Remove unwanted map in SERP

[JacobFunnell]

My company is based in Brighton.

We run courses in London.

If you search 'london business writing' in Google UK, you get this:

http://i39.tinypic.com/35me3qs.jpg

Lolwut. Google is placing a link for a map to our Brighton offices beneath the second result.

For a London-related keyword that links to a page for our London courses that contains an address for our London venue.

We are registered on Google maps as being based in Brighton; we also have a map of our Brighton office on our contact page. But obviously, this is not relevant to this search.

How do I get rid of this map for this keyword?

[ClickConsult]

Perhaps you could add the London based address to all of the pages which Google is showing the map beneath the listing in the SERPs and mark the London address with rich snippets.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bix,

Can you clarify for me whether you actually have a physical office dedicated to just your business in London - or are you sharing a building or something along those lines? That would be a start. Thanks, and by the way, love your screen name. I'm a big Bix fan.

Miriam

[JacobFunnell]

Hi Miriam

Thanks!

Our actual physical office is in Brighton. In London, we rent out a room. This room  belongs to SOAS, a university.

[JacobFunnell]

I didn't know about rich snippets; thanks.

[JacobFunnell]

Just in case anyone finds this in future: I've tried adding the address markup here http://www.schema.org/PostalAddress

There's an unusually clear explanation of how to use this here: http://www.schema.org/docs/gs.html

If you have a basic understanding of HTML (esp div and span tags) you can learn how to do this fairly quickly.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bix,

Thanks for the further info. You are very lucky to be showing up for that London search, given that you are not in London (i.e. you don't have a dedicated physical address there). The reason Google is associating that map with your business is because that is you company's real, registered physical address. Your screenshot is not of a set of local results, nor would you qualify for a real local result because of the lack of a dedicated address in that city. So, I'm afraid you are stuck with the map link to Brighton. I agree...that might confuse some users, but frankly, I would think that your awesome ranking outside of your city of location totally outweighs the downside of having that mapped link.

Sorry I can't tell you how to change this. Google displays what they feel is relevant, and for that search, they feel it's relevant to display your address.

I want you to know that I put a little feeler out amongst a couple of colleagues in Local to see if they have a different opinion on this. I didn't use your name or anything; just described the situation in general terms. If I get any differing opinions, I will certainly return to this thread, but I'm pretty positive any Local SEO will agree with my take on this.

Your site must have good traditional SEO and Local SEO factors to be doing so well for that term. You might like to read Linda Buquet's recent article on the Venice update...wonder if this could be the reason for your prominences in organic outside your true, physical location:

http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-venice-update-local-seo.html

Cheers!

Miriam

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Again Bix,

As I suspected, this may be difficult/impossible to have remove. My only good suggestion on this is to try using the Google Maps Troubleshooter to see if you can get some help that way, but I think you may be stuck with that link being generated by the algo:

http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps

Too bad there isn't a simple solution for this. Just one of those things where I wish there was more support!

Miriam

[JacobFunnell]

Hi Miriam

Thanks so much for taking the time to look so thoroughly into this!

If it's something I'm stuck with, I'll just accept it - for very similar relevant 'london [keyword]' searches I don't get the map.

That said, I'm hoping that specifiying the London address on that page with schema.org tags will prevent Google from displaying the map.

[MiriamEllis]

It's worth trying, Bix. Hope it works out for you!

[JacobFunnell]

It worked! The map is gone. Looks like Google really does pay attention to those schemas.

[JacobFunnell]

I actually solved this problem with a very similar solution - using the address markup at schema.org

Thanks for putting me on the right track!

[MiriamEllis]

Bix, really appreciate you coming back to update this thread. Great that you had success! And, while we mustn't mix up correlation with causation, I'd say the effort you made is a very strong candidate for the causation of this. Well done! Again, thanks for taking the time to share your results. Could be very useful to others in the future who run into a problem like this. Miriam