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Best practice for a business with multiple locations on Google Places?

by adriver38
15 replies
Im making a list of potential clients to contact today and out of curiosity I looked up my favorite little pizza place. My suspicions were correct, poor guy dosnt even have a title or meta description, let alone claimed his Google listing.

I found he has 3 different locations in town, all of them have Google Listings. I know this is bad, but what is the best practice for a business like this? Claim one listing? I was gonna help this guy as more of a case study in exchange for a few pizzas a month thinking he wouldnt have a ton of money to throw at marketing but now that I know he has 3 locations I think I'll just take him on as a regular client Anyone have any experience with multiple business locations?
#business #google #locations #multiple #places #practice
  • Profile picture of the author Rus Sells
    From what I have read its not bad to have multiple listings if you have more then one location. You just need to make sure the information is accurate on all the listing as far as address and phone numbers.

    You can probably get more reliable information by just searching for that question on Google though.
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    • Profile picture of the author adriver38
      I actually just got back from my google search about this Rus lol. According to a response in Google:

      You can create a new Places Page for your new restaurant location by selecting "add another business" within your Google Places dashboard. The new page will take a couple of weeks to show up in search.

      Very helpful. I also see that NONE of the other pizza places in the A-G spots have claimed their listing. WTH? My guy is on the 5th page but I think just claiming his listing should help the rank slightly. The onpage SEO and map optimization should knock him out of the park though
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  • Profile picture of the author redlegrich
    If a business has multiple locations then they certainly can have multiple listings! What about Dominos, do you think they have multiple listings? Just check and see! As long as your location is real and the information accurate then you should have no problem at all.
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    • Profile picture of the author adriver38
      Yep, you're right redlegrich! If you dont do it correctly though, following Google Places rules, they penalize you, and thats what I was trying to avoid. I found my answer just by googling though ironically
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  • Profile picture of the author redlegrich
    Ha ha, go get 'em adriver! BTW, in regards to pizza places. I live in Redmond WA and a favorite northwest pizza chain is Papa Muprphy's Take and Bake (great pizza). I did a search for them once in Places because I could not remember the address. Well non showed up even though there are at least a dozen around. Upon closer examination their Places listing did not have "pizza" in the title of the listing. So every other pizza place showed but them! Go figure. No biz opp though, they are a corporation based 150 miles away.
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    • Profile picture of the author adriver38
      Thanks redlegrich!

      Haha, we have a Papa Murphys that just moved into town here! Im still not sure I understand the appeal? I mean the prices are really comparative to other pizza places in town and you still have the added inconvenience of baking it when you get home. Ive never never bought a Papa Murphys but I can tell you my oven gets no where near as hot as a pizza oven so I doubt its gonna taste as good as my local pizza joint's either. Who knows? Its like...I must be missing something with this "Take and Bake" approach? :rolleyes:
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      • Profile picture of the author scottgallagher
        There have been a lot of challenges and discussions for Google Places best practices. How do I correct a listing? How do I remove it? One places page per location?

        I've put together a simple page with all the resources you need for Google Places Best Practices.

        Ignore the opt-in on the page. All the resources you needs are before opt-in. It's just a simple page with some useful links.
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        I teach entrepreneurs to build a sustainable Internet Marketing Agency with real value. I have many free resources and paid training programs available

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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgeO7
    Scott's link should actually point here: Google Places Best Practices | Local Marketing Source
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  • Profile picture of the author alxvallejo
    Places pages pull a lot of information off of backlinks, directories, etc so it's important to be consistent in your listings (NAP) across the web.

    But what concerns me is if you are handling multiple locations for a small business, how can you choose which address to submit to various directory services (which don't normally allow multiple listings)?
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    • Profile picture of the author Jeff Snyder
      Originally Posted by alxvallejo View Post

      Places pages pull a lot of information off of backlinks, directories, etc so it's important to be consistent in your listings (NAP) across the web.

      But what concerns me is if you are handling multiple locations for a small business, how can you choose which address to submit to various directory services (which don't normally allow multiple listings)?
      Submit multiple listings with different landing pages for each listing. I've never seen a directory that will deny a listing if the URL, phone, and Address are different.
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      • Profile picture of the author alxvallejo
        Originally Posted by Jeff Snyder View Post

        Submit multiple listings with different landing pages for each listing. I've never seen a directory that will deny a listing if the URL, phone, and Address are different.
        Yes buy I've seen directories that deny multiple listings.
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        • Profile picture of the author Jeff Snyder
          Originally Posted by alxvallejo View Post

          Yes buy I've seen directories that deny multiple listings.
          When the contact information is different? What do you consider a duplicate listing?

          There are 100 Subways and Pizza Huts in a metropolitan area. I see where they would deny it if only the phone # was different and name, address, website were the same. But that's about it. I could be wrong but in my experience I've never had a problem as long as address was different, even with the same landing page URL.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeff Snyder
    From Google Places Quality Guidelines:
    "Businesses with multiple specializations, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties. You may create one listing per practitioner, and one listing for the hospital or clinic at large."

    According to Matt Cutts (and my experience), best practice here is having a dedicated landing page for each location. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/give-each-store-a-url/

    For example, listing 1 points to: joespizza.com/locations/newyork
    Listing 2 points to: joespizza.com/locations/newjersey

    Each landing page would have the second location address on it.

    For lawyers or doctors, give each person their own landing page and you can setup a listing for each person.

    I know this is an old post but the blog by Matt Cutts gives a definitive answer.
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  • Profile picture of the author EmmaWilliams
    It is the entrepreneur's responsibility to check whether he has multiple listings as this might affect the searches. It can be hard especially when they let the optimization be handled by people offshore (outsourcing has become quite a fad to internet marketers nowadays.) So just check whether the customization done by your PHP programmer is not wasted, in the sense that the SEO strategies you apply online as well as offline are effective.
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  • Profile picture of the author microsoftofd
    Places pages pull a lot of information off of backlinks, directories, etc so it's important to be consistent in your listings (NAP) across the web.
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