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Great, Mark. Hope it works out!

Good Afternoon, That's an interesting situation you've highlighted! You are quite correct that Google only allows one listing per physical location, but things get a bit fuzzy when it comes to multi-language listings. The first time I ran into this scenario was in about 2009, in which Mike Blumenthal published this article quoting Google's stance on how a business could have multi-language listings without creating multiple listings (http://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/08/10/local-business-center-same-listing-in-multiple-languages-is-ok/). However, the current Google Places for Business setup does not allow for multiple languages. Google's stand on this is that you're supposed to pick a single language and create a single listing in it. See this: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/language/business/Ok7wphTl6hQ/v8pfqDRtj2gJ Despite this, businesses have old multi-language listings from former times and are also creating mutiple language listings by using different accounts (which was once recommended as a best practice). The exact guideline, currently, is found here: https://support.google.com/places/answer/142906?hl=en ... and reads: "In countries where more than one language is spoken, choose a primary language that you want the listing to be displayed in. Even if users have their browsers set to another language, they'll still be able to find your business on Maps." So, according to Google, you should only have one language and one listing, but as we can see from your example, people are getting around this. You could try to report your competitor, but it may not be worth it. What I actually find most interesting about your example is the fact that Google is surfacing those 3 same listings for your search term, hinting to me that Google may be confusing your search intent with a branded search that matches the titles of your competitor's Google+ Local pages. The titles on those pages don't look quite right to me. So, bottom line ... yes, it's supposed to be just one listing, but I suspect this whole situation is a big mess given Google's guidelines that don't meet the real-world situation terribly well, coupled with their failure to sometimes police their own product. Hope these thoughts are helpful.

Hi Courtney, Yes, that's correct. The process is outlined in the Google Places Quality Guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en). If you're not familiar with these, they are the main starting point for understanding Local SEO, as Google sees it. Google's guidelines regarding this are as follows: Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas.  If you wish to display your complete business address while setting your service area(s), your business location should be staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours. Google will determine how best to display your business address based on your inputs as well as inputs from other sources. Learn how to add service areas to your listing. If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option. Hope this helps clarify your client's options. Additionally, if you're just getting your feet wet with Local SEO, please take advantage of the super free education offered in our new Moz Local Learning Center: http://moz.com/learn/local

I definitely agree with this. Also, why would you want your website to listed in your google places if you don't want it to show up in search results? It seems a little bit counter intuitive to me.

Thank you

Super, Gordon! So glad my reply was helpful and happy reading!

Hi Clair, Regarding the connection between the various types of Google pages, check out this excellent Mike Blumenthal post: http://localu.org/blog/merge-google-pages-usually-cant-now/ And here's another one: http://localu.org/blog/kind-google-plus-page/ Regarding your question about a local listing - a 'local listing' is kind of a vague term. It could be a profile of your business on literally any platform. Google-specific lingo these days is that you can create a Google+ Local page using the Google Places for Business dashboard. There are other types of Google pages, as well, described in the above articles. Hope this helps! http://localu.org/blog/kind-google-plus-page/

Hi 1AKAL, If you have a physical location in those cities, then you would simply be building a location landing page for each office you have. These would be optimized with the complete NAP (name, address, phone) of each location and should feature good, unique content about the specific location. If you don't have physical locations in these cities, the choice to build out a page for each target city should be predicated on having something unique to say about each location. Check out: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide Find the business model in that post that describes your business model, and hopefully the recommendations provided will help you form a good, clean strategy. Please, let me know if you have any questions after reading that post.

Hi Stacey, I am not sure if you already have your answer. If not here I go. For the local you can claim management on the account which would need to be re-verified. This would let you get in there at least an potentially clean up anything that needs it. You would not loose your reviews. Based on your description of old SEO errors I can imagine it may be link based errors which could have developed a algorithmic penalty which in that case a new domain, in the in term only, may be useful. If you are sure it is not algorithmic though I would think that perhaps re-evaluating the on-page and content would be the next step. Hope this helps if you haven't gotten help already

Hi NetMasons, Google forms a cluster of data about each local business, drawing information from around the web. If Google is publishing incorrect business data for your company, chances are, they have pulled it from some source that features this incorrect data. For a better understanding of how local business data is shared around the web, check this out: http://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-providers Your task will be to search for whatever pieces of the data are incorrect, find the source of them and then correct them at the source so that, eventually, Google will update what they have about you to reflect correct information. Citation inconsistency is widely considered to be the third most negative ranking factor. You can read more about this here: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors Without actually being able to audit your unique situation, I can't guarantee that this is what is causing your issues, but from your description, I'd bet that you have some citation cleanup work ahead of you. Please, let me know if you have any other questions.

Keri is quite correct about Google not showing web design companies for main local queries, and David is also correct that adding 'in' to these queries will typically bring up these local results. Why Google makes this big distinction between 'in' and not 'in', nobody knows. Presumably, the use of 'in' makes Google more convinced that the user is, indeed, searching for a local solution. Kind of an arbitrary distinction on G's part.

Close... you still have them all grouped into 1 event though. You need to remove the [itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/Event"] from the and move it to the level (and repeat for each )

So glad to be of help, Jackson!

30 days isn't bad. I'm just hoping it's not much longer that. I appreciate you sharing your tests. Best, Ruben

Hi Nathan, Can I ask for a bit of pronoun clarification in this: "I am working with an Insurance agent and he has Google Alerts setup on his company name. He has received two alerts where his name only appears in the URL. If you click the links they bring you to a competitor's Yahoo Local profile page with their name and info. If you look at the URL it has his company's name and city in the URL." Is 'his' referring to your client's company name and city or the competitor's name and city?

Sorry to double post, but I went and looked and they also have one specifically for local business. http://schema.org/LocalBusiness

We are happy to help. Best of luck, Andrew!

I know you can pay to get listed with Yahoo's Directory, but I didn't know it was fed by Yelp. Thanks for that Dudley!

Thank you for the screen shots, Ruben. At any rate, none of these things should affect NAP consistency, so fortunately, not something to be worried about.

Alright, thanks for the input guys.  I guess it's good to know that everyone is shooting into the dark, at least a bit.