Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Indeed. Luckily organic is the client's top traffic and conversion source.

At the moment, to my knowledge, Search Console does not necessarily show any local data. However, like you mentioned, Google My Business has added some awesome data and insights over the past year. My agency has been loving the recent updates that show how many times your listing has appeared, how many users have asked for directions, how many users have called, and more!

They are indeed separated, to get your G+ page for your local listing to display in brandaccounts, create a new G+ page and use the exact URL you use for GMB. This will let Google know they are tied together.

Just updating the URL of the post Miriam mentioned. It's been moved and is returning a 404 error. Try https://www.imprezziomarketing.com/is-permanently-closed-killing-your-ranking-4-case-studies/ instead.

Hi Donald, Thanks so much for the answers. Other than a past SEO doing this for some weird reason for your client, the only other explanation I can think of is that the weird listings are the outcome of some kind of aggregation by the directories in question. Some directories do auto-generate listings, and there is a possibility of your client's business getting mixed up with the details of some other business. But I'm not really leaning that way because of the fictitious address. That "feels like" spam to me. But, I definitely would review this with the client in full to see if anything about it rings a bell to them about past work that may have been done internally or by an agency. I think the best thing to do here would be to discover as many directories as you can that are listing the fictitious business and contact them to request listing removal, as you've done with Manta. You will easily be able to approve that the address is non-existent, that the phone doesn't connect to anything, and, if you've received no reply trying to use the email address, that the email is unresponsive. Show legal proofs of ownership of the brand name if necessary. Then, once you've gotten these odd listings removed, I would make it a practice once a month to search for any new listings that may crop up. Not very fun, but it seems necessary in the instance of such an odd scenario. Good luck!

Thanks for the further details, and shalom to your wife and family.

Hey hey, Paul - you read my article! Woo hoo Thank you. And thanks for your great contributions to this thread.

1.) If the business is brand new, and there is no record of it on the Internet as of yet, then I would only recommend creating practitioner listings if it is necessary to point out an area of specialization. So, for example if a medical practice has 5 MDs, the listing for the practice covers that, with no added listings needed. But, if a medical practice has 5 MDs and an Otolaryngologist, it may be good marketing to give the specialist his own listing, because it has its own GMB category and won’t be competing with the practice for rankings. *However, read on to understand the challenges being undertaken any time a multi-practitioner listing is created 2.) If the multi-practitioner business is not new, chances are very good that there are listings out there for present, past, and even deceased practitioners. If a partner is current, be sure you point his listing at a landing page on the practice’s website, instead of at the homepage, see if you can differentiate categories, and do your utmost to optimize the practice’s own listing — the point here is to prevent practitioners from outranking the practice. What do I mean by optimization? Be sure the practice’s GMB listing is fully filled out, you’ve got amazing photos, you’re actively earning and responding to reviews, you’re publishing a Google Post at least once a week, and your citations across the web are consistent. These things should all strengthen the listing for the practice. If a partner is no longer with the practice, it’s ideal to unverify the listing and ask Google to market it as moved to the practice — not to the practitioner’s new location. Sound goofy? Read Joy Hawkins’ smart explanation of this convoluted issue. If, sadly, a practitioner has passed away, contact Google to show them an obituary so that the listing can be removed. If a listing represents what is actually a solo practitioner (instead of a partner in a multi-practitioner business model) and his GMB listing is now competing with the listing for his business, you can ask Google to merge the two listings. Source Not-Actually-the-Best Local SEO Practices IF THIS ANSWER WERE USEFUL MARK IT AS A GOOD ANSWER

Thanks for the extra input William. Yeah, it's a new site. I was mainly concerned about the shared address. Nothing I have ever seen before. We have ran some reports on local churches, as well as churches in general to see where to get some quality links and will be implementing that soon. I will keep everyone updated on what happens!

Hi Ben - Chad here from Moz. Kudos to Joy and Nigel for the great tool suggestions. I checked those out myself! You make a good call out that there is no perfect method for tracking rankings given proximity and geographic location - I'd also add personalization as the other big factor. I was recently in the same room with 4-5 members of my client's digital team in Texas. We all ran the same keyword search on laptops and mobiles, and nearly all saw variations in the local results. So, there's that. : ) Moz has put a ton of thought and testing into how to get the most directionally accurate results, but personalization in particular challenges any method. It may go without saying, but I tell my clients to pick one method or tracker (maybe two at the most) then look at the directional changes in rankings vs. the absolute rankings themselves. It takes the pressure off small changes in rankings and allows them to become a useful confirmation that all is well or an alerting system that something has gone/is going in the wrong direction. This is in contrast to metrics like traffic (online and off), GMB insights data, and conversions/sales that tend be better indicators of success in your digital efforts. Best of luck! -Chad

Hey Joy, Yea it definitely is pretty much impossible to get that to populate. We are trying to work through some options with our tracking company since we want to be as consistent as possible. Thanks so much for your help it is much appreciated and I turned to different possibilities thanks to your advice! -Ben

Sounds like we have the same thoughts on the matter. Thanks for the response!

Hi GVZH! Great question. There are so many different phenomena that can contribute to the scenario you're seeing. In order for the community to help you dig into this, we'll need to know: The identity of your website The exact keyword phrase you're trying to rank locally for. If you can share these things, you should receive some great, targeted advice here. Otherwise, unfortunately, we'd just be making random guesses.

Hey Patrick, Coming back to give you 2 additional pro tips I got from Mike Blumenthal: Get multiple people to report the issue via the "send feedback" link. This could help the job get done. If you see no traction after a couple of months, go report the whole issue in the GMB forum. The TCs there can try to escalate it for you. So nice of Mike to offer these extra tips

That would be a good outcome! Thanks for starting an interesting discussion.

Hi Coppell, Google puts the burden on business owners to become aware of and read Google's guidelines. They won't stop you from creating most listings that violate the guidelines, but these listings can then be taken down for violations if a) Google catches them, or, b) a consumer or competitor reports them. The only time you should create a Google My Business listings is if it is guideline-compliant. Otherwise, you are putting effort into something that's a liability to your brand and reputation, instead of being an asset. So, unfortunately, you were unaware of Google's guidelines in this and have built rankings and reviews around an ineligible address. Regarding the new address, I had asked some questions. You mention it has no postal delivery. Why is that? Is it on a brand new street? How do business owners occupying your street receive mail? Also, you mention you are sharing this office with a friend. Are they in the same business category as you?

Hey Matt, A tough subject. I'm guessing you've read all the general advice on ensuring that you've added plenty of your own guideline-compliant photos on behalf of your clients so that Google has good stuff to choose from, and it sounds like you know how to flag photos or report them like this: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Basics-for-Business-Owners/Remove-Photo-From-Location-Listing/td-p/1131795 But as to doing this at scale, I'm not aware of a solution that gives you any additional control over GMB images than you have with manual management. I think I once asked Local SEO Guide if their Locadium product alerts customers to new images being uploaded to their GMB listings, but I don't believe they ever replied. You might investigate that product further to see if you can get an answer. My question to them may simply have gotten lost - it's the one thing I wondered about when the product debuted. But, even if a product were to alert you to photos being added (which would be half the battle) the other half of the battle would be that it's up to Google to plunk photos into your listing - it's their choice. You can report unwanted images, but you can't proactively prevent Google from accepting them or displaying them. Definitely a pain point, and one of the impactful outcomes of Googles crowd-sourcing approach to location data.

Hi Gavo, My apologies for the delayed reply, as I've been away for the past 10 days. I think you're right to feel some concerns and have some questions about what your client is doing. If the myotherapy is just a service his chiropractic office is offering, then he shouldn't be building out new listings for it. Google's policy on this hasn't changed. However there are some nuances to the scenario, like: Did he legally register this with government agencies as a new, completely distinct business Does he have a unique phone number for the business, being answered "Myotherapy Office" instead of "Chiropractic Office" when patients (or Google) phone in? Is the myotherapy part of the business open at separate hours from the chiro business? There could, potentially, be cause for treating the two models as separate, but you'll need to know the complete details before making an educated guess as to whether the owner is putting himself at risk for suspension.

Hi Tariq! You'll typically be best off building your Google My Business listings manually, which you can then import to Moz Local for the purposes of building out the rest of your most important citations. You can learn more about syncing Moz Local and Google My Business here: https://moz.com/blog/my-business-console-free-tool A WP theme isn't really going to ensure higher maps rankings. Yoast's Local SEO plugin for WP (https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/local-seo/) is popular, but I think it oversimplifies the idea that any plugin or theme is going to = high local rankings. There are several hundred factors that contribute to ranking well locally on Google, and your website factors into that in terms of its basic SEO, content and links. Check out this year's Local Search Ranking Factors survey for further details: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors Hope this helps!

Hi SSDigital, Ooof...listing hijacking is truly awful. I'm so sorry for the trouble you're experiencing, and even sorrier to have to mention that it's not uncommon. Here's a phone number for Yext: 888-444-2988. Hope it helps!