Will natural rank drop if I make a Google Places account?

[Brian-H]

I've optimised a site well for a Keyword + City1 however I'd like to set them up on Google places too. Trouble is they have a mailing address in a second city (only 10 miles apart). Will making a google places using City2 mean that the rankings for City1 are negatively affected?

Thank you

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi Brian,

In short, the answer is No. I may have an administrative office in one location but my target market is in another location. This is absolutely fine and there will be no harm for your organic ranking for city1. We have had such scenarios in the past and we did not see these situations doing any harm to our organic ranks.

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Brian,

You should not create a Places/Google+ Local listing for the mailing address location. You must have a real, physical address and unique local phone number to seek inclusion in Google's local products. So, until you have a physical address and not a virtual address, mailing address, P.O box or any other variant, you should not attempt to create a listing. This could definitely hurt your overall standings with Google because it would violate their rules, and of course, you don't want to do that. Here are the guidelines for your perusal:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

[Brian-H]

Thanks. I'm from the UK and I presumed postal address translated to USA mailing address.

City 2 is their physical headquarters walk-in off the street address.

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks for clarifying this, Brian. When you said 'mailing address' I understood that as a mail-only address. People sometimes use these in the USA to try to appear to have more locations, but this is clearly not what you are talking about. Sorry for not understanding.

So: if the business has 2 legit locations, then yes, you are totally fine in creating 2 listings via the Google Places dashboard. You cannot merge these businesses with Google+ Local yet because it does not yet support multi-location businesses. You are perfectly fine having more than one location; think of franchises. A pizza place may have 50 different restaurants, and their rankings in one city do not affect their rankings in another city in any way.

One thing, though, that I do get quite a few questions about here in Q&A is that some business owners are startled when their organic ranking disappears once they get into the blended/local (lettered, pinned) results. This is a quite common phenomenon, the cause of which is that their previous organic rank has been subsumed into their new Local rank. Since the Venice update in early 2012, it has become rare for a business to have both a local and an organic listing on the same page. They typically have one or the other. So, be aware that this can happen and that it's not a negative thing. It's just the way the system works.

[Brian-H]

Thanks for that additional information I was unaware of that.

In this case the company has 1 location and I have achieved rankings in the second location as that is where 80% of their target market is.