanks

Hi Platinum, Thanks for the clarification. Okay, so if you've got multiple brick-and-mortar locations, the typical local marketing strategy would look like this: One website with a page for each physical location, reached either via a main menu or via a store locator widget. A unique set of citations for each of the physical locations. Suggest to your boss that he think big, like Whole Foods or McDonalds, with a single website that builds the brand, while connecting local consumers with the appropriate location via a store locator widget. Everything that the brand does (earning media attention, links, etc.) goes toward building the overall authority of the website, benefiting all of its locations. There is no need to duplicate content because each store can have a single page with its own content (photos, reviews, special offers, staff interviews, local news/advice, etc.). What your boss is suggesting you do, however, is to forego the idea of creating a powerful brand by attempting to take a shortcut. His shortcut of building duplicate websites will likely result in Google's duplicate content filter affecting the company's rankings, and will fail to achieve the visibility he is likely hoping for. Even if he was prepared not to take a total shortcut and to build unique content on each microsite, the strategy wouldn't be one most Local SEO experts would advise, because it is simply a better use of resources to pour all efforts into a single website rather than trying to divide your resources up between 5, 10, 100 websites. Your boss is already sensing that it would be overwhelming to properly manage multiple websites, and so he's considering taking an unadvised shortcut by serving up duplicate content to his consumers and search engines. So, actually, I think he's already part of the way there to realizing something just doesn't add up in the multi-site approach; he can already see without being told that doing it authentically would be unmanageable, so if you're going to step up and tell him you're worried about his strategy, this would be something to keep in mind. Depending on your role at the company, the best advice that could be given to this owner at this critical point of decision is to ask him how much faith he has in the brand. If he believes in it, he should build it to maximum strength via the real work of building a reputation for sterling service, both online and offline. There is no shortcut to doing this, but to say he's going to rely, instead, on a risky strategy that has been specifically targeted by Google as a no-no is like an admission that the boss doesn't believe in the brand and can only prop it up with funky techniques that will not pay off in the long run. You'd be doing him a massive favor by pointing this out to him, but whether he's open to hearing this is another question, right?

Hi Kris! We just had a good discussion about this in June. Please check this out: https://moz.com/community/q/local-search-can-i-use-a-shortened-company-name

Hi BigChad2, Thanks for your reply. Just to be sure I'm understanding, you are positive that no GMB listings exist (either claimed or not) for departments B & C? If positive, do you know where the hours are coming from? Have you been able to trace them to the website or elsewhere?

Thanks heaps, Miriam, your advice is always appreciated!!

Did you get verified? Over on inbound, there's someone with a similar question and I'm wondering how things went for you. https://inbound.org/discuss/google-my-business-in-uae-is-not-getting-the-postcard

Hi Edward - yes the online 'ONLY' was staring me in the face - this is more suited to companies with a physical presence. Still important to have consistent NAP wherever it is listed but not so much on locally only focused directories.

yes you are right . i was asking for same, thnx for help

Thanks, thats put my mind at ease

Thanks Ive sent them an email

Nice coincidence! Thanks for letting me know, DickensLawGroup. So glad it helped.

Those pesky duplicate, Joy! FPK - has our community helped you? Do you have any further questions?

Hello George, Thank you for your response and help! It seems like doing both is the way to go (assuming no duplicate content, GSC and Moz are being monitored). I did have a couple quick follow-ups just so I’m clear what you meant and you don’t mind: When you mentioned “…keeping things on the primary domain would be a better idea over time if …” – Did you mean that if it’s part of a regional strategy we probably shouldn’t do both and just stick to the sub-folders? I know that there’s tons of advantages to just using the sub-folder (especially from a resources/authority/link perspective) but assuming we need the separate domain I just wanted to be sure of you meant. Also, if the regional site should naturally win out for a local search but we would want to use ‘second’ domain for local searches would it be best to not do both approaches? – I imagine it would depend on the value being sent from the priority site vs. ability to rank on its own but though I’d ask. Please let me know if I could provide any further updates that could help. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Thanks again! Best,