Great organic rankings, but hit by Possum

[JJoe]

Hey Guys! My first post...how exciting

I work with a law firm in Southern California and they currently rank number one organically for many of the major keyword phrases they target in their competitive market.

Pre-Possum they used to typically rank #1 or #2 in the Local 3 Pack for their major phrases, however after Possum they?ve been knocked down out of the Local Pack and typically fall somewhere between positions 4-12. They have suffered about a 50% loss in overall business since this happened despite the fact that they still rank extremely well organically.

I thought I?d reach out to see if anyone is experiencing something similar or has any pointers on how to recover?

Any advice is appreciated...

Best,

JJoe

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Is the address dedicated to them? By that I'm actually asking if they're in a regus suite or something like that. I've seen that's pretty common with law firms. If you want to share the link, we can dig in a little bit. Without actually seeing the business we're kind of shooting in the dark.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Is the address dedicated to them? By that I'm actually asking if they're in a regus suite or something like that. I've seen that's pretty common with law firms.

Thanks Eric. And since Possum, even if it's a regular office building with several attys they could be filtered due to that. Or it could be dupes or practitioner listings. Or Google doesn't think the 2nd office is legit and penalized both, or something else.

If you want to share the link, we can dig in a little bit. Without actually seeing the business we're kind of shooting in the dark.

Took the words right out of my mouth Eric. Too many possibilities to just guess. But if you can share the links to the GMB pages I'm sure Eric and some other pros here will take a look for you.

 

[JJoe]

Thanks Linda & Eric!

Of course, you can view it here - https://goo.gl/maps/ocXe2QpfEmk

They are in a large office building in downtown LA, and there are many other law firms in the same building. Do you think they are actually going to need to move their office to get this fixed?

The odd thing is that, many of their colleagues rank perfectly well in the Local Pack in the same building as them. Go figure...

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi JJ,

Sorry meant to weigh in on this sooner.

Looks like they are in the same building as Regus, so likely lots of atty listings there.

There is an edit on MapMaker from someone that marked the name "The Los Angeles DUI Experts" as spam and said it was not the practice name.

You didn't mention or link to the San Diego office. Looks like that one is in Regus.

There is an edit in Map Maker saying "The San Diego DUI Specialists" the keyword name on the listing, is spam, it's a dupe of the legit listing and someones trying to change name to: The Law Office of Gilliland & Burgess. This edit from 2014 is still pending and includes a change to phone # too. I see other names floating around on the net like: Gilliland & Burgess Trial Lawyers and different addresses too.

Google does not usually penalize for keyword names. even tho against guidelines. However if 2 listings are in same account and both have dings for possible wrong names, (maybe names were changed at some point)) still seems there is either confusion or competitive sabotage or something. Plus if they are in same building as Regus and one actually IS in Regus, I just wonder if all this knocked them out?

If it's a matter of the Possum filtering we've talked about, the listings at that address that are going to rank are the ones that have the most accurate data, clean history with no dings and everything else going for them. (As per the GMB part of the algo.)

I'm sure there is a good reason for some of this, like a name change or something, but if Google is looking for trustworthy data, you can see why she might be a little confused.

Thoughts?

 

[JJoe]

Hi Linda,

Thanks for weighing in on this one. I completely understand...makes sense.

I had to speak to the attorneys about some of the details you mentioned because I think some of the business changes were before my time with them.

Its odd because The Los Angeles DUI Experts is and always has been the practice name, for several years.

As far as the San Diego guys, they are colleagues of the Los Angeles group. What I’ve realized in working with attorneys is that many of them partner and work together as attorneys “of council” with their colleagues.

The edit you are seeing to change the name to The Law Office of Gilliland & Burgess is incorrect. Gilliland & Burgess is no longer a law firm as the attorneys are no longer working together. From what I understand, in the past there were some issues with the The San Diego DUI Specialists business listing as it was accidentally “merged” with a competing attorneys business listing. Google was contacted and eventually able to separate the two, but that may be one of the issues. However, the current information appears accurate.

The unfortunate truth is that in the legal industry there is a lot of sabotage from competing attorneys. Its something we see regularly. It is common to see them flag competitors listings, make false claims from fake accounts, and leave false bad reviews from fake accounts. I’m wondering if this is part of the problem…

What do you think I should have them do to clean up any possible issues?

 

[Scott ClientClicks]

Hi JJ -

I noticed that in addition to the LA and San Diego listings, there is a San Francisco DUI Experts listing and a San Jose DUI Experts listing.

Do you know if the attorneys registered these names as a law Corp or a DBA?

 

[Digitaldar]

Sounds like you might want to start with a citation audit from Loganix. Be sure to advise them of all of variations of your client's brand that have been mentioned here so they can pull the largest variety of citations.

Then you might want to hire them to start cleaning those citations or do it yourself

 

[JJoe]

I'm not sure as I work with the Southern California groups but I can check. I'm assuming its their associates that handle Northern California.

Digitaldar: I think thats a good idea. I can reach out to them for assistance.

Just trying to make sense of this and determine the most appropriate long-term fix. The main issue was with the Los Angeles team and confirming what would be the best approach for them to recover from Possum.