GMBs have the same NAP

[Oliver Keates]

Hi Folks

What is the latest do's and dont's on having two GMB listings registered to the same address (NAP).

thanks

 

[Michael S. Doran]

Don't. Why would it make sense to have 2 listings for the same business?

 

[Reboot38]

Don't. Why would it make sense to have 2 listings for the same business?

I'm a freelance web developer, my wife has a craft business that she runs part-time Sept thru May, full-time June thru August (she's a teacher). We work both businesses from home. We both have a GMB listing using the same address.

Mine is set up as a service area listing that hides the address. Her's is a regular listing that shows the address. We each have plenty of reviews. And as far as I can tell, two distinct businesses in Google's beady little eyes.

That said - there's a chance, at some point, Google could count both as the same listing and combine them which would be interesting. I'm not worried but for those who play it safe, it's probably better to have one business per address.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

When the business categories are completely different, there is usually no issue.

If the address on her listing is displayed, then there should be signage out front for her business as per the guidelines.

 

[Reboot38]

If the address on her listing is displayed, then there should be signage out front for her business as per the guidelines.

Ya, about that...

 

[Rich Owings]

To add to what Yan said, it's also a best practice to have separate websites and separate phone numbers. If you're doing all that correctly, I doubt that you would have any problems.

 

[brettmandoes]

Ok how about a clinic that has a family medicine clinic and an urgent Care clinic in the same building, but they've rebranded the urgent Care as "express" and they're technically two distinct business units?

Same address, overlapping categories and distinct phone numbers and similar but different names.

 

[Michael S. Doran]

I'm a freelance web developer, my wife has a craft business that she runs part-time Sept thru May, full-time June thru August (she's a teacher). We work both businesses from home. We both have a GMB listing using the same address.

Mine is set up as a service area listing that hides the address. Her's is a regular listing that shows the address. We each have plenty of reviews. And as far as I can tell, two distinct businesses in Google's beady little eyes.

That said - there's a chance, at some point, Google could count both as the same listing and combine them which would be interesting. I'm not worried but for those who play it safe, it's probably better to have one business per address.

If you have two different businesses I would expect two different names and two different phone numbers. That would mean different NAPs, that only share a common address. If not, you are doing it wrong.

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Hey @Oliver Keates!

First, NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone - so you wouldn't want two listings with the same NAP. Same street address only, though, is a possibility.

Do's: Have unique business name, phone number, website, and category. In other words, be completely different businesses.

Don't: Have two listings that don't have these things - unless you are a Dr, Lawyer, etc and there are other Drs, Lawyers, etc working for the same business. And even then, there should be a very good reason for creating the different listings (as they will compete with each other), and the business name should have the Dr name, have a different category, and be linked to that person's profile page on the website.

 

[Rich Owings]

Ok how about a clinic that has a family medicine clinic and an urgent Care clinic in the same building, but they've rebranded the urgent Care as "express" and they're technically two distinct business units?

Same address, overlapping categories and distinct phone numbers and similar but different names.

The overlapping categories would likely cause an issue. Isn't Urgent Care a separate GMB category? Do they have separate websites?

 

[brettmandoes]

The overlapping categories would likely cause an issue. Isn't Urgent Care a separate GMB category? Do they have separate websites?

Nope, same root domain, different landing pages. It doesn't seem like the listings are being suppressed - they are showing up when you search for them. But they aren't showing very highly in Google Maps when you search for the relevant business category/unit that they are.

It's an interesting arena because hospitals have multiple listings - they might have an urgent care, an ER, and a hospital listing, as well as listings for all the doctors. Funnily enough, Google is not suppressing the entities as duplicate and seems to recognize that even though there is some shared NAP information, reviews for the ER aren't applied to the hospital as a whole. It's very different from home services where we saw competitors in the same strip mall getting hammered for having the same category. I know Google says they don't build their algorithms to be different around certain industries, but I wonder if there are exceptions in local SEO. It's not the first time I've seen different behavior for different categories.

 

[gyitsakalakis]

Not much to add here, but just to reiterate and emphasize for creative office-sharing lawyers, don't do it! We've been receiving a lot of inquiries related to law firm suspensions due to office sharing. Yes, even if the firms are in completely different categories (i.e. personal injury and family law).