Places listing not showing 5 weeks after verification - Possibly my own fault.

[Schalk]

First: I tried to look for answers in the Google Help Forum but for some reason it keeps timing out right now(last 2 hours) so I decided to post here on Linda's Forum.

Only thread here I could find close to my question is this one: Google Listing not coming in searches [Pankaj Kumar]

I've created and verified a client's Places listing on the 20th of July 2012. They're a Flower Wholesaler, Flower Shop(for the public), Gift Shop, Wedding Accessories and a Coffee Shop. Most of their business relies on the wholesale of flowers, deliveries and the public buying flowers at their premises.

This business is located in Brackenfell(Suburb), Cape Town(City), South Africa, 7560(Zip Code)

Google Maps - bunches for africa - Google Maps
Place Page - https://plus.google.com/100060954397325603339/about?gl=za&hl=en
Site- www.bunchesforafrica.com

I also created this business in Map Maker which got published on 1 Aug 2012. I guess this is probably a problem because now their's this business created in Google Places and Map Maker at the same location, effectively a duplicate? I don't know if this is a best practice to do it like a did with this listing.

I noticed there is no NAP data on the home page. At this stage I have no access to their website.

Its been five weeks since verification and the listing still doesn't completely rank for search terms. I however received this Google Places email out of the blue about two weeks after verification:

In this mail it shows the address without a number assigned to it but in the Places dashboard it does show the nr. "Fourie St, Cape Town 7560, South Africa"

I decided to leave it as is for a while to see if it might get rectified but to no avail.

Here's a screencap of the Places Dashboard

Here's what I've noticed when searching Google Maps for this business:

When searching for "florist" only, with Google Maps zoomed in at this level I receive this result: screencap1

When searching for "florist" via the Google Auto Complete for this area it returns this: screencap2

When searching for "flowers in brackenfell" I get the following - screencap3

As you can see in the above screenshots it appears that its not really ranking that well, I understand that NAP consistency and citations are important but would've thought that it will at least appear when searching for in the local area.

Any advice as to why this listing is "behaving" as it is and how I can hopefully correct or improve it?. I'd assume the most important search terms being "florist" and "flowers" for when anyone in and around Brackenfell search for it.

 

[Linda Buquet]

This listing is not fully populated yet, (no similar places section at the bottom), which tells me it's probably not fully worked into the local database yet. It can take 6 weeks or so for that to happen.

Hopefully about the time that section shows up on the listing and you get your stats in the dashboard, it should start showing up better in search.

HOWEVER for most core keywords the ranking is going to depend more on organic and their site does not appear to be well optimized for the main keywords. Are you only doing their Place page or are you also going to optimized their site?

 

[Schalk]

Thanks for the quick reply Linda.

At this stage I'm only assisting them with their Place page, unfortunately not their site. It's something I hope to do in future though - would like to talk to you sometime about the advanced places training you provide.

So at this time(within 6 weeks from verification) there's no way to tell if their site might be causing any conflicts with the Places page?

So all I can do now is to leave the Places page untouched for another few weeks and see if it gets populated?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Schalk,

I have seen newly verified listings take up to 8 weeks to generate the "similar places" at the bottom of the G+ Local listing.

On a few occasions, I have seen a listing start to rank right around the time that the "similar places" show up.

Don't do too much until the listing is fully indexed.

 

[Linda Buquet]

So at this time(within 6 weeks from verification) there's no way to tell if their site might be causing any conflicts with the Places page?

So all I can do now is to leave the Places page untouched for another few weeks and see if it gets populated?

Not sure what you mean by site causing conflicts with Places BUT it isn't optimized right for their KWs so they likely aren't going to rank.

Not sure about the MM issue and not sure why you created in both places? Could be a prob. But a quick search in MM only shows me one listing.

BUT right now there is a serious problem. Can't tell if it's something wrong with this listing or a Google glitch. Have NEVER seen it before.

I clicked your Google shortened link to G Maps above (bunches for africa - Google Maps) BUT it redirected to Google search home page. So I thought the link was just wrong.

So then I went to the G+ Local page Bunches For Africa - About - Google+ - clicked on the address, which SHOULD take me to maps. It also redirects to the G home page. So something is wrong but I'm not sure what.

 

[Schalk]

I'll just leave the the listing as is for another month so that I can at least eliminate the Place Page indexing as a possible issue.

Thanks for the help Linda & Colan.