NAP No mail delivered to physical location

[David-Denning]

Hello,

First question here on moz.  I live in a small town, and some of my clients do as well.  Some mail is delivered to physical locations, however most mail is delivered to PO Boxes.  I have tried with some success to get the mail workers to flag Google and others post cards.  Otherwise I am not able to verify ownership.  Any ideas or help on how to verify businesses that don't get mail at their location would be great.

Dave

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Dave,

I would be careful about verifying businesses that do not have physical addresses or have clients at those physical addresses. Google is very clear about this being a violation of their guidelines. https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

Granted, I'm not the google police, but it's something I would recommend you considering.

Best,

Ruben

[David-Denning]

Ruben,

Thanks for the reply.  To clarify, these businesses have physical locations, they just don't receive mail at their location.

Any ideas in this scenario?

Thanks for your help,

Dave

[MiriamEllis]

Hi David,

While Ruben is correct that the use of P.O. Boxes is a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines, there is a chance that you can get help with this via the Google Troubleshooter located here:

https://support.google.com/places/

Click the contact button and go through the troubleshooter. You should see a blue 'Call Us' button appear in the form and if you can speak to a Google rep, they may be able to help you with the verification issue.

However, before you can do this, it's important to understand that any Google+ Local page you create must be based on the physical location of the business in question and not any associated P.O. box. So, for a client in this town, you'd need to create the listing, have postcard verification fail and then go through the troubleshooter in hopes of getting direct help from Google staff in verifying the validity of the business. This will be extra work on your part, and you should prepare you clients for this hangup by explaining Google's limitations in regards to small towns like yours where everyone picks up mail at the local post office. Be sure not to guarantee that you can get the listing verified for them, but tell them that you will make a best effort to make it happen.

Hope this helps!

[David-Denning]

Miriam,

Thanks so much.  I will try the troubleshooter.

Dave

[MiriamEllis]

You're welcome, Dave. Good luck!