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Category: Local Listings

Examine the impact of maintaining consistent and accurate local listings on your local SEO strategy.


  • Hi Red Nova, While, unfortunately, I don't know how to resolve this, I do know there is a Google and Your Business forum thread open right now on this topic. I would highly suggest adding your own query to that thread. The more people that respond to it, the better the chances of getting a response from a Google staffer with a suggested solution. Here's the thread: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/analytics|sort:date/business/Ab_sPzkwTBg/02Dm0hAIfo4J The issue is pretty new - I'm sorry not to have a easy fix for you, but I hope the link will at least get you talking with others who are having this problem, and perhaps some of our community members will contribute here if they've found a fix. I hope so!

    | MiriamEllis
    1

  • Hi There! Sorry that wasn't what you needed. Basically, no, so far as I know, there is no obvious visual signal looking through Bing Places that a listing has been verified. If you click on the 'report a problem' link at the bottom of a Bing Place page, it takes you to a page that says 'Are you the business owner, claim this listing', but unfortunately, it appears to do this whether the listing is claimed or not. So, that's kind of weird. As an experiment, you could attempt to go through the claiming process of a listing you are curious about and see if it eventually stops you with a 'this is already claimed' message. This is the only test I can think of to run. Hope it's at least somewhat helpful to know you're not missing some obvious visual signal. There just doesn't appear to be one, nor can I find any documentation that such a signal exists.

    | MiriamEllis
    0

  • Thank you for the response, we will look into that!

    | PM_Academy
    0

  • Hi There! Unfortunately, I'm not very well versed in Local SEO in the Netherlands, but I do believe this Moz blog post will help you to begin troubleshooting how well-optimized your local presence is, regardless of country: http://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures Also, want to be sure that your company is running a Google+ Local page ... not just a Google+ social type page and that you actually qualify as a local business of the type that Google would most typically show mapped results for. Do you make in-person contact with your customers and do they come to your physical location to do business with you? These are some important questions, and I hope the article will help!

    | MiriamEllis
    0

  • Hey There! I want to be sure that you understand how to interpret your Moz Local listing score, and have a good sense of what Moz Local is doing for and what you can take manual action on. When you sign into your Moz Local dashboard and click on a business listing there, you are taken to a business details page where you will see your overall listing score. This score is comprised of your status on the 7 partner sites in our network + the status of your listings on 8 non-partner sites, as well. The 7 supported partner sites in our network are: Factual Foursquare Neustar/Localeze Infogroup Best of the Web Acxiom Superpages Once you’ve uploaded your listing to Moz Local, it’s our job to push your data out to the above 7 partner sites. Your overall listing score will begin to rise as each of the above listings achieves updated status. The rise may be gradual rather than instantaneous, but should be noticeable over time. You should be sure you’ve filled out as many details as possible on your listing so that it can achieve a maximum score. If you’ve filled out all of these fields, you’re good to go on this and it’s our job to take it from there, pushing out your data to the 7 partners. As each partner achieves updated status, your listing score will gradually begin to rise. Apart from this, you can contribute to a rise in your listing score manually by improving your listings on the non-partner sites shown on the details page. These non-partner sites are: Google Facebook Yelp Hotfrog YP Citysearch Yahoo! Bing On the details page, if you discover that we are reporting issues to you under the ‘Inconsistent’ and ‘Incomplete’ tabs on any of the above non-partner sites, you should consider taking manual action to correct these things. This activity on your part will also eventually contribute to a rise in your listing score. However, if you don't have login information for these sites, your ability to work on these non-partner sites is definitely going to be limited. You may need to work at contacting each of the platforms individually to see if they can help you regain control of the listings. Finally, if our tool also surfaces duplicate listings for you, you’ll want to pay close attention to these. If the duplicates are on any of the 7 partner sites, you can simply click the ‘close’ button. If they are on the non-partner sites, clicking the close button will take you to a page on the associated site where you will need to work manually with the platform to request closure of the duplicate. Again, you may need to do some spadework to see if these non-partner platforms can help you get back in control of the listings. Taken altogether, the work we are doing to push your data to the 7 partner sites and the work you do on the non-partner sites will contribute to a rise in your listing score. I hope this helps you feel fully informed about our service and your opportunities! Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any further questions.

    | MiriamEllis
    0

  • Oh you're right we still have to update the footer, sorry about that. Thank you for your help.

    | jhinchcliffe
    1

  • Thank you very much for the reply. We are having a read of your suggested Blog post now. Regards Ben

    | Bendall
    0

  • Hey There! Think you might enjoy reading: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/03/18/google-maps-report-a-problem-does-it-work-for-local-spam/ Hope this helps!

    | MiriamEllis
    0

  • Hi Ryan, I haven't had this myself, so have sent John Mueller at Google at Tweet asking him to have a quick look at this for you. If he comes back to me with a reply, I will update you -Andy

    | Andy.Drinkwater
    0

  • Hi Ahmad, I am happy I could be of help. You would take the location that ranks the best in local and leave that in a perfect world. However, there may be a good reason for you to not be able to do that. To answer whether you revivify or restart the answer is is yes you would begin again. If you are lucky there is a second phone number that has no ties to the lower ranking business and you can use that for your new NAP Do you have phone number associated with associated with both businesses? Sincerely, Thomas

    | BlueprintMarketing
    0

  • Hi There! Would you be able to offer a bit more detail about the business model? Is this a local business with a physical location, face-to-face contact with customers and a Google+ Local page? If so, you must have a local area code phone number available on the Google+ Local page ... but I'm not quite sure this is what you're describing. The more detail you can provide, the better the community will be able to offer thoughts.

    | MiriamEllis
    0

  • Hi Spencer! Unless the listing was created with the business name/personal name entered that way, then that's right to assume that Yahoo has pulled the info from elsewhere. So, the task at hand here is for you to sleuth out the source of that data and see if you can correct it there. You should definitely check out the big picture of Yahoo's data sources by looking at this infographic: http://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us but given the Yahoo/Yelp deal of 2014, I'd think that would be very important to investigate, too (see: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/12/yahoo-partners-with-yelp-to-bring-local-data-to-its-search-tools/) I would start by searching for that undesired business title in Google's main engine and on Google Maps to see if you can pull it up, wherever it exists and then hopefully take care of it at the source. Hope this helps!

    | MiriamEllis
    0

  • What a great discussion going on here on this one! Love our community:) My thoughts on this are: I agree with Donna's suggestion of seeking legal advice on this before you begin using another brand's name on your website. If you are legally advised that it's okay to do so, then the comparison model is a legitimate topic for content development. Explaining the differences between your organization and that of your better known competitor will be educational for parents and guardians considering their local options for youth sports. This will be good information for them to have. I would suggest approaching this very mindfully and with full transparency that your organization is completely separate from Pop Warner and has no affiliation with this organization. Your strategy must have education as its basis in order to avoid the totally unwanted outcome of local parents deciding you are trying to trick them into thinking your organization is anything other than what it truthfully is - that's certainly not going to be the start of a happy relationship! After all, what you really want here is for your organization to build up a brand that earns local recognition as a wonderful option for youth sports. You don't want to build Pop Warner's brand - you want to build your own.

    | MiriamEllis
    0

  • Hi IPIM! Agree with the single domain vs. mult-domain approach, and you absolutely want to avoid duplicating content across multiple websites. I think you might find this article helpful: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

    | MiriamEllis
    0

  • My gut feeling is that Google is doing the same thing to the BBB entry (re-writing, that is) and not that BBB is the cause, but it's a little hard to separate.

    | Dr-Pete
    0

  • Fraid so. Use the technique Marcus mentioned to find the one you want to keep. Don't forget to look at reviews, if any. You want to retain the one with the most reviews.

    | DonnaDuncan
    0

  • Hi Ruben, That's a good thing to learn! Yes, I've run into different requirements over the years in different states. Interesting to know how it works in Florida. Good luck:)

    | MiriamEllis
    1

  • I found the answer I was after here: http://moz.com/ugc/is-your-website-being-replaced-with-google-plus-local-listings

    | skrauss
    0

  • You must list a physical address.  If you provide service at their customer's location then you can use your home address. Here, you have the option to hide your address (if do not want to show it to public). You can get more info here-  Google Places Quality Guidelines You may also find this link helpful- http://moz.com/community/q/google-local-listing-no-physical-address

    | sachin-sv
    0

  • That isn't one I have come across before, but is powered by BT... "Smile Local is one of over 150 business directories managed by BT Customerstreet" It is something I would need to look at in more detail, but the links out are no-follow so in theory, shouldn't be a problem - quite ad-heavy pages with 3 all close to the top though. -Andy

    | Andy.Drinkwater
    0