Multiple sites - 1 listing...

[DTO Jerbs]

Was advised to register here.

Our new client has a chain of franchises around the country. His service is basically buying scrap (junk) cars which is something they mostly do at the customer's location. i.e. you get a quote over the phone, they drive to your location and buy the car. Car goes on the back of a truck, to a scrap yard, cash in your pocket, etc.

They operate in 14 areas around the country. Whilst they do have several addresses around the country, they're just residential addresses where the franchise holders live. Customers ARE able to visit the franchise holders' residential addresses to get their cars valued or bought however they usually arrange for the franchise holder to travel to their address if it's within 20 miles.

The main address is the head office/"junk yard" which is where the franchise holders ship the cars. The only phone number is the head office phone number. Each location has their own webpage but it's on the same website.

They want to show up in the Google Places results when someone types in "scrap cars Manchester" or "scrap cars London". They do have franchise holders in these locations.


To my knowledge, Google Places works very poorly with service areas. It was designed for restaurants, shops so whilst it supports plumbers and other mobile services, it wasn't intended to so the support is poor. i.e. it's intended for businesses with a physical location in that area, where customers go in and buy things.

I've already setup Google Place listings for companies with multiple service areas before but they don't seem to appear in Places searches for those service areas - except for the location where their "head office" is. I put this down to Google Places being broken in the past but perhaps I've set these up incorrectly - I don't check "hide address" for example.


We setup each site by visiting http://www.google.com/<wbr>placesforbusiness and put in the details for each site. I used the same customer services number for each site but a different physical address for each of them - as well as a different webpage.


Only the Newcastle site in Westrow, Backworth is showing. For the listings we've validated,




Each of the 4 "See your listing on Google" links go to the same page - https://plus.google.com/<wbr>115821632160311753970/about?<wbr>gl=GB&hl=en-GB


Searching for Metal Monkey Recycling on Google Maps only turns up the Newcastle site. The Altrincham and Preston sites do not appear. I've contacted Google to find out more information but would value any feedback you have.

From reading other threads, it seems the first step is establishing each location with citation sites.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi DTO, thanks for following me over and posting this with all the needed details so we can help you.

As I mentioned on Reddit, Google isn't great at handling every type of situation. Home-based franchisees is one.

You have 3 primary problems that I see.

1) If residential addresses you really MUST select hide address or they will likely get deleted. It's a HUGE problems and hundreds of thousands of listings have been deleted and it's been months and most have not been revived.

2) The other locations don't show because they are all merged together. The biggest reason they are merged is due to having 1 phone number. For each location to be separate it would need a unique number.

3) But I'm thinking it's possilbe too that if these are new locations were just set up AND have no citations, AND they are residential AND they are same phone Google won't trust the locations enough and that could also contribute to a merge.

"The main address is the head office/"junk yard" which is where the franchise holders ship the cars. The only phone number is the head office phone number. Each location has their own webpage but it's on the same website."

Tons of franchises like Rotorooter are set up with multiple locations, each location has a page on the same site - so that part is fine. The difference is they all have their own phone AND citations for that location/phone.

Does that help? I mean I'm sure you didn't want to hear the part about the phone numbers, but did that help explain what's up?

 

[DTO Jerbs]

It's definitely not ideal. The standard Google advice is to create a list of service areas off the main listing - but as I've said - in my experience these don't tend to appear in the Places results for that location. Am I doing something wrong, for example?

 

[Linda Buquet]

The standard Google advice is to create a list of service areas off the main listing - but as I've said - in my experience these don't tend to appear in the Places results for that location. Am I doing something wrong, for example?

Well here's the thing to understand with service areas. It's designed to let customers know all the areas you serve BUT that does not mean you are going to rank in all those places. TYPICALLY (depending on competition) you will only rank for the city you are actually located in.

Think of this example. You are a plumber in a town with 50 plumbers. You fight your way to page one. Everyone on page 1 - 3 has a local presence and is actually located in that town. THEN G starts showing plumbers that are located 3, 4, 5 towns away, just cuz they set up a big service area? That's not right.

Plus if I'm a consumer and search for Escondido Plumber - I want a plumber in Escondido, not one from way down in San Diego (30 miles away) that just set up a big service area.

So that's just how it works. Google ranks my relevance and proximity.

Did that answer your question? Were you thinking you should be able to have one location and rank in a bunch of different cities, just because you added them to service area?

FYI not sure how you have service area set up, but from what I've heard a 20 mile radius or less is best. But again no matter how you set it, you'll usually only rank for the city you are located in.

Do a test. Pick a city you want to rank for. Search City + Keyword and see if any of the 1st page listings have addresses in other cities. Again depends on competition, if really low, occasionally you'll see another city ranking, but not usually for competitive terms.

 

[DTO Jerbs]

Actually I've tested this already.

We set up 4 domains for a client that operated in 4 cities. 4 phone numbers. One address. 4 service areas - 1 per listing. 4 separate listings were created by Google...

And they only show up in the results for the address of the head office... :/

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well as I explained in beginning that's because Google merged them all together due to having same phone #.

 

[DTO Jerbs]

Different client! 4 different phone numbers!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Different client! 4 different phone numbers!

Oops dang. Jumping around trying to troubleshoot a TON of different problems. Need to slow down and read. Sorry thought you were talking about the original one above.

So let's start over on the new one...

We set up 4 domains for a client that operated in 4 cities. 4 phone numbers. One address. 4 service areas - 1 per listing. 4 separate listings were created by Google...

And they only show up in the results for the address of the head office... :/

ONE ADDRESS? You can only have one G+L listing per business per location. So one address = 1 G+ local page. Does not matter how many sites and phone #s you set up. And in organic you can have multiple sites.

But in G+ Local only 1 per location. More than that is a violation and will either get suspended, ignored or merged.