Google places VS position one ranking above the places.

[itrogers]

In my experience, I had a client with the positioning like yours. We created the Places account and it just went into the local / maps results. The good news was that the SERP didn't contain any other organic listings at the top. If you have prominent and consistent rankings and are confident in your strategy, then you might not need to create a places account. Just be aware that moving down 1 spot could really be 8 or 9 spots on the real estate of the SERP. Moving down to #2 organically could mean being below the entire local results. You will need to judge the risk / rewards. Hope that helps.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

I work with around 50 companies, and that's typically what I see.  My #1 listing will just get changed to a Places listing, but it will still be in the #1 position.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi BC,

Yes, you can typically expect the organic rank to be subsumed into the Places rank if you create a Google Places/+ Local page for the client. This is a very common outcome and it remains uncommon, though not impossible, for businesses to have more than one results per SERPs page.

[Laurean]

We have the same experience as Cody.  Google Places is like ADDING another listing to the SERP.  From what I understand the Google places, is supposed to rotate around.  But your #1 or #2 spot should stay firm - unless you get knocked off by a competitor!  We have several clients that are in #1, Google Places and then #4 or 5 - so it is possible to take up quite a bit of real estate on a SERP.

[Bodie]

Thanks for your response, would it be deemed black hat to set up a new site specifically for the Google places listing if it had a strong geo location in the URL and was attached to a different address?

ie website Hillarysrestaurant.com.au (ie hillarys is the suburb) and i was to register Perthrestaurant.com.au and attach that to a different address as the restaurant takes up 3 blocks ie 6-10 so i run the real website as it always was on 6 and set up the new site as a push site/squeeze page on 10 and use it just for google local?

i really hope this makes sense. Thanks again for your help and SEO wisdom!

P.s its not a restaurant im just using this as an example.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bodie,

My pleasure. Are you stating that you work at a large business that has more than one front entry door for clientele (like a hospital with an emergency room and a separate radiology department?) If so, then you are allowed to create more than one listing for the business under the following Google Places Quality Guideline:

Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.

If this is an accurate description of your business model, then I would simply have a single website with unique landing pages for the different public offices and tie these pages to the distinct Place Pages/+ Local Page for the business. Anything that doesn't really fit the above would not be a good idea.

I would not recommend associating an identical business name with two different websites and Place Pages if it is really the same business. What Google wants is for you to make a totally realistic representation of your business on the web; not to try to appear like you are larger, more diverse, or different than you really are in real life. I know how important it is to do all you can to gain the broadest visibility, but I believe that all efforts must be founded on an authentic presentation of any business, and this appears to be Google's view, too. Hope this helps!

[Bodie]

Think more along the lines of a car dealership with a 'NEW' and "used car' department? would i be pushing it ? My question to you is how would the association be made between the pages and businesses if the new site was branded differently and had a new address and a unique non associated domain? The only way i can think is if they were interlinked, but many non associated sites are linked. Is this playing in a grey area?   Thanks again

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bodie,

Yes, I think this is playing in the grey area. If the business owner actually wants to make his used and new car dealerships two companies with completely separate legal business names or DBAs, addresses with separate walk-in entrances, phone numbers and websites with completely unique content, then yes, you'd be talking about two different businesses, but that seems like an awful lot of real-world trouble to go to just to get a second Place page, eh? Chances are, a car dealership with both used and new cars is simply a single business with different specialties and should only be running a single website with a single Place/+ Local page.

What would happen if you went ahead with this plan, anyway, without the company actually being two legally separate entities? Honestly, you might be able to get away with it for awhile. Google is often not super sharp about upholding their policies and iffy stuff can ride for a long time. But...the risk is big. Should Google ever decide that they don't like what they are seeing, they could penalize or remove the listing from the index and if there is any association at all between the 2 listings, they could penalize the whole profile. This isn't a risk I would take for my clients, and for a business model like you're describing, like a car dealership, I would not advise the hypothetical approach you are considering. Rather, I would recommend that the client build the strongest local profile he can for his business and then consider other forms of marketing such as Social Media, Video Marketing, new content, development, etc. to continue to build additional visibility.

Hope this helps!

[SparkSEO]

Curious if anyone of you guys has experience pointing the places listing to a different URL other than the homepage?

I have read a few articles that stated various different outcomes, some mentioning that it didn't effect their Organic result, but was harder to rank the places URL.  Just curious of findings!

[itrogers]

I have a client where we put the specific local listing page url (example.com/locations/phoenix/location1) in the Google Places URL field. It works out really well as we get the home page ranking organically (depending on the query) and the specific places result locally. Sometimes they are combined and other times they are not, but we are in the mix somewhere almost always.