Moz/Google My Business Conflict - SABs

[KevinWag]

Hello all,

Does anyone have any insight on if and when Moz will be able to pull in Google as a primary source for SABs that hide their address in GMB?

As I'm sure you all know, this is problematic since so many in the SEO community, as well as small businesses, use Moz Local score as a proxy for citation thoroughness. It's also a reporting metric we use to show progress.

Google advises us to hide address for SABs, but you must unhide just for Moz to reflect it.

Any direction or advice? Follow Google guidelines and just know the Moz score will be artificially low?

Does a lack of address on the FB page prevent Moz from picking it up as well?

Thanks again for being such a nice, local SEO community and source! Always learn when I come up in here

 

[JoyHawkins]

I'll ping Miriam from Moz to see if she has some insight.

 

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Kevin!
This is Miriam from Moz, and thank you for asking an important question about Moz Local.

The cause of the scenario you mention is that Google's Places API doesn't presently support SABs, which means Moz Local can't pick them up. And, because we wouldn't recommend that a customer of ours ignore Google's guidelines about keeping SAB listing addresses hidden, the best you can do right now is to manually check that the SMB GMB listing is in good shape, knowing that its accuracy, unfortunately, can't be reflected in the Moz Local scoring system. We know that's not ideal, and we'd love to see Google one day accord equal treatment to SABs. They are such an important reality of commerce!

Fortunately, being an SAB doesn't exclude you from getting listed with Moz Local, provided we can find a valid Facebook page for the business. Unlike Google, Facebook doesn't require SABs to hide their addresses.

I wish I had a workaround for the limitations of Google's API, but I hope the explanation is at least informative. Please, let me know if you have any further questions about this!