2 Company Divisions One Address

[JohnWeb12]

Hi, we have a client that has 2 distinct divisions 1)XYZ Construction and 2)XYZ Pools  they reside at the same address and share a phone number.  They do have 2 different websites.  How can we handle this from a Local listing perspective without getting our listings merged or penalized?

[DJ123]

Get a UPS box for one of the businesses with a VOIP # for one of them, or even a Google Voice # (although be careful there because if you get huge, you may not always be able to keep that #).  Unless you get tons of snail mail...

Then you can legitimately list 2 separate companies in the local listings.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi John,

Having 2 companies occupy the same address does carry some risk of merging, but there are things you can do to lower that risk. First of all, you cannot have the two businesses share the same phone number, whether they are located in the same building or separate buildings. Every local business must have its own phone number, so you'll need to invest in a new local area code phone number for one or the other and be sure to edit references web-wide to the old phone number being associated with whichever business you choose to get the new number for. Once you have the 2 numbers, the other things you can do to lower the risk of merging are:

1. Be sure none of the content is duplicated from one website to the other. It must all be unique.

2. Do not interlink between the two websites. Keep everything separate.

3. Consider getting a legal suite number for the second business. Do not use a P.O. Box, virtual office or anything like that. This would be a real suite number from your local post office - not a fictitious number.

These would be some ways to decrease the risk of merging.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi DJ,

So glad to have you here in Q&A! Just wanted to make a note here that Google doesn't view boxes as legitimate physical addresses, so this would not be considered a best practice and could result in the listing being removed from their index. You can dig into the Google Places Quality Guidelines here:

https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

Hope this helps!

[DJ123]

Thank you for pointing that out!

Even a UPS box? That is different than a PO box because you have people there to sign for things, etc.

We haven't had to deal with this issue because we have a physical office, but that is interesting.  Thank you for pointing that out!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi DJ,

Any kind of box. The address has to be a staffed, physical office. Google frowns on boxes:)

[DJ123]

That is a big 10-4, thank you for pointing that out.