Offline Biz - Google Local Business

[tonyscott]

On Tuesday I met with a dentist in a neighbouring town to discuss their website and online marketing.

Pulled up google.co.uk results for "dentist theirtown" and found zero google local business listings.

Great I thought, a chance to get them on page one (there are only directory pages in the first 5 pages of the search results) by adding them to Google local and build some credibility for my services.

So we opened a google account and added their info, there and then.

Checked today to see if they are listed and it turns out that Google doesn't show local listings for "dentist theirtown"

They do show local listings for "dentist mytown" which has about 1/4 of the population, and also other neighbouring towns.

Anyone met with this before?

Is there a workaround?

Obviously it's up to Google as to what they show for local results, just seems a bit of an oddity that there are no listings for this particular town.

Tony

[AndrewCavanagh]

There's a random element to Google Maps and coming up in listings can be really fast or really slow.

And yes sometimes it doesn't seem to happen at all.

The only real tip I can give you is that it is absolutely vital you put the keywords you want to come up for (without your geographical location) in the "categories" section of a business listing.

Also the closer the business address is to the postcode center of the location people are searching for the higher your listing is likely to be (yes there may be some value in listing a P.O. Box if your client has one at the local post office.)

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[GoGetta]

Yes, as Andrew says, it can be fairly random!

I would try a variation of keywords to see if any of them pull the listings up:

Dental Clinic YourTOWN
Dental Practice YourTOWN
Dentist YourTOWN
YourTOWN Dentists
YourTOWN Dentist

I do not know if this would be a reason, but lets say no dentists in the town in question have listings on there, there will be nothing to show??? Maybe this is the reason, maybe the dentists in the area have yet to add listings??

This is theory, as I do not know if Google adds lisitings automatically, but may be a reason!

GoGetta

[tonyscott]

Hi Andrew, yep we used the correct keywords without the geographical location. Their postcode is good, however just typed the postcode into google and although the map is correct, google incorrectly labels the town as another neighbouring town 5 miles away. I guess that would cause problems.

cheers

Tony
ps. Thanks for resurrecting the whole offline biz thing back in Jan 08. It's now what I do full time.

[tonyscott]

Tried them all - nothing

Tried dentist TheirTown in maps.google.co.uk and there are 319 results

Tony

Originally Posted by GoGetta

Yes, as Andrew says, it can be fairly random!

I would try a variation of keywords to see if any of them pull the listings up:

Dental Clinic YourTOWN
Dental Practice YourTOWN
Dentist YourTOWN
YourTOWN Dentists
YourTOWN Dentist

I do not know if this would be a reason, but lets say no dentists in the town in question have listings on there, there will be nothing to show??? Maybe this is the reason, maybe the dentists in the area have yet to add listings??

This is theory, as I do not know if Google adds lisitings automatically, but may be a reason!

GoGetta