GMB listings not associating with address pages

[Annika Neudecker]

Hi all,

Since around the turn of the year, we've been seeing more issues with our new GMB listings not being associated with their address pages on Maps. When the address is searched, it shows that there are no businesses at that location. At first I thought it might just be lagging behind in adding things, but even months later our listings aren't showing up. Obviously, this presents an issue with customers searching for our address to find our business and not seeing it.

For example, we have a store located at 1411 W 5th Street in Austin, TX. The store's GMB listing is configured correctly and displays the right address, yet the address page doesn't show it. This is just one of many stores with the same problem.

Have any of you had similar issues recently? Have you had any luck in finding a way to associate the pages? Worrying/problematic or no?

Thank you!

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Interesting question. I never looked into why some businesses show up at address locations and others do not. I just assumed it depended on some measure by the previous searches that were performed.

 

[Annika Neudecker]

In my experience it seems to be universal. We get reports of this issue from store managers across the country with distinctly different search histories than my own.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Maybe I'll make this my next case study to do after I finish the giant one I'm doing right now on what influences place labels on Google Maps. At this point, I've never heard a good answer for this.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Annika Neudecker, have you tried pulling up the generic address, selecting "Add a missing place," and then in the "name" field selecting that location of CubeSmart? (I'm now seeing "See results about [CubeSmart]" in the right-hand sidebar when I search for the address.)

 

[Zhivko]

@Annika Neudecker, have you tried pulling up the generic address, selecting "Add a missing place," and then in the "name" field selecting that location of CubeSmart? (I'm now seeing "See results about [CubeSmart]" in the right-hand sidebar when I search for the address.)

Um.. I just did. Here is what I got.

 

[Annika Neudecker]

@Annika Neudecker, have you tried pulling up the generic address, selecting "Add a missing place," and then in the "name" field selecting that location of CubeSmart? (I'm now seeing "See results about [CubeSmart]" in the right-hand sidebar when I search for the address.)

Yes, I've tried that. Same results as @Zhivko unfortunately. If the place already exists, it doesn't seem to do anything to associate it with the address.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Annika,

I asked one of the Maps Product Experts this question. He goes by the name treebles on the Maps forum. What he replied with was definitely news to me and I wanted to share here.

"There is no way for users to get their business to appear in the At this location feature. The Maps team did it once, we never got any notifications and I don't remember ever been asked in the private forum.

I suspect the Maps team ran a batch process once to make these links and I don't know if they ever ran it again. All I know is that a listing I created 2 years ago still is not featured in the At this location list for the address."

Regarding the advice Phil posted he said "that is a trick to get the Web Search result to display results related to the business at the address but I do not think it would cause the linkage on Maps, which is a different product, but who knows, strangest things have happened with Google. "

 

[Annika Neudecker]

I suspect the Maps team ran a batch process once to make these links and I don't know if they ever ran it again. All I know is that a listing I created 2 years ago still is not featured in the At this location list for the address."

Fascinating! I never would have thought of it as a batch process instead of something automated. If that's the case, I guess we have to wait for them to run another batch before locations will appear at their addresses.

Edit:
I'm going to dig through some of our development stores which have opened in the past two years and see if I can confirm with our data.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Right? I was surprised by this as well. Super smart guy - I'm glad I asked him

 

[IsmaM]

I asked the same and this is what I received from a Google representative a year ago:

"Google my Business and Google Maps are different applications and databases. The only connection is that a GMB address must resolve to an address in Maps.

Doing a general search on Google maps like "Personal Injury Lawyer Chicago" will show a list of local businesses on the left and a map on the right, with red pins for front businesses.

Searching for an address in Google maps is not a Google My Business search. I hope this clarifies the question."

 

[Annika Neudecker]

Doing a general search on Google maps like "Personal Injury Lawyer Chicago" will show a list of local businesses on the left and a map on the right, with red pins for front businesses.

Searching for an address in Google maps is not a Google My Business search. I hope this clarifies the question."

That doesn't make sense. When you search for an address in Maps, it does generally pull up businesses located at that address. That's what the "At this location" section is for. If searching for addresses wasn't meant to pull up GMB listings located at that address, that section wouldn't be included.

 

[IsmaM]

That doesn't make sense. When you search for an address in Maps, it does generally pull up businesses located at that address. That's what the "At this location" section is for. If searching for addresses wasn't meant to pull up GMB listings located at that address, that section wouldn't be included.

I agree with you. The information by Joy about the batch process makes sense. At that time we were wondering if by clicking "Add a missing place" would create a duplicate listing for the business.

 

[JoyHawkins]

@Annika Neudecker I know it's a while since we had this discussion but now I'm actually seeing CubeSmart showing up under "at this address" when I search 1411 W 5th Street in Austin, TX.

I was curious if you found anything that worked or do you think Google just ran the batch again and it updated?

 

[Annika Neudecker]

@Annika Neudecker I know it's a while since we had this discussion but now I'm actually seeing CubeSmart showing up under "at this address" when I search 1411 W 5th Street in Austin, TX.

I was curious if you found anything that worked or do you think Google just ran the batch again and it updated?

I think they just ran the batch again. I hadn't taken any action on the listing since this thread. Unfortunately it seems to very much be up to Google.