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Hi Ryan,

Luckily I have not been in that situation. But I have not taken on clients personally for 3 years. So back when I did, merging would have been more of a concern, which leads me to Miriam's question.

1st off, good points all Miriam! Re: merging you are correct.  I very seldom see that issue these days which is why no one talks about it, I think.

The bigger question I have for Wick is what industry is each of the businesses in?

And is it a really small company where the owner is answering both phones and is mainly the one doing both services?

Because there is a chance they may not qualify to even have a 2nd listing.

If you can answer the 2 Qs above, I can weigh in more.

I'm very much a purist when it comes to the Google Local guidelines, since I deal with fixing problems all day AFTER someone has gotten in trouble.

In my mind sharing an office like this is tricky to handle.  Now you likely would not get in trouble for adding a suite, but to me if a suite does not really exist, then it does not exist so it's a little like making up a fake location.  Here is the pertinent part of the guidelines.

Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location.

In big office buildings you'll often see 10 businesses that are all at the same address that don't specify a suite at all, so it would look to the algo as if they are all in the same office. So maybe just skip suite on the new listing?

Just my anal-about-the-rules 2 cents.

Wow, excellent response Miriam and right on!

The other thing you might want to consider is getting more rankings for long tail queries for each location by actively incorporating neighborhood SEO. So each location tries to get more rankings for neighborhood and other regional queries to help compensate for the fact they may not rank for KW + city.

I think there have been several posts about this, but here is one I found for you from SE Land:
http://searchengineland.com/ready-googles-neighborhood-algo-194161

Hi Marty,

I've seen a few reports like yours recently and was going to share a couple theories.  But then it occurred to me I should check to be sure you are talking about local pack rankings, the pinned results? Because that's what my theories relate to.

The ranking fluctuations you are talking about, is that in pure organic or in the local pack results?

Yes Pigeon hit the UK back in December.  BrightLocal started noticing changes around Dec 18th and asked me about it.

I told them it sounded like Pigeon and spotted some telltale changes that made me pretty sure it was, so I called it as an official update. Then SE Land announced it with confirmation from Google on 12/22.

Good points all Richard!

"Those that don't have Google+ and haven't setup social and other profiles or have NAP listings typically rank poorly even if they are EMD."

Yes, sorry I should have qualified I was only talking about local listings in the pack. In regular organic it's somewhat different. The specific potential benefit I was pointing out, only works for local pinned listings. And Google mainly seems to still like EMDs and PMDs in local pack listings .

But like you said you can't just do any one thing and expect to rank. You can have a subdomain or even an EMD and if everything else isn't optimized well or there are violations or the competition is stronger, you still may not rank.

However, just an FYI with something else to consider. I've been meaning to do a post about this with examples, so this Q will hopefully motivate me to get it done...

We know how Google loves EMDs and PMDs in local. In competitive markets they are usually the ones that rank on top.

If the link on the G+ L page is domain.com/miami. Then what shows on the G+ L page AND in the SERPs is simply domain.com

However if the link on the G+ L page is miami.domain.com then city ends up showing on the domain on G+ L and in the SERPS.

Example: See Mr Rooter in the B spot here: https://www.google.com/search?q=memphis+plumber
In the SERPs in the URL Memphis is highlighted by Google since the query was Memphis Plumber.

And Memphis is in the URL on the G+ L and shows up like this: memphis.mrrooter.com where otherwise memphis would be cut off and not showing on the page: https://plus.google.com/101436210710682267977/about  (Not a client or anything, just one of many random examples I've been collecting for my subdomain post)

Now I'm not saying you should use subdomains just for this reason. And not even saying it will necessarily help ranking, even though I've seen tons of subdomains that rank high.

Just throwing it out there for consideration and think the benefits should be weighed against the other pros and cons.

What do you think? Do you think having city in the URL in the SERPs and on the G+ L page could possibly help with ranking in that city?

Hi Ashwin,

You asked: "So what happens to my Google plus page now? Do i discontinue using it"

No I'd still keep it current and use it, for reviews for one thing. But additionally the data from your G+ L page still gets used and fed to other places like the knowledge graph. And your page may still show up and rank in Map search and Google+ search as well. Plus you never know when she'll come out with some new display format and use that local data.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that sometimes packs disappearing is temporary and based on a wide variety of factors like query volume. So the pack could come back. I've seen packs disappear for a week and then come back.

I agree with Miriam and Ray.

Additionally it does depend on the query/industry. For instance "indy plumbers" does pull a 3 pack, so Google does realize I was searching for Indianapolis. But in your industry I'd search to be sure a local pack comes up.

I'd include the full city spelled out in all the relevant SEO places on your site though to help you rank for the majority of searches that will include full city name. But with Indy as part of your business name and URL you should find it fairly easy to rank for Indy searches, though the search volume will likely be less.

Yes if you are outside the US, then I agree with the others. The Pigeon algo expanded overseas and exhibits many of the characteristics you are describing.

Many report 7 packs being reduced to 3 packs, but in some industries packs are totally gone.

Kevin, most of the experts I read seem to think backlinks to your G+ Local listing don't boost ranking at all.

Thanks parayama for the mention.

Happy New Year all!

Yes I agree with the above comments.

Here is what may be throwing you. Pre-Pigeon it did not matter as much. I would check rankings all day from whatever city I happened to have set in my browser and it didn't matter.

But since Pigeon it does. You really need to set location to the query city to even try to get accurate results.

But even with that you'll often see different results than clients do, due to personalization. If you are checking their ranking a lot or clicking their links or checking the page, then they could rank higher for you. Sometimes it even varies by browser and as others have said can be different if logged in or not.

FYI if you ever need to check pure maps ranking realize that Classic maps is still showing the OLD algo and ranking order. But new maps is showing the Pigeon ranking order so if I client says I dropped down to H on maps, need so see which version of maps.

It all just keeps getting more complicate, doesn't it?

Yes I agree with everyone above. There are pros and cons both ways. We've had this discussion many time at other venues and the general consensus, even from top citation pros is that it does not matter too much either way.

As Range and Monica said, keeping NAP consistent is the most important thing.

Yes I agree with Hutch.

Many companies feel like "divide and conquer" is the name of the game - but with Google Local "united we stand" typically works better. Then you are driving all your energy into one strong site instead of fracturing it. Many attorneys have a single site with multiple practice areas.

You are right, you can't have a separate G+ L page for the other practice area, but as long as the home page is optimized for both practice areas and you have the right categories you should be good.

Hi Fiona,

Unfortunately, it does not really matter if you set up multiple service areas, you'll still only have a chance of ranking in the city or near the area the business is actually located. (Depending on competition.)

And also, since you'll just be moving there, you may not rank well at 1st compared to established businesses that have been there for a long time. The algo is like a giant puzzle and there are lots of things at play that go into the ranking order.

Moving can be challenging for your Google ranking, so I'd suggest reading the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors if you have not yet and be ready to start working to increase some of those ranking signals after you move. Using the Moz Local tool to try to either correct or build new citations to the new location would be important too.

There are a few issues I wanted to point out.

1st off the address in your Google dashboard needs to be the real address you work from.  So if you move you MUST change it in dash. If you don't all kinds of problems could come up including duplicates and including your listing being deleted.

Any time you move, it breaks NAP so you will likely lose ranking.

If you move to a new city you will likely only rank in that city, not the previous city. (Depends on competition and proximity.)

In either case you need to set service area and be sure address is hidden. But that service area does not affect ranking in any way at all. Ranking area is still determined by the location that's in dash, even though address is hidden.

Hope that helps and best of luck!

If no keywords in domain I would also go with #3 from a pure SEO perspective. Although post Hummingbird and post Pigeon I'm not sure it matters quite as much these days.

Just my 2 cents, no strong theory behind it except for good ole fashioned local SEO.

I'm really sorry if something I said, or removing one of your posts on the topic because it was off-topic upset you.

But there was nothing said that could remotely be considered [Portion of this comment removed for TAGFEE reasons - editor]. I merely explained why that post was not allowed and was trying to caution you that all the posts you've been making may not be helping your cause.

And again I'm sorry you are having to go through this frustrating experience.

Hi Clifford,

I'm the one that said that over in my forum. Sorry I could not explain more. Was running out door to hospital as my daughter was having a baby.  What I meant is this...

I was not implying you talking about and linking to that site so many times at different places using the Google URL shortener carries link juice in the traditional sense of the word.

However Google learns about and quantifies the popularity of a site based on links and hits. (And many other factors.) And most small local sites don't get many hits or have many backlinks, so any uptick in links and hits could indicate prominence, authority or popularity.

When you use Google's own link shortener - given many of Google's tools are designed to get her gain info about user patterns and how people search the web... given that you are creating that link right on Google and telling her what site to go to - don't you think she's following that link to the destination? And we KNOW she's recording action on that link, because you can see how many hits right in the Google link shortener dashboard, correct?

So my point was if you keep saying over and over at different places "vehicle wraps charlotte nc" check this out LINK (Google short link" going to competitors site) you are giving that site, not link juice in the traditional sense, but lots of added attention that Google could interpret wrong. Especially since you keep mentioning the keywords and link over and over so many times.

Someone at Google is not reading everything you write to try to understand the sentiment. It's a bot that's programmed to look for certain things. If for local it may well be looking mainly at location and service KWs and links. So when you keep saying city + KW and linking to them with a Google link over and over, it could be perceived by the algo as "this business must be pretty popular or important".

None of what I just said above is known science, just some educated assumptions about how Google works at a more subtle level. And I've seen some cases lately where using a Google URL shortener in a very specific way seems to possibly help ranking.  So I was merely cautioning that when you keep giving that Google URL clicks and attention, it could possibly have the opposite effect that you want it to.

Also we know for a fact that clicks from search to site impact ranking, so when you tell possibly hundreds of people reading all the forums you've been posting at to search Google for "vehicle wraps charlotte nc" and check out the one box - if lots of them are, and some are clicking the site to check out why it's ranking - that's def giving that site more clout too.

Does that make a little bit of esoteric sense?