NAP Formatting - Food for Thought

[Colan Nielsen]

I just wanted to share a response that I recently received from a Google employee in regards to the formatting of the way a street address is displaying on a clients listing.

Thank you for contacting the Google+ Local Team about your address appearing differently on your local Google+ page than it does on your dashboard. After looking further, we've determined that (address removed) is an appropriate way for your listing to be displayed.

Note that the address on your page might be different from what you've input into your dashboard. Our processes might alter user-input addresses to make them more standardized and easier for users to access.

What this tells us is that we need to keep an ever vigilant eye on what formatting we are choosing to use for our clients NAP information, in particular the address. If Google is telling us to use a certain formatting, it's probably worth some investigation to see if it's worth updating all of the citations to match up.

With that said, it seems that Google is changing the way addresses display so often, that it almost makes you wonder just how important EXACT match NAP actually is in the big picture. Perhaps we give Google less credit than it deserves for it's ability to figure out and match up slight NAP differences? Than again, maybe we don't

 

[Keenan Glass]

Colan - what was the change that Google made to the formatting of the address? What was it originally, what are they suggesting is an appropriate format?

I don't think that one should worry about matching citations to what Google has decided it's preferred format to be today, but rather keep it consistent across the web.

 

[David Deering]

Correct me if I'm wrong, Colan, but aren't addresses formatted slightly differently in Canada than in the US, particularly when it comes to suite numbers? And what is their preferred format?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

It changed the street name out to a longer version basically.

Avocado Blvd to Avocado Village Ct.

I wouldn't recommend going out and changing all the citations just because Google re-formats the address on the Places page. But, I do think it makes for an interesting observation, and something to keep an eye on.

---------- Post Merged at 11:22 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:21 AM ----------

Correct me if I'm wrong, Colan, but aren't addresses formatted slightly differently in Canada than in the US, particularly when it comes to suite numbers? And what is their preferred format?

Canada Post formats addresses with the suite# first. Which is how you find it in Map Maker, and most countries (hence why Map Maker uses the suite# first format).

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

I echo what others have said. We can't stress too much about how Google re-formats the address - it just happens and there ain't much you can do about it.

As a general rule, I think it's important for citations across the web to be consistent and to match Google (as much as possible) but there's only a set amount of things we can control. When the errors are quite large, I do an "edit details" to try to change it back.

 

[Marie Ysais]

I have experienced the exact same thing. The Google team responded letting me know there were filters and the filters will show the address in the easiest format to the end user. The slight change in address happened to a very old account about six months ago. So it took everyone a little bit by surprise.

 

[Andrew Sawyer]

Again I will repeat that when using Google Place/+local the address is suppose to be long form (entirely spelled out) so it matches the names in the dropdown for Street Names and Cities. Which is why I always suggest people go into MapMaker to make sure everything matches (and isn't abbreviated). Or if you are apprehensive about using GMM find someone who will do the edit for you.