Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Mike,

Great discussion going on here. I want to clarify - when you say "apartments" you are talking about apartment complexes, right, not individual apartment units within a development? In other words, Tan Apartment Community, Green Apartment Community, Blue Apartment Community; not Apartment 3, 20, and 35 within communities?

I thought you raised some really thoughtful points, Kane. This particular situation isn't one of those black-and-white ones with a super obvious call - it's nuanced. So, I thought the points you brought up were very valid in an "it depends" kind of scenario. Thanks for the very kind words.

Hi Andrew,

As Brooks has highlighted, your client's catering business sounds like a service area business (SAB) and is therefore eligible for a Google My Business listing, provided the staff meets face-to-face with its customers. Your client will need to enter their address when creating the listing and then select the options Brooks as pointed out so that the street address won't be public on the live listing.

That being said, there are some nuances to this. Google did have a bug, in recent memory, during which they briefly showed the addresses of SABs. It was a temporary issue.

Given this, the conversation you need to have with the client surrounds whether their privacy concerns are so extreme that they don't want their street address ever to appear anywhere on the Internet however briefly, or, whether, like most home-based businesses, they just don't want customers showing up at their house thinking it's a walk-in business.

If the former, your hands are tied to doing a limited Local SEO campaign for them and you'll have to rely on Organic SEO, PPC, and Social to get the word out as best you can.

If the latter, then the SAB listing is the solution for this client. It's Google's policy not to show the addresses of these businesses, and you can restrict other citation building to the sites listed in the Phil Rozek article Brooks has linked to. You'll at least be able to do a good, pretty complete campaign for them in this scenario, though not quite as thorough as you can for an SAB that doesn't care whether their address is published on some platforms.

Hope this helps and that you'll have that conversation with the client to discover the source of their objections, whether that be a strong fear or a simple concern over inconvenience.

Good suggestions from Brooks, but sounds like you've checked off the things he mentioned.

So, typically, Google will display the one you designate as the profile pick, but as you've seen, not always.

If you've removed the unwanted photo from your website, you can ask a GMB forum TC to help you get your listing updated. Here's a thread from Google's forum along those lines: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Enhance-Your-Presence/Photos-pulling-from-website-that-are-not-wanted-to-show/m-p/1119604/highlight/true#M6409

But, if you want to keep that photo on your website, you can try flagging the image from several accounts over the next few weeks to see if Google will get rid of it. If nothing happens after a few weeks, you could take this to the GMB forum, but I'm not sure they'll be able to do much unless the photo is really inappropriate, in which case, you may just want to remove it from the website.

Other advice: be sure you're not using a logo as your profile pic. Google really doesn't like those and often will replace them. Be sure every photo you've uploaded to your GMB dash is of best quality and is something you'd be okay with having Google use to represent the business.

Hey There,

So sorry to hear this has happened. Recommended reading:

https://onlineownership.com/google-has-suspended-your-page-due-to-quality-issues/

https://searchengineland.com/top-9-reasons-google-suspends-local-listings-247394

I recommend that you go through both of those to see if there's something you may have overlooked. Then, as Andy is mentioning, you need to take this to the GMB forum and be persistent in asking for help. Tell them you've read through both Joy Hawkins' and Tim Capper's articles on suspensions and that you either a) found and fixed an issue or b) could not find any issue at all. Be prepared to share the complete details of your business and the exact language of the message you got from Google, and to be persistent in asking for help from the Top Contributors (TCs) who staff the forum.

Hi WP-Pro!

So, there has been a ton of buzz in the past week or so about zero-results SERPs (see an excellent article about this by Dr. Pete here on the Moz Blog: https://moz.com/blog/zero-result-serps

Google ran a test of the above that they have since shut down.

However, I don't believe this is what you've noticed. I think you are talking about what might be called a "Branded Knowledge Panel", in that a term Google used to show a typical 3-pack for is now being dominated by a single business, with their knowledge panel showing up on the right side of the SERPs and no competitors in sight.

This is a huge pain in the neck when Google does this, as it leaves all other local businesses out in the cold. Basically, what has happened when you see this is that "something" has caused Google to believe that a single business is THE authoritative result for a search. This is fine when someone is searching for Taco Bell, but really annoying when someone is searching for "tacos".

If an authoritative knowledge panel is negatively impacting a SERP for which you were previously competing, leaving your business out in the cold, you need to take a very close look at that competitor to see if you can figure out why Google is giving them this preferential treatment. I recommend doing a competitive local business audit to highlight areas where that competitor is strong and you are weak. And look at their use of features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, etc. to see if there is some way they've gotten ahead. Study their keyword optimization on their website. And, of course, take a close look to see if some kind of spammy behavior on their part may have gotten them this preferential treatment.

There isn't a direct action you can take to force Google to show a 3-pack instead of an authoritative knowledge panel, but the general idea is that you've got to become stronger than your competitor so that Google realizes that there is more than one quality answer available to that particular search query. Unfortunately, you may have a long haul ahead.

Just a thank-you for sharing your experience and tips with the community, Arowland! Much appreciated! Very creative workaround you've come up with. Neat.

Hi Jon,

Unless Yelp's policies have changed, I believe they only offer bulk management of features to paying customers. If you are paying to advertise on Yelp, I'd recommend contacting a rep there to see what's possible.

Hello There!

I believe what you are referencing is the red "Duplicate Address" label in the Status column under Locations in your GMB dashboard. Google uses this label if there are two listings at the same address, and I know, it's frustrating!

I highly recommend reading this recent tutorial by Joy Hawkins on this topic: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/resolve-duplicate-addresses-google-business/

I think you'll find it's just what the doctor ordered!

Happy to have you here, Lior!

While you're diving into this topic, you might like to read:

https://whitespark.ca/blog/the-json-ld-markup-guide-to-local-business-schema/

What a kind offer, Ben. Hopefully, if Bcallegary hasn't already taken steps on this step on their own, they will see your post here with such a nice offer to help.

Hey There,

I recommend you reach out to GMB support on Twitter with a link to the listing, explaining that it's a stand-alone location, not located within another business.

Sure thing! If for any reason, that doesn't work out for you, please feel free to come back here.

Hi Karma,

Thanks for sharing the URL. Notes for you follow:

1. At a glance, it appears your client is being impacted by Google's Possum filter. They are sharing an address with a competitor (Lee's Signs) at 853 S Peachtree Street. You can read more about Possum here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/google-possum. You can confirm for yourself that this appears to be Possum in action, as, if you do a search for your desired keyword phrase in Google, and then click in on the map, your client is totally missing. But, once you zoom in on the map, your client appears in the local finder to the left of the map. So, that's a good diagnosis that Possum is at work here. In a nutshell Google is going to filter out all but one sign shop at that single address. They are filtering your client, because they feel, for whatever reason, that Lee's is the stronger answer. Given this, I highly recommend again that you take the time to do the competitive audit I've linked to in order to help you discover why Google favors this specific competitor over your client. The only way to beat the Possum filter is to prove to Google that yours is the more authoritative business. To do that, you'll need to know exactly what Lee's strengths are.

(here are a few more random things I noticed while looking at your client)

2. The profile photo representing the business in the Google Knowledge Panel is of a Lutheran Church, rather than of your business. I'm not sure if the idea here was to show a sample of company work, but there's a chance Google could be confused by this image. I would make every effort to change it out for an image of the actual business.

3. When I look at streetview in Google Maps, I'm not able to see the business. It could be behind trees or something, but the location Google is dropping me in is showing a parking lot with what appears to be a furniture store in it. Where is the business in relationship to this? Do they have street level signage? Is this a public-facing location that customers come to in order to do face-to-face business with the company?

4. I notice that 1/2 of this brand's Google-based reviews are from first-time reviewers (folks who have never left a review for any other business than this one). Are you confident that the client is strictly adhering to Google's review policies? A majority of one-off reviews can sometimes be a signal of review spam.

Hope this helps, and that taking the time to do a local-specific competitive audit will help you start to form a plan for the client to surpass their competitor. Best of luck!

And we're so glad to have you here, Ed!

Hi there!

Yes, your sense that MapQuest has decreased in importance is correct. They were a very early mapping product and enjoyed some years as an early adopter. I believe MQ is still pulling data from Infogroup, but basically, they handed over the keys to Yext and their help documentation is all about using Yext instead of using MapQuest. Kind of sad, honestly. There was a time before Google Maps was the be-all-end-all in mapping.

Hi Kate!

We're so happy to have you here. I want to be sure I'm clearly understanding your strategy. When you say you are building local listings, do you mean you are building local business listings for the state of California? Local business listings are address-specific. So, if you are marketing a plumbing company with a physical location in, say, San Diego, CA., you can create local business listings surrounding this, but what you cannot do is create a local business listing for a state. Please, provide a little further detail here about how you are handling local business listings.

Also, can you let the community know whether you are referring to organic or local rankings in terms of your goals?

Thank you!

Hi Kate,

If you are marketing a business in the payday loans industry, your challenge is more complex than many other business categories face, due to Google taking punitive action in the past.

If the business is virtual rather than physical, you cannot do Local SEO. Unless the business has physical offices where staff make face-to-face contact with customers, you cannot build out local business listings on platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, etc. Instead, you'll have to focus on organic SEO and PPC. Here's a recent article specifically about your industry: https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/22/a-review-of-the-payday-loans-algorithm-in-2018/

Hi William,

Good finds from both Donna and Nicholas. Please especially pay attention to Donna's query regarding your address.

I have two additional questions for you.

1. Are you meeting face-to-face with your customers?

2. At your address, within your building, or even within the same couple of city blocks from you, are there any other video production companies?

Hi Ben,

So, Google's guidelines state:

-Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible.

-Use a local phone number instead of central, call center helpline number whenever possible.

Given this, sharing a phone number between locations should be avoided. A unique phone number for each location of a multi-location business should be considered a necessary investment. However, the implementation of this (or lack of it) may or may not be the cause of ranking problems. It would be a good idea to do a complete audit of the second location to document all of the factors that could be causing that business to rank lower than its competitors in its city of location.