2 Businesses, Same Address, 1 local, 1 SAB

[Prominent]

I have a client who operates 2 businesses out of the one address. They have a live local GMB listing for one of the businesses and now I'm trying to add a SAB GMB listing for the other business. My frustration is that Google will not approve the SAB business as their policy states that only one business can be listed at the one location.

They both have their own websites and phone numbers and the only real cross over is that they are in the same industry. The difference between them is that one of them is a builder and the other is supply only.

How can I get the SAB business approved?

 

[StephanieNewton]

Hey there,

As far as I'm aware you don't actually need to include the address on a GMB listing for a service-area business. So in this case, when going through the GMB set up for your client's service-area business, Google will ask if you'd like to add an address. Here you can simply click 'No' and instead specify a service area, meaning you won't be duplicating addresses on GMB.

You'll find the whole GMB for SABs set up process in this article here if you need more info: How to Set Up and Optimize Your Service Area Business in GMB ?.

Also, a bit of a shameless plug but if you are just getting started with service-area businesses, we've actually got a live Q&A on this later today with Local Search Forum's Colan Nielsen. So you may find it useful to join us and get some extra insights.

Anyway, hopefully that clears things up a bit — best of luck with your client!

 

[Prominent]

Hi Stephanie,

Maybe things are different around the world, however in Australia even though I chose the option of not displaying an address and selected a service area I still had to add an address so that a postcard could be sent to verify the listing.

I have been battling Google support to have the SAB listing approved however they just keep responding with the same generic email pointing out that another listing can not share the same address.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yeah, you still need to provide an address to verify the listing. Are the categories on both listings completely different? Can you share what the categories are on both listings?

 

[Prominent]

The categories were the same, but after doing a lot of research yesterday I figured that this could be a problem.

I have since changed the SAB categories to only 1 category and it does not match the local listing categories. Hopefully this does the trick.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yeah if it's the same type of business you're likely not going to get anywhere with GMB support.