Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thank you for your valuable feedback, i appreciate it.

Hi Kevin, If you have face-to-face transactions with your customers, you are allowed to have 1 Google+ Local page per each physical location out of which you operate. These are Google's rules (https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en). It is also considered a best practice to have a unique landing page on your website for each physical location you operate. These should be high quality pages that help customers (not thin or duplicative pages) and linking your Google+ Local listings to these pages (rather than to the domain) may also reduce the risk of Google accidentally merging your listings in their system, because you are doing your utmost to differentiate the various locations. You can read more about the practice of creating local landing pages here: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide Hope this helps!

Thanks for the question. First, you're not crazy! Second, I'd suggest reading all of these Moz resources on international SEO, Hreflang, and CcTLDs. They should answer all of your questions. Just a couple of other observations. First, I would divide your English subdomain into two like this: en-us.domain.com en-uk.domain.com (Although, I'd personally prefer to use subdirectories such as domain.com/en-us and domain.com/en-uk.) The reason for this is that you can continue to tailor the subdomain to each location in addition to language. In just a basic example, the UK subdomain may want to have text in British English and show pounds while the US subdomain may want to use US English and show dollars. In Google Webmaster Tools, you can also tell Google that a certain subdomain or subdirectory is targeting a specific country. There are several other things to do as well -- again, I'd suggest that you read the linked documents above. Please feel free to post if you have any other questions!

I can confirm as well. I've run a lot of tests hoping this would help but it never moves the needle it's all about building high quality citations or cleaning up your already existing citations.

Hey There! I would suggest further researching the hours of operation idea to see if you can find any other reports of similar behavior. Like I said, that idea may be a shot in the dark. I would also make sure there are no issues being surfaced for the site via Google Webmaster tools. Don't forget personalization, too. The computers or devices you are using could be influencing the listing appearing and disappearing for you, but I would be surprised if that was the whole answer. Are you checking on multiple browsers and devices when you see the site disappear after you've seen it appear? It's good that you are seeing positive movement! It's also good that the company has sought legal guidance on this - smart move. And I definitely think the company needs a rep management expert on board to further research the whole issue. Also, check out this blog post: http://moz.com/blog/panic-stations-how-to-handle-an-important-page-disappearing-from-google-case-study I hope the community will weigh in with further suggestions and insights on this.

Mike Blumenthal posted a breakdown of a Mediative study in September that you might find useful. LOCAL HEAT MAPS – LOTS OF ATTENTION, NOT SO MUCH CLICKING

Hi Rachel, So glad I was able to identify this for you. It's a few weeks old now, so you should be able to find a ton of articles about it. Mike Blumenthal tends to offer some of the best insight on this topic, so check out his blog. You might looks this up on Linda Buquet's Local Search Forum as well. Hope this helps!

Whitespark....Darren's got Nyag there and he can build with the best of them!!!

We're actually in the middle of this problem and found a work around. If you get the invalid pin message: Login to your Yahoo biz dashboard, navigate to your client's listing and click edit. Make a quick edit (doesn't matter if you change it back before hitting submit). After hitting submit, it should take you right to the verification screen to either a) send a new pin, or b) enter your pin. Use the PIN you already received to verify the listing. We've done this a couple times already, and it seems to be working.

I would spend more time on custom descriptions for the ones that you have reviews on. The goal would be to have as many citations with gold stars as possible rank high for your brand name on Google. That way when customers search for you, they are blasted with nothing but gold stars. This brand name is a good example: ME Contracting

You have answered many questions I wasn't even sure I was asking!  Thank you for being clear and detailed, so many great people at Moz!

Hi Mari-Rose, Okay, that's good you've verified and important to know that you only did so this month. So, you are working with a brand new listing that will have to climb the rankings. How high you climb will be based on a combination of factors, including: The quality and authority of your website The consistency and number of your citations The number of your Google-based reviews The strength/weakness of your competitors The distance between your business and the physical location of the searcher who is performing the search Social metrics and more ! If Local SEO is pretty new to you, I have some suggestions for jump starting your education: Get a basic understanding of the components of Local SEO from The Moz Local learning center http://moz.com/learn/local (already mentioned on this thread by RangeMarketing). Get an advanced understanding of how specific factors are believe to influence local search rankings from the Local Search Ranking Factors 2014 survey results: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors Troubleshoot potential ranking problems with http://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures I cannot overstate the importance of your website in all this. Investing in running the fastest, most user-friendly site with the best content in your industry/geography should be seen as your #1 priority, and then this must be backed up with your off-site efforts such as citation building, review acquisition and social participation. There is a lot to learn, but there is a ton of free educational information out there. Or, in some cases, local business owners hire Local SEOs to either consult with them to create a strategy or to implement said strategy. You have lots of options, and that's good news:) Good luck!

Hi Dennis The listing is verified by postcard already, i just need to link the business page to my website and vice versa.

Yes I agree with the above comments. Here is what may be throwing you. Pre-Pigeon it did not matter as much. I would check rankings all day from whatever city I happened to have set in my browser and it didn't matter. But since Pigeon it does. You really need to set location to the query city to even try to get accurate results. But even with that you'll often see different results than clients do, due to personalization. If you are checking their ranking a lot or clicking their links or checking the page, then they could rank higher for you. Sometimes it even varies by browser and as others have said can be different if logged in or not. FYI if you ever need to check pure maps ranking realize that Classic maps is still showing the OLD algo and ranking order. But new maps is showing the Pigeon ranking order so if I client says I dropped down to H on maps, need so see which version of maps. It all just keeps getting more complicate, doesn't it?

Yes very weird, it came back even improved a spot or two a couple of time and now has been missing for a little while. Not used to seeing something always in the number 4 spot completely dis sapper. Only thing that I have done is straightened out his directories with Moz Local which should help but YP still has a tracking number on his listing which they always did and claim that they have a way for Google to read the real number on the backend but show the public the tracking. Not sure I believe that. Even went as far to have his YP call me when I was trying to get him to have them put it back to his real number. Don't think this would cause this though. This is just for keyword Dentist St Louis... He still shows good for Cosmetic Dentist St Louis and Emergency Dentist St Louis

You're very welcome! I'm glad the link was helpful.

Hey Jason! You're getting excellent feedback from the community here. Local SEO is all about physical location and face-to-face contact with customers. If both of these describe your business model, then you can definitely build citations. If you have to say 'no' to either of these two prerequisites, then citation building isn't the right marketing strategy for your business.

Thank you for the pointer. Google does indeed lease maps from Zenrin-DataCom. Now I just need to get my head around how they gather information as it is not obvious from their website.

Heads up on this thread > the descriptor has just been given the axe: http://moz.com/community/q/heads-up-on-new-google-local-guidelines

Mikes drill-down is especially apropos of this whole change....do click to see what I mean, eh! And thanks Miriam - nice nice catch!