Welcome to the Q&A Forum

You asked a good question, Ruben. Glad to help.

Hi Jim, I think you might find this article by Mike Blumenthal to be helpful: http://localu.org/blog/merge-google-pages-usually-cant-now/

Wow, okay. Yeah, there they are. Thanks! Ruben

Hi Gavo, Just want to be sure that in addition to changing your address on your Google listing, you've also been cleaning up any other citations that reference the old address. I'm asking this because it's so important to understand that Google also draws their information from third party sources, beyond simply relying on what the business owner says in his dashboard. Yes, it can take some time to see the change. If you don't see the change within 10 days, you may need to take further steps.

Thanks guys!

Hi Wesley, If, at the bottom of the local pack results, you click on the link that says 'Maps Results for Plumber' and this will take you to Google Maps where you can see more of the plumbers they have indexed by clicking on the page links at the bottom of the left hand column of results within Google Maps. Will this show you every single plumber in San Francisco? No, but it will typically show you more of them. Setting my location to San Francisco and following the above steps, Google states that they have 4000+ entries for this query in Maps. At any rate, it should be quite a few.

Another vote for WhiteSpark. And don't forget, you can get a deal on WhiteSpark using your Moz Perks. Paul

I received great answers to my question but Donna's seems to hit home.   I do find my self feeling that I'm lacking in "real-world" SEO experience.   Luckily I love to learn and I guess its never to late to do that even at 51 yrs of age.    I am passionate about this field so going to put in 100% commitment!

Hi There Few things; They are no longer ranking for me on "caliber signs and imaging" set to Irvine, CA. I think they are ranking still for "caliber signs and graphics" because it's an exact title match, and the domain is carrying a large part of the ranking Their site is really messed up - like phenomenally messed up - looks like they still exist as of last year on facebook but they either don't use their site or it's just not updated. I don't think there was anything malicious, it's just bad. The blog - strange! The "author's" profile IS in fact "martin" - I wonder if it somehow got hijacked. I think it DID get hijacked actually. All the posts 2011 and prior are real (like this one) - then the spam starts. Now, if the word "caliber" is not commercial (like a "caliber sign" is not a thing, right?) - then they are still going to rank very easily for things like "caliber" despite their bad site and geographic location. So essentially, they are ranking because they are super low-competition terms, they actually haven't done anything malicious on their end - and now we know Google can process iFrame sites

To add to what Cyrus has said, Google will "choose" a version of content it finds duplicated to favour, so has clearly chosen the local. subdomain. The main website would likely fall back into favour if you were to consolidate the subdomain and redirect it to the main site, but I would definitely find out if the third party agency who developed the subdomain has done some promotion of the subdomain that you aren't aware of. There is no real problem using subdomains or subfolders for specific local rankings / campaigns. I wouldn't say you are gaming or abusing it here - you have a dupe content problem that needs fixing though. If you were to use subfolders, the duplicate content problem would remain as long as there are multiple versions of the same content, but if you were to consolidate the main site and subdomain's strength, then any subfolders you added to the one remaining site (assuming all content was unique) should inherit authority.

Thanks for the answer that help!

Thanks for double checking for me. I appreciate it!

Hi Blair, Funny, I recalled this question, too, but didn't realize it was yours I wish we could get an 'official word' from Google on this, because it's something the guidelines hint around but don't speak to directly. Have you ever posted this question in the Google And Your Business Forum, just to see if you get any feedback from the TCs there? Maybe even from a staffer? What's really important, I think, is the distinction between what Google's guidelines state about rental properties, etc., and the fact that a main office is being located on the property for several years. I mean, if it were a watch repair store that opened for several years and then closed, no one would fault them for having a G+ Local page, right? So, I think there is grey area here. You've been told by a Google rep not to do this, but I am truly curious as to the reasoning behind that individual's advice, and whether they could have been misinterpreting the guidelines. Blair, as this is a business model you deal with constantly, I'd suggest trying again to get feedback from a Google staffer on this, maybe via their forum. If that doesn't work, you might try contacting a TC, like Linda Buquet or Mike Blumenthal to see if they would consider writing about your topic ... because there just isn't a clear guideline for this, in my opinion, given the exact details of the business model.

Hi Alexander, There isn't a best length to write, but I personally would never make this too long. Remember that this is a small sales page (of a kind), and you are wanting to sell your services. You are much better off with something that quickly describes what you are offering. I think the maximum number of characters you can use is about 4,500, but this would make for an overly lengthy read. There is a lot of personal opinion comes into this question, but for me, I would stick at about 600 characters. Others might choose more - others less. -Andy

Hi Ruben, I hope you'll just love Moz Local! Yep, it looks like that # thing is everywhere. When, exactly, this happened, I did not notice.

Hi AvalanceSearch, Great questions. Let me address them in order. Personally, I'm not a fan of taking advantage of Google's offer to let partners in a practice build their own Google+ Local pages in addition to the main practice page. My hesitation stems from two things - Google's historic issues with merging similar listings and Google's historic refusal to delete doctor/dentist dupes (read: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-duplicates-merges/861-dr-dupes-google-local-user-edits.html) That being said, it is certainly permissible to go this way, just so as you have a sense of historic problems that could potentially come up for clients. It's fine to have a different name and same address in the multi-partner scenario. But, if you can, do give each partner a different phone number at which they can be directly contacted during stated business hours. The main reason for doing so is to lessen the chances of merged listings. Yes, definitely point an individual practitioner's citations to his unique page on the website. Again, this helps reduce the likelihood of merges and provides a better user experience. Hope this helps!

Thanks, Moosa

I'm not in the tool, so I'll leave that to those in the know. However, to clarify you can still do free basic listings. So maybe that's what they're doing, and that's what you're seeing. I'm referring to whether I should pay for listings so that I can get the specialized attention I need for 70 locations that are giving me grief. So it's within that frame that we are weighing whether they carry enough influence to be worth it.

Hi Mark, Best practice is to create a number of different descriptions - maybe 5-10 of them, just to vary things up. However, you cannot prevent duplication even if you create a different description for each entity, because of the way certain data sources populate the data of other websites. So, duplication, to some degree, is baked into the citation building process and, thus, is unlikely to have a serious, negative effect. So, go ahead and write a handful of different descriptions to use, but don't fret over this area too much, because you can't avoid a certain level of duplication.

As others had answered before, if the pages with parameters are just a consequence of a filter, but don't actually add nothing relevant (aka: substantially duplicated of the not parametered URLs) or nothing all, than the best idea is having those URLs with noindex meta robots. This will ensure that those pages, if they were crawled, will disappear from the index. But this is just a general rule, because can exists many variations to that same rule (and we don't know how really has been developed your site). For instance, if those pages cannot be physically crawl because the filters are behind a Javascript selector (something that can be verified disabling Java in the browser), then you should not suffer issues and, eventually, using the meta robots "noindex" should be just a prevention not really an intervention to something already happened.