Moz Local and Service Area Business

[Dino]

I just signed up a client for Moz Local and realized their profile for Google My Business will not show because we have their address hidden.

What's everyone else doing about this? Do you just let the tool run its course, knowing that it will always show Google as a 100% incomplete listing? Moz support suggested I unhide the address if I want their tool to work, which clearly I cannot do.

Any thoughts?

 

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Dino!
Thanks for asking about this. I work for Moz, supporting our Moz Local product.

You are absolutely right - Google made a change in which they stopped including SMB listings in their Places API, because, according to Google, SMBs aren't 'places'. You can kind of see the logic there.

However, the unfortunate result of this is that tools like ours, which use the Places API, cannot then surface your GMB listing. I totally get how SMBs are often frustrated because it seems like Google has historically treated them like second-class citizens, when, in fact, they are a major component of commerce.

I'd love to see us be able to find a workaround for this with Moz Local, but for now, yes, I'm afraid the best advice we can give is to manually check that your SMB GMB listing is accurate. So sorry for the extra step that requires. I hope this explanation at least clarifies why this works this way.

 

[Dino]

OK, thanks for the quick feedback, Miriam.

I agree, that makes sense. I know the listing is set up accurately so as long as the hidden address is not preventing the tool from fixing my citations elsewhere, then it's no problem at all for me to keep using it.

 

[Blake Denman]

Moz support suggested I unhide the address if I want their tool to work, which clearly I cannot do.

Any thoughts?

We had this issue and followed support's recommendation. We unhid the address to get the verification with Moz Local. Once we were able to get the listing done with Moz Local, we rehid the address. Took all but 5-10 minutes and the listing was suspended.

 

[James Watt]

Wait, Blake, are you saying that you unhid the address for 5~10 minutes to verify Moz, and Google still suspended your listing for spam even though you rehid the address right away?

For my two cents, I know moz can verify off a Facebook business page as well. Seems like it'd be safer to unhide the address there temporarily.

 

[Blake Denman]

Wait, Blake, are you saying that you unhid the address for 5~10 minutes to verify Moz, and Google still suspended your listing for spam even though you rehid the address right away?

For my two cents, I know moz can verify off a Facebook business page as well. Seems like it'd be safer to unhide the address there temporarily.

Whoops! Minor typo. The listing was NOT suspended.

 

[James Watt]

Glad I asked! Minor typo with a big meaning shift, haha. Glad it worked out.

 

[Greg Schueler]

Even if you unhide the GMB until MOZ verifies it, I still get notifications weeks/months later saying that my listing has been suspended (again).

They say they use Facebook OR GMB, but even if I have the address on Facebook, they still get kicked.

I guess I understand how/why this happens, but it is still frustrating.

 

[onebluesummer]

I had luck chatting with a kind lady over on Moz Local and she was able to hard confirm it w/ it being a SAB and ONLY Facebook. Because she did it on her back end it will stick.