Ranking Problem for Locations Across The Street From Each Other

[wcssderek]

We have a ranking problem. We manage two local storage businesses that are on the same street, across the street from each other. They are both on our domain, and both are on the same url tree (domain/state/city). One of these facilities has been on our domain for five years and prior to that, their original domain dates back to 2010. The other facility is new as of 2 years ago and its pages started on our domain. This newer facility (Federal Way Supreme Self Storage) ranks very poorly on Google maps with the only reach being toward the east and southeast (see attached search grid with .5 miles between dots.) We've tried many things to try and differentiate these two locations to let Google know they are not duplicates including adding address in page title and H1, address in GBP description, etc.) but nothing seems to improve our rankings for the new location. It doesn't help that there is only one word different between the two (Federal Way Heated Self Storage vs Federal Way Supreme Self Storage. It also doesn't help that both locations are managed through the same GBP account. Any ideas of how to communicate to Google that these are different?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Unfortunately this isn't something that Google can assist with because it's baked into the algorithm. You can read about it here: Is Your Google My Business Listing Getting Filtered? - Sterling Sky Inc

I haven't heard any success stories of a business that managed to avoid it - if one starts ranking better, the other will likely drop as a consequence. The only way to have them both consistently rank together is to move one.

 

[wcssderek]

Thanks, Joy. I've read your article before but just wondered if anything had changed on that front. As your article suggests, we'll have to go after unique keywords for the new location that the other one isn't targeting. The good news is that the newer location gets a lot of referral business from the more established one.

 

[JS Girard]

I found about this myself very recently. In our agency, we usually run into the filter for people with the same address discounting suites # etc. (which is also how it's usually discussed online), but location that are very close geographically can indeed generate filtering. We ran into it for a lawyer with no same-address GBPs but almost 20 other lawyers within a radius of like 150-200 yards. Client wouldn't show up until you zoomed significantly.