'Distorting' listings...

[aputtock]

Hello all!

Big question - Looking for feedback from other folks.

We sometimes have clients that change their information. Sometimes, they go from operating from a storefront to a home address. There is no way to update this information on the listing (ie, it's for exposed addresses ONLY and the client, under no circumstances, wants their address exposed).

Other times, the listing cannot be deleted.

To get around this, we have been stuffing the listings with basically what is fake information as to not cause a NAP conflict.

Is there any harm in this?

Example:

Random Co in Chesterville, ON

Random Co in Chesterville (ON) reviews, contact details, photos, open hours and map directions.

www.fyple.ca

As always, thanks for the feedback

 

[whitespark]

This is interesting. My instinct is to say there should be no harm, but what if Google keeps the URL on record and refers to it for changes. In this case the URL changed, but on most sites it wouldn't.

One way to hide your address and leave all the other information intact is to just enter spaces into the fields. Works on many sites.

 

[aputtock]

Yes, that's my thinking too.

In other directories, the URL betrays the business name as it will maintain the original business information.

Example: http://www.citations.com/plumbers/pittsburg/a-best-plumbing-co would be the URL, but meanwhile the listing itself is something super crazy (like the previous link).

We stopped adding the 'space' since on some sites we were concerned that it was getting indexed as   which we thought could constitute a NAP conflict....