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You're welcome. Good luck to you in the work ahead!

Hi DylMar, You are right to guess that, yes, it's up to Google to decide if they want to show a two-pack like that for a branded search. If your geographic scenario is similar, in terms of distance and terrain,  there's definitely hope that you could see this same treatment of your client. Your best shot is building up the authority of both of the locations so that Google feels confident about listing them both for users when a branded search is done. However, it's definitely not something I would set as a client goal or make promises about. There could be reasons why Google is treating your client differently that have to do with Google's understanding of user intent in that specific region. If, for example, Google felt that users near to local A definitely want location A, a calculation could be going on just to show A instead of showing both A & B. Another scenario could be that your locations are being considered too close together by Google, and one of them is being filtered out, because of that. But, as with most things, if you can drive up the overall authority of both locations, it's your best bet to see what you can squeeze out of the SERPs. Some things to work on: Earn reviews for both locations Be sure you've got strong landing pages for each location Be sure no guidelines are being violated by either location Earn some good local links for both locations Likely you're already working on these things, but without being able to see your actual client, the best I can do is offer general advice. Good luck!

Hi Lee! Thanks for clarifying this. Yes, then, if your offices are staffed during stated business hours by your own staff, have unique phone numbers for each office, and are meeting face-to-face with customers you are: Eligible to have 2 listings Free to link those listings to whatever page on your website you want to. But, now, let's get into the nuances of this. Which page/pages is it best to link to from GMB listings? This is a subject of long debate in the local SEO industry. The two schools of thought  go something like this: You should link all of your listings for a multi-location business to your homepage, because homepages typically have the strongest DA and this can then boost the local pack rankings of all locations. -or- You should link each location's listing to that location's landing page on the website, because it's better Usability. UX would suggest that the local customer clicking on the GMB listing wants to be taken to the page for that listing's location - not taken to a homepage and then having to click around to find the address/phone number/other details for the location they want to visit. Option 1 might work best for you, because if you've only got 2 locations, you can likely display their complete NAP on your homepage without it being burdensome. But, it's a decision you'll need to make based on whether you believe rankings or UX  need greatest emphasis  for your customers and your business. Hope this helps!

That's highly dependent on the query itself. For example, for research-based searches, you'll see authoritative websites like Wikipedia dominate the search results as those kinds of searches are not relevant to any location. Think of a medical term, or a name of a movie,  or a type of flower for example. However, for navigation-based searches, and local services based searches, you'll see very localized results. If you search for "plumber in CityName" - you'll see different results every time you use a different city name. It comes down to the search intent as Google always aims to serve that intent to the best of its ability & understanding.

It's a bug from Google's end, you need to contact GMB support to fix this.

Very helpful, Daniel, and congrats on the good ranking! Here is what I would do to try to jog Google: Remove the logo image from the dashboard Upload 5 new high quality images to the dashboard, choosing one as the profile image. Google just wasn't showing me very many photos for this business and I think you should take away what you don't want and give them more to choose from among photos that you do want. Give that a shot. The change could be immediate or could take a few days. If you try this experiment, please follow up here if you can to let me know what happens.

Yay! You're welcome, Bryan. So glad that worked out!

I recommend: landscaping.com/landscapers-houston

How did this all play out for you guys? I am late to the party but am just now experiencing this for the first time with an HVAC client. In the clients knowledge graph on Google it shows: "Products and Services: places.singleplatform.com" I tried what was explained in the original post but it appears some things have changed in GMB since Aug. 2018. Imagine that Any help on getting this link removed would be greatly appreciated!

This schema defines the name of your business, it should just contain your business name (and nothing else) "Name:_ This is the name of the business you are talking about_" If the name of your business (legally, the name you trade with) is "ABC Dental", then this should be set to "ABC Dental" Editing your business name for SEO is something that Google frowns upon at the GMB / schema level. Lots of the information which affects a businesses' prominence in the SERPs is cross-fed from schema, but also from Google My Business https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/20273/google-my-business-tips/ For Google My Business, it's frowned upon to conjoin your location and business name (indeed this can cause GMB penalties) "[Don't] Stuff only keywords in the title: Don’t take the advice above badly. If you have multiple keywords, just focus on the main one and keep the secondary ones for your website’s pages. A good example of keyword stuffing which you should avoid is the following: “Arcadia: Hotel, Motel, Bed and Breakfast, B&B, Restaurant in London. Google doesn’t like that and will often hard suspend pages that do this, so avoid it." ~ Cognitive SEO https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB "Your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your shop front, website, stationery and as known to customers. Accurately representing your business name helps customers find your business online. _Add additional details like address and/or service area, opening hours and category in the other sections of your business information. _ For example, if you were creating a listing for a 24-hour coffee shop in Southampton city centre called Shelly’s Coffee, you would enter that business information as: Business name: Shelly’s Coffee Address: 324 Poppy Street, Southampton Hours: Open 24 hours Category: Coffee shop Including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted, and could result in your listing being suspended. Refer to the specific examples below to determine what you can and can't include in your business name." ~ Google Since Google frown on building out the business name with keywords (yes, EVEN location based ones) for GMB, and since LocalBusiness schema and GMB data serve similar functions for Google - why would they think any differently? As such I'd personally not include your location in your business name specifically (either through schema or on GMB) as the benefit of doing so will be slight, whilst the risks may be more substantial (GMB / rich snippet spam penalties)

Hello! Thank you for bringing your question to the community. Unfortunately, holiday rental properties are not eligible for Google My Business listings. You can read the guidelines regarding this here. They read: "Ineligible businesses The following businesses aren’t eligible for a business listing: Rental or for-sale properties such as vacation homes, model homes, or vacant apartments. Sales or leasing offices, however, are eligible for verification." So, while the office from which you rent out these properties is eligible for a GMB listing, the chalets are not. Please let me know if I've misunderstood anything about your business model or question.

Still looking for a solution, Thanks

Hi Justin, So sorry you were unwell and I hope you're feeling better. I'm afraid I'm not quite understanding your follow-up regarding citations. Your initial question was about use of DBAs. If you have a second question, please share a few more details and I'm happy to keep chatting!

I think Yext is really worth the cost and has the most important local directories covered. One main advantage of services like Yext or Moz Local is the ease of making updates to the listings. With manual citations, if you need to make a small change to the hours or description of the business, you need to repeat the task for all the sites one by one. But with Yext or Moz Local, it can happen quickly by just updating the business under your Yext or Moz Local account while automation will take care of updating the rest of the listings in the background for you. There is also this business listing scan tool out there that I thought might be relevant to this question, it covers the most sites and also tells you what's your completeness score and your accuracy score with a short link that you can use to share the web-based report with others. I hope you find my answer useful.

As you are running AdWords, the reason your ad isn't showing up will depend on several factors. The main factors why your business isn't showing up on those keywords are: Improper configuration on the ad, not including the targeted keywords CTR %: The higher the CTR, the better the ad quality and the higher the chances that it shows Lower bid: Other businesses might be paying more for the ad space and so their ad shows more Relevancy: If your ad and your landing page are relevant and optimized for the targeted keyword, there is a higher chance for it to show up. Landing page experience (Based on several factors like bounce rate, time on page, ctr, etc.) If you are directing all of the ads to your homepage, then you might want to create some landing pages for those keywords where your ad doesn't show up, and it should be increasing the rank. On the other side, for your business listing to rank higher, it will depend mainly on: Keyword relevancy Location: The closer to the user, the better Local citations Number of (positive) reviews So, apply the needed optimization and you should see your business listing slowly get higher on the SERP. Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting https://dalerioconsulting.com/ info@dalerioconsulting.com

It is difficult to tell whether Google will mark the two locations as the same business and link them to your site when it comes to local citations, but the usual stance as also outlined at Moz here, is that you always use the short version of the address, since not all sites will allow you to put the full-length address. So, what you can do is update your website and other profiles where you have inserted the address to have the short version: Blue Widgets Ltd Hope Springs, Stow on the Wold POSTCODE That should help you be consistent with nearly every local citation. Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting https://dalerioconsulting.com/ info@dalerioconsulting.com

Isn't New-York just a waste of url length? Shouldn't it be New-York-City,-NY? And you're busting the recommended url length. Adrian

In my experience, Google quite often see this (rightly or wrongly) as an illegitimate attempt to increase your search footprint. Quite often some listings get banned, denied, removed, or increased scrutiny is put on your original listing Google really wants serrate listings for separate businesses, not separate listings for different services. That's why it's called Google My Business and not Google My Service. The core remit of the platform is to list businesses, not fragmented services. To those who try to derail this, sometimes it can work pretty well - but usually (in the end) it causes more problems than it solves You could label your services as different businesses and give them different internal addresses (e.g: Unit 1, Unit 2 etc). If that seems really inaccurate, then it probably says that your attempt to diversify online in jumping the gun a little (and Google may not embrace it)

Not a problem. The UK is just in a weird situation with its listings where in the end, the input outweighs the outcome (IMO)