Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Joseph, This is what you're looking for: https://support.google.com/mapmaker/answer/6296952?hl=en Hope it helps, Tom

No problem at all - glad I could help!

You're welcome, Omer!

Hi James, If Google is not showing a 3 pack for your most important term, but, rather, is treating it like a branded result with only one business in it, there's not a ton you can do about that. Is there any chance you're able to share the name of your company and term you're trying to rank for? If not, it's okay, but if you can, it will help the community target their suggestions to your specific case.

I think what we'll do for now is use an image as a (potentially) temporary solution, but also look at our Schema options. Thanks!

Thanks everyone for the response and Bernadette Coleman I felt this conversation healthy and useful for me. Thank you so much yeah Miriam I will

Oh, man! Not this: Google Business and that the reviews "may" return once the bug is worked out. It has been 4 years since Google's last major review fiasco. Hope this doesn't turn into round 2. Thanks for mentioning, David, and sorry Google Business Manager is giving you a headache.

Also, although not directly related to your question, this was a really helpful article to get to the bottom of how GMB insight metrics are calculated. http://www.joyannehawkins.com/interpret-google-business-gmb-insights/3/

Thanks- this sounds right. We decided to keep our pages as Product pages.

Hi Jason! I agree 100% with what Miriam and Ben have said. I would go through all your listings and take out the geo-modifiers if that is not actually part of the legal company name. This could be causing confusion for Google and negatively impacting your rankings—not something you want to do! However, if Google has not caught on to this (if the company's name does not actually include the geos), and you change these, it could impact how you rank for local search results. By having the city in the company name, you increase your chances of showing up in the local pack. This is a situation where you will need to track, test, tweak, repeat until you find the right process for your particular situation! Hope this helps.

Wishing you good luck! Spammers really give me the blues.

So glad to help!

Hi Dominick! Good for you for being thorough about this. In answer to your 2 questions: As the business is genuinely being closed at this location and is not moving to a new location, you'll just want to follow Google's recommendations for reporting the business as closed: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6314541?hl=en&ref_topic=4854191 Yes, you should follow up with closing out as many other citations that pertained to the business as possible. Why? For a couple of reasons, including not wanting the other offices to have to field calls from unhappy customers who are seeking the closed business in vain, and also, because you never really want stray, inaccurate NAP floating around out there in the ecosystem for any business. So, yes, I vote for closing out the old references. Hope these replies help!

Hi Bernadette, thanks for taking the time to respond. The owner in question is most certainly representing his ownership and we had advised legal options, though the client is not quite ready to pursuit anything yet. Thank you for the lengthy feedback, we certainly appreciate any help we can get.

If both your Yext and Moz listings match, it won't matter, as the citation information will be correct no matter who they prioritize.

Hi Kristen, Great question! So sorry, but I have no personal experience to add here about being a Local Guide. These might interest you, though: https://jakehennett.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/2016-01-20-local-guide-experiences/ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/_J0EEGiM9cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whDs4MSumbg And Mike Blumenthal, I believe, is a Local Guide. He mentions it in the comments of this blog post, but I don't recall ever seeing him blog about it: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/01/15/google-replacing-city-experts-with-local-guides-program/ There doesn't seem to be a ton out there about people's personal experiences being Google Local Guides. If anyone in our community is doing this, it would be neat to hear what you think of the program!

Thanks for the input. I double checked everything. I really think it is Google overriding the results because the webpage it is pulling from is highly shared and trafficked.

Thank you so much for your help, Chris. I was able to get in touch with someone at Google over chat and get the issue correct. Although now the Google rep has pointed out another issue to be corrected on my end. But I am grateful for the feedback. Thanks again!

Hi Tony! Yes, you would want any practitioner listings on other platforms to match the practitioner listings on Google (i.e. have the same phone number across the board for each practitioner you are promoting). The idea here is that, the more frequently Google finds Practitioner A listed with Phone Number A, the more trust Google feels in the data they have about that entity. Conversely, if Google were to find Practitioner A listed with Phone Numbers A, B, C and D, Google would feel less trust in what the accurate data should be. So, for sure, you'll want to clean up phone number variants you find so that everything you can access matches what you're listing on Google for a given practitioner. Hope this helps!

Just seconding Ira's excellent response here. Without in-person contact, the business is ineligible for a GMB listing. Very good topic!