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Hi SSDigital,

Ooof...listing hijacking is truly awful. I'm so sorry for the trouble you're experiencing, and even sorrier to have to mention that it's not uncommon. Here's a phone number for Yext: 888-444-2988. Hope it helps!

Hey Matt,

A tough subject. I'm guessing you've read all the general advice on ensuring that you've added plenty of your own guideline-compliant photos on behalf of your clients so that Google has good stuff to choose from, and it sounds like you know how to flag photos or report them like this: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Basics-for-Business-Owners/Remove-Photo-From-Location-Listing/td-p/1131795

But as to doing this at scale, I'm not aware of a solution that gives you any additional control over GMB images than you have with manual management. I think I once asked Local SEO Guide if their Locadium product alerts customers to new images being uploaded to their GMB listings, but I don't believe they ever replied. You might investigate that product further to see if you can get an answer. My question to them may simply have gotten lost - it's the one thing I wondered about when the product debuted. But, even if a product were to alert you to photos being added (which would be half the battle) the other half of the battle would be that it's up to Google to plunk photos into your listing - it's their choice. You can report unwanted images, but you can't proactively prevent Google from accepting them or displaying them. Definitely a pain point, and one of the impactful outcomes of Googles crowd-sourcing approach to location data.

Good luck, Mike, and that would be great if you would share anything you learn with our community. Thank you!

Hi Patrick!

Ooh - these can be tough! Thanks for providing such thorough details.

The good news is, the majority of your patients are unlikely to look you up via a street address. So long as their search for "Chalco Clinic" is getting them to a Knowledge Panel and a map that showing your accurate location, you're likely getting found by most of your patients. You'd also want to check to be sure that a non-branded search (like "health clinic omaha" is also rendering a listing that sends your patients to the right place from the local pack/local finder view).

When I do the searches you've listed out, it's clear that Google thinks of this geography as 168th St ... not 168th Ave. You can see that right on the map - it's being designated a street not an avenue. I want to be sure I understand ... there is just one 168th in your town, right? Or, are you saying that Omaha has both a 168th St. and a 168th Avenue? Please, let me know on that. I'll pop back by as soon as I can to read your answer.

Hey Ben,

I happen to love philosophical Local SEO discussions - they are too few and far between, IMO.

You've pretty much answered your good question by understanding that paying for placement allows you to "cut in line" (I like that analogy). Traditional Adwords have never had anything to do with organic authority, which is why Adwords can be used by scammers to fool consumers (want a great but scary read: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16309752/google-rehabs-near-me-search-adwords-crackdown). So, it's not just that businesses with low organic rankings can dominate PPC, but that totally unethical business models can use it to scam the consumer public. This is in no way confined to Google's program, but they do get the lion's share of visibility.

Now, here's what I'm finding interesting. Google's growing Local Service Ads (formerly Home Service Ads) is a bit different, in that it has a quite serious vetting process AND that Google is obliging itself to guarantee work being done up to $2,000. This means that if Google allows a scammer to slip past them into the program, Google will end up paying for it.

While this doesn't directly relate to organic rankings, there is an indirect tie. I would theorize that a local business which has the credentials to pass Google's vetting process for LSA inclusion will also be working hard at building the real-world reputation that can lead to organic authority and high organic rankings. They will be earning good press, good links. So, in a way, LSA could reduce the disconnect between ads and business quality. Interesting to think about, right?

Jen, thank you so much for contributing your findings to this thread. I'm so happy you have a resource you've linked to. Fantastic!

You're welcome, Patrick. So, I have 2 suggestions:

1. Short-term, change the email being sent out so that it links to a correct, custom map on your website instead of G Maps.

2. Long-term, go to your town on G Maps, and in the lower right, click the tiny "send feedback" link to report the missing street issue. It will likely take a month, but hopefully Google will act on this. Only then should you re-include the link to your G Maps map in the email.

Hope this helps!

Hi GVZH!

Great question. There are so many different phenomena that can contribute to the scenario you're seeing. In order for the community to help you dig into this, we'll need to know:

1. The identity of your website

2. The exact keyword phrase you're trying to rank locally for.

If you can share these things, you should receive some great, targeted advice here. Otherwise, unfortunately, we'd just be making random guesses.

Hi Gary,

Great question. The answer is, no, I don't believe that is a "known" quantity, because it would vary for each scenario, each search. How frequently one of your clients appears in the results is going to be based on a) it's strength, b) the strength and number of nearby competitors it has and c) the location of the searcher. So, as you can imagine, that varies, search by search, user by user.

A given in any scenario is that a business is only likely to rank for both truly local and remote searchers for the city in which it is physically located. So, let's say you have a dealership in Dallas. Someone in Dallas searches for "auto dealership" and your client has a good chance to rank for that. Someone in Sugar Land searches for "auto dealership Dallas", and, again, your client can rank for that. But, if someone in Sugar Land searches just for "auto dealership", Google is going to show him Sugar Land results, and your client won't be included in those because they are located in Dallas.

The variables in the scenario relate to the exact proximity of a user to your business at the time of search. A searcher in a Central Dallas neighborhood looks for "auto dealership" on his device, and Google is most likely to show him dealerships that are closest to him. If he then drives over to the Park Cities neighborhood and performs the same search, his results are likely to change to that geographic area of the city. But, if the searcher is, say, 10 miles outside of Dallas, searching for "auto dealerships Dallas", Google defaults to a different type of result for him, which appears to be based more on authority than proximity.

So, those are basically the elements that you have to take into consideration in trying to understand the reach of a given business. You have to consider the location of the searcher, as well as the level of competition both right next to the business, and within its entire city or zip code.

Not a simple answer, I know! But, I hope it helps.

Hey Michael,

Nice to know my name is one your cherished family members had (may they rest in peace), and thanks for the kind words in your reply. I'm sorry if what I was describing was a bit basic - stuff you already knew, but it does sound like that city-specific ranking bias of Google's is the cause of what your clients are experiencing in the more populous area you've described. One thing I am curious about, and would like to ask you as you've been looking so much at the results in this tri-city area. Let's say your client is in city X in the XYZ of this triangulation. Do you ever see competitors in city Y ranking in the local packs for cities X and Z, or competitors in city Z ranking in the local packs for X and Y? Just curious.

I know what you mean about spurious agencies offering your client the impossible, and yikes, the client taking the bait. So frustrating when that happens. Likely, the best thing to recommend to the client in city X is to invest in Adwords so that they can show up in the paid results for cities Y and Z.

Enjoyed your reply very much!

Hi Steven!

So, basically, the answer is: you can't. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it is the reality for nearly all single location businesses that serve multiple cities. Google's bias toward physical location affects all service business models this way. Unless you can get a staffed, physical office in the second city, it will be a waste of your time to make it your goal to rank in the local results for that city. Instead, your options are:

1. Go after organic rankings for that city via the authority you build surrounding website content+links for that city.

2. Pay for visibility with locally-targeted PPC.

3. Use social media to try to build brand awareness for your work in that city.

4. Do everything you can to encourage word-of-mouth among existing customers. Customers in City A have friends and family in city B. Make a superior effort to offer the type of superior service that would cause the A group to recommend your services to the B group. Consider how loyalty programs might assist with this. Perhaps every customer who brings you a new customer gets a voucher for a free dinner, free massage, etc.

5. Explore building relationships with related businesses in City B. Perhaps your company does everything but bake the cake for weddings. Find the best bakers in City B and see how you can help one another in terms of lead gen.

A combination of all these efforts could begin generating some leads for you that are not dependent on the unrealistic goal of ranking locally where you aren't locally located. Hope this helps!

Hey Mike,

I hope you'll take a peek at my Monday blog post which Paul has linked to in his reply to you. It deals with precisely this topic. Your dilemma is a really common one, and so frustrating, I know! Basically:

1. Yes, you should remove the keyword stuffing. It's a guideline violation, and therefore, a risk.

2. Yes, this may cause rankings to drop - you will have to build authority in a Google-approved way to get it back.

3. Yes, Google can "soft supsend" the listing if you don't remove the kw stuffing, which will likely cause your listing to become unverified and your reviews may get lost because they aren't associated with a GMB account anymore. You'll have to re-claim the listing if you get caught, but I can't guarantee the reviews will come back (this is scary).

4. Yes, Google is doing an awful job catching this type of spam, so help them out. Once you've cleaned up your own listing, start reporting every single competitor for spam. It would help if you could achieve Local Guide status in Google, as it will give your spam reports a bit more oomph...better still if you can get to know a few other Local Guides and team up to repeatedly flag a business for spam. You have to be on the lookout after you report a business for business title spam - very often, they reappear with the spammy name intact! Arggh - so annoying. But be persistent.

Again, hope you'll read the article, and thanks for asking an important question.

Wow - this is super weird, Donald. When I saw the word "hijack" I assumed your were talking about this entity hijacking your GMB listing, but you've clarified that this isn't so. Bearing in mind that I haven't dealt with this scenario before, here is what I see.

When I search for the Galveston address in Google's main engine, I see:

https://www.google.com/search?q=1644+Lynn+Ogden+Lane+Galveston%2C+TX+77550&oq=1644+Lynn+Ogden+Lane+Galveston%2C+TX+77550&aqs=chrome..69i57.463j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

You are right ... there appear to be a number of listings that have been created for this business.

When I click into Maps, I see the following error message:

Maps can't find 1644 Lynn Ogden Lane Galveston, TX 77550

So it would appear that address doesn't exist. Let's check Smarty Streets just to be sure. Yep! As I suspected "address unknown".

So, the address being used doesn't actually exist.

Calling the phone number several time only yields a busy signal.

The website listed on that Wufoo form is your client's own website. Are you seeing a website anywhere for this other entity?

The Manta listing for the strange entity is bringing up a 404 error page: https://www.manta.com/c/mh1l5py/s-s-s-custom-closets, but I'm seeing a live listing on Hotfrog and a couple of other low level directories.

I have to ask, what would be the point of this spam? If they're pointing to your client's website, and the phone number on those weird listings isn't functional, how would this be a successful spam strategy? I just don't get it.

A couple of questions, Don:

1. Are you positive your client has never attempted to operate any type of undertaking in Galveston? Positive they didn't try to do anything spammy on their end, like set up a fake location there? No offense intended in any way, but sometimes clients have done weird things in the past that we don't know about unless we ask.

2. What is the email being listed on those weird listings: warblingjulian@rediffmail.com. Is that your client or the unknown entity? Have you investigated that email at all...tried to write to them? I just don't see any other way to contact this unknown person than by filling out the form/emailing them, if they have no website or working phone number.

One suggestion:

I would urge you to do some work on your client's website to locally optimize it better. The website is currently very vague about its location. The homepage, contact, footer, about, etc. should list the full NAP of the business. Right now, I'm seeing a mention of the city here and there, but to ensure that your client retains dominant status for its name + location, some optimization needs to be done on-page to associate that brand name with the correct street address.

Please, if you can, answer the couple of questions I've asked, and thanks for bringing this mysterious case to the community. It's just not adding up for me. It's not typical local spam.

Thanks for the further details, and shalom to your wife and family.

Hi Donald,

Thanks so much for the answers. Other than a past SEO doing this for some weird reason for your client, the only other explanation I can think of is that the weird listings are the outcome of some kind of aggregation by the directories in question. Some directories do auto-generate listings, and there is a possibility of your client's business getting mixed up with the details of some other business. But I'm not really leaning that way because of the fictitious address. That "feels like" spam to me. But, I definitely would review this with the client in full to see if anything about it rings a bell to them about past work that may have been done internally or by an agency.

I think the best thing to do here would be to discover as many directories as you can that are listing the fictitious business and contact them to request listing removal, as you've done with Manta. You will easily be able to approve that the address is non-existent, that the phone doesn't connect to anything, and, if you've received no reply trying to use the email address, that the email is unresponsive. Show legal proofs of ownership of the brand name if necessary. Then, once you've gotten these odd listings removed, I would make it a practice once a month to search for any new listings that may crop up. Not very fun, but it seems necessary in the instance of such an odd scenario.

Good luck!

Hi Sociable!

Yes, Google will show a 2-pack for a branded search (like Me Gusta Tacos) if the business only has 2 locations in a given city. From looking at your website, it looks like you have two locations about 20 miles apart, so that might be a bit of a stretch for Google to include both in the same pack. But, here are three things to consider:

1. When you perform your search, are you physically at or next to one of the restaurants? Because of the searcher-proximity factor, this could affect the results you see. If you go to the other restaurant, do you then see a different result? How about if you search from 20 or 50 miles away from both?

2. Have you built up enough authority for BOTH locations to convince Google that they should show both in a pack when someone in your area does a branded search. If not, this is something to work on that could eventually influence Google to give you that 2-pack you want. Can't promise that, but this would be a way to work towards that goal.

3. Unfortunately, your business name is of a type that may have intent problems. When someone searches for "me gusta tacos" how does Google parse their intent? This could be someone speaking Spanish declaring their enjoyment of tacos, it could be a non-Spanish speaker asking for a translation, it could be someone looking for your restaurant, or it could be something else. This being the case, you may need to build brand authority over time. Google gets it that when someone searches for "Taco Bell" there's really no question of intent and they are likely to show them a local pack with multiple Taco Bells in a city or multiple Taco Bells in nearby towns. No one typing that it is looking for a bell shaped like a taco, or a taco shaped like a bell, or what have you. The brand is so known, the intent is a given. So, with your smaller brand, you'll be hoping to build that kind of authority that signals to Google that anyone searching for "Me Gusta Tacos" means your company. Right now, you need to focus on building local authority so that local searches are shown your business. In the future, if your chain expands, you will need to build regional and then national brand recognition, so that you can get that "Taco Bell treatment" in any local pack where you have branches.

Hope this helps! It's a good question you asked.

Hi Paul,

Okay, glad to know you were at least able to determine that GMB listings aren't right for the business model. Sounds like you will need to rely on other forms of outreach (organic, paid, social). Good luck!

Hi There,

Normally, no, having a local presence should not harm your national marketing efforts. However, it is important that any Google My Business listing you build is guideline-compliant. Are the GMB listings you built representing real, physical addresses and do you have face-to-face interactions with your customers? If the answer to either of those is "no" then you shouldn't be building GMB listings.

If my answer hasn't quite cleared this up for you, please feel free to provide further details about your business model.

Hi There!

Some questions for you:

1. Are these two legally distinct businesses? One being the recruiting agency and the other being a non-proft soccer camp, both legally registered as unique entities, or is the soccer camp just a service offered by the recruiting agency rather than a stand-alone "business".

2. Does the recruiting agency meet face-to-face with the student-athletes?

3. What is the exact physical location scenario? Is the soccer camp actually taking place in the same office as the recruitment work?

4. Is the soccer camp a year-round business, or is it seasonal? How does this work?

5. What, exactly is meant by "they've been told by Google that they can't use the same address as their recruiting business"? Does this mean that the business spoke 1:1 with Google support about this?

Please, answer all five questions as best as you can so that the community can be sure to provide advice most closely tailored to the specifics of this business. Looking forward to your replies!

Hi Kevin!

Thanks so much for joining in on this conversation. Just a heads-up that suite numbers are not a solution for differentiating businesses in Google My Business. Google doesn't pay any attention to suite numbers, and the use of fictitious suite numbers is actually a Google guideline violation, because Google requires that you represent the address of the business exactly as it appears in the real world.