Should I omit the street address for a delivery based business?

[ScottMcPherson]

I have a client who has a small ready mix concrete delivery business. A couple months ago the client payed another agency to add their business to google places/business—whatever their calling it these days, and to bing places.

So instead of the agency submitting the full address, and the full NAP, they just submitted the Name, City, State, and phone (left off the street address). I guess their rational was that by doing it this way, my client would show up for a more broad region instead of a small specific region for local search.

It's been about 2-3 months now since the agency completed the work and I noticed that my client just started showing up on the maps today.

When my client first hired me, I advised them to let me submit their full NAP, with the street address to Moz Local, and add the NAP micro-data to the footer of their website, with the hopes that google would start paying attention to their location and begin indexing and ranking their website. But after seeing their website begin to show up on the maps, I'm wondering if that's the right decision.

So my question is: Should I submit the _full NAP—_with street address—to moz local, or should I submit the NAP without the street address?

And depending on which of those I should do, how should I proceed with the google+ business page and the bing for places page?

[BruceA]

No sure why you would not include the street address.  If this is because the business does not have an office or place for customers to visit then they should make this clear elsewhere on their site..in the contact us section or about us section, stating that the address is a Depot only and does not have a customer service department at this location and to call xxxxxxxxxx for sales etc, will help solve this.

Search engines like complete data, therefore if the full address is ambiguous, then the business might be perceived as ambiguous.

Hope this is useful

Bruce

[JVRudnick]

YES...you do need to include the full NAP!

Check here at moz.com for the local search ranking factors survey - we're still working on this years, but last years shows too the vast importance of the full NAP on every page....

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Scott,

I'm a wee bit puzzled by this - could it be that the client did submit their complete NAP but then marked the address so that it would be hidden? This would be quite common for a service area business. I would not have believed that you could create a Google+ Local Page/Google My Business Page without at least submitting the complete NAP. I could be wrong about this, but just to be sure, have you taken a logged-in look at the client's Google My Business dashboard to see if the NAP is, in fact, missing?

[ScottMcPherson]

Hi Miriam,

That could very well be the case. We're still waiting on the google+ login credentials from the previous agency.  If that is the case, I should still include the full NAP on the website and Moz Local, right? Would moz local complain at all about the full NAP not showing up on google+ if I submit the full NAP to moz local?

[LindaBuquet]

I'm with Miriam on this!

If the listing was set up properly in the Google My Business dashboard then the full address is listed but the address is not shown live because it's a violation for the address to show if they only do business at the client's locations.

However citations should still have full address and NAP should match exactly as it is in the dashboard. Because Google matches citations to the address field even if address is suppressed.

Only exception would be if it's a home address and the client is adamant about having it not listed anywhere. If so, then Phil Rozek has a good post about citation sources that allow submission without a street address.

[MiriamEllis]

I'm betting dollars to doughnuts that's probably the case with the NAP. It's likely in the dashboard but hidden. You should absolutely include the full NAP on the website (typically in the footer and on the contact page and preferably in Schema markup) and use it in your citation building. It's extremely important to do so

[ScottMcPherson]

That makes sense. The address that the previous agency submitted was his home address. He has a small commercial business address in a neighbor city, but the majority of his business comes from around his home address. He told me his thinking was that by submitting his home address, his website would be more likely to show for potential customers due to google map proximity, which makes sense to me.