Site dropped 45 places in Google Maps overnight. What gives?

[txsigma41]

Hi everyone..newbie here with my first post. Ive been lurking for a few months here and have picked up tons of great info, so thank you to everyone.

One of my client sites dropped 45 spots in Google maps overnight for some of his main keywords (Austin personal trainer, austin personal training, etc)

The company is complete fitness design in Austin, tx. Website is completefitnessdesign.com

His organic rankings are continuing to increase so I dont know what's causing the huge drop in local rankings. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[Linda Buquet]

The only thing I found is there is another personal trainer and another Gym right at that same address. Is he affiliated with either of these or located inside the other gym maybe?

https://plus.google.com/105656309431983838686/about?gl=us&hl=en
https://plus.google.com/109752406394719534208/about?gl=us&hl=en

Not that there can't be 3 businesses at the same address BUT often when there are and it's the same address with no suite numbers it's really just one business gaming the system with 3 different names, sites and phones.

Thats probably not it but only had time for a little research and that's the only thing I noticed.

 

[Chris McCreery]

Do you remember what your indexed title in searches was prior to the shift?

I notice in search results the title of your website is different than what's displaying in your title tag now.

See what pages are indexed here site:www.completefitnessdesign.com

Current page title in search Complete Fitness Design: Austin Personal Trainer
Page title from your site
Austin Personal Trainer - Complete Fitness Design

So just wondering if maybe Google reindexed a portion of your site?

Also noticing that if you search for your phone number 512-484-2270 there are a bunch of results for Austin Fitness Center: Austin's #1 Gym
Hope that helps a bit.

 

[txsigma41]

Linda,
Thanks for the quick response, you guys are awesome! Thanks for doing some research for me, I looked at the two listings. The first one is the accurate one for my client, I had to do some research on the second one.The second one is for a Gymnastics center in the same shopping center as his gym.

Would you recommend me putting his Suite # in the Google Maps listing? And if so, Im assuming I would need to go correct the other ~50 local citations Ive built for him also?

Thanks again for your help - what an awesome community!

---------- Post Merged at 09:08 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:56 AM ----------

Chris - thanks for your help!

First, 512-484-2270 is the clients cell number that he uses for Complete Fitness Design (the site in question) and the gym he owns (Austin Fitness Center). Do you think the same number for both listings is causing an issue? He's been in spot 4-5 for over a year so I didnt think that would be an issue?

For the title tags issues, I've been doing some adjusting of the tags last month. I havent touched them since then though, and I'm not sure why Google isn't displaying the old tags and not the new (Austin Personal Trainer - Complete Fitness Design). I need to do some looking into that, thanks again for your help!

 

[Chris McCreery]

Well could definitely be an issue with different business names but both using the same number and address. If there are other citations for the Austin Fitness Center starting to popup then "she" (as Linda calls Google Local Algo) might be getting confused.
There are also a few other listings with the same address, some with suite and some without.

https://plus.google.com/local/Austin, TX/s/3100 W Slaughter Ln Austin, TX 78748?gl=us&hl=en

Suite number would be a good idea and yes you would need to update the citations as well.

Title tags- Google just hasn't recrawled your site recently to get the latest updates on your site. Sometimes you can poke them by resubmitting your xml site map in Webmaster Tools.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for doing some research for me, I looked at the two listings. The first one is the accurate one for my client, I had to do some research on the second one.The second one is for a Gymnastics center in the same shopping center as his gym.

Oops there is a 3rd listing I forgot to list last night - the gymnastics center:
https://plus.google.com/102443794931871079747/about?gl=us&hl=en

Was tired so to explain more...

The 1st thing I look for with a drop that big is violations and dupes. When searching for dupes I found those other 2 listings that have somewhat similar categories, so was only speculating that there could be a problem with it BUT I'm not certain that's what caused the drop.

I would not add a suite if their real address and citations does not include a suite. That's kinda like making up a fake address IMO.

Have you changed any part of NAP on the listing lately?

Tweaking title tags could do it.

There is also a big ranking shuffle with listings shifting all over. I'd hang tight a bit.

 

[Blake Denman]

Do you remember what your indexed title in searches was prior to the shift?

I notice in search results the title of your website is different than what's displaying in your title tag now.

See what pages are indexed here site:www.completefitnessdesign.com

Current page title in search Complete Fitness Design: Austin Personal Trainer


Page title from your site
Austin Personal Trainer - Complete Fitness Design

So just wondering if maybe Google reindexed a portion of your site?

This is probably Google making the change to the page title automatically. Quote from G Support, "If we?ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources."
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en

It's happened a few times to a few of my clients. Normally they just switch the title from keyword | biz name to biz name: keyword, like they suggest in the article linked above.

 

[txsigma41]

Nope - no changes have been made to the NAP or Google + page in quite awhile. After I saw the drop, I went in and checked some of the categories and removed "Health Center" from them, thats about it.

Do you think it's the dupes causing it? I dont know how long those two sites have had Google+ pages, but we have been ranking in the top 7 for almost a year now.

Could it be from any recent backlinks I may have built?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Could be backlinks BUT it ranks 10 or so in pure organic so I don't think that's it.

Are you still in old dash? Because some of the cats appear to me to be custom cats that violate the is not does rule. But I've never seen a ranking penalty for that.

Description is missing which is odd for a verified optimized page.
Do you have a description in dash???

One other odd thing - a new problem I just discovered today and have not figure out yet. Check the warning in the browser bar for the listing: https://plus.google.com/105656309431983838686/about?gl=us&hl=en

Other pages have the lock icon and are secure.

Check this post at the G forum about another listing that has this problem. I'm trying to figure out what the deal is. I explain more here.

https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/business/XkJwHAZv0s0/1AguB2tnIUYJ

 

[Chris McCreery]

Hi Linda, the issue with the browser warning is because there are insecure content on those pages. By which I mean, the images that are being displayed aren't using the same domain certificate (which covers *.google.com). The images are being served up from lh5.googleusercontent.com. So I think it's an issue on Google's side.

 

[Chris McCreery]

Another thing I just thought of would be just to review the Google+ User Content and Conduct Policy Policies & Principles - Google to see if perhaps there are anything you might have done recently that could possible be mistaken for suspicious activity.

Few items to consider

"Do not aggressively add people to your circles."

Also check out the Google+ Profile Name guidelines
https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1228271?p=plus_names&rd=1

 

[Linda Buquet]

Good sleuthing Chris. When I was checking earlier one of the warnings led me to suspect images but I got interrupted and didn't have time to check further and I would not have thought to check the image serving domain. Good catch.

Although Kaleh in the G thread thinks it's a different issue. No time to check it out further.

 

[Chris McCreery]

I also found a few things in Map Maker history.



Not sure what the first one means but suspect something to do with the updates the +Local is going through currently.



This one shows that there used to be a name "Austin Fitness Center"

 

[txsigma41]

Chris,
Where can I check out Map Maker history? Complete Fitness Design and Austin Fitness Center are both run by my client at the same address/phone (CFD is his personal training business and Austin Fitness Center is the gym he owns at the same location).

I read through the rules/recommendations on Googles forums and Im pretty sure I am following all the rules for setting up his listing. Im in the new dashboard, but I am still a little confused (after reading tons of threads) on the new dash vs old dash and the places/maps/+ pages etc

 

[katandmouse]

I wonder if this is the same issue I'm seeing with my restaurant client. He opens up a new restaurant at the same address and the existing one disappears overnight from Maps. In his case though, they have different phone numbers. In the example at hand, they share the same phone number which I would think would make it worse. If I were him, I'd get a different phone number for his personal fitness training service. From a branding perspective, I think that would make sense too.

 

[katandmouse]

Did you notice that all the reviews here are for the gym https://plus.google.com/105656309431983838686/about?gl=us&hl=en Yet, that is the personal fitness trainer's page. And when I search on Austin Fitness Center, Complete Fitness comes up. It looks like you have a merge to me.

 

[Chris McCreery]

Yah it does look like a merge to me.


Chris McCreery

 

[Keenan Glass]

If you ask me (which you did not), I would say that you cannot set up two separate listings. A gym and a personal trainer at the same location is really just one business that offers additional services.

There should just be one business.

 

[Linda Buquet]

If you ask me (which you did not), I would say that you cannot set up two separate listings. A gym and a personal trainer at the same location is really just one business that offers additional services.

There should just be one business.

Absolutely! Keenan, I missed the later added merged post here:

---------- Post Merged at 09:08 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:56 AM ----------First, 512-484-2270 is the clients cell number that he uses for Complete Fitness Design (the site in question) and the gym he owns (Austin Fitness Center). Do you think the same number for both listings is causing an issue? He's been in spot 4-5 for over a year so I didnt think that would be an issue?

txsigma wish you had mentioned right up front he had 2 listings himself. As soon as I started mentioning the other related businesses that could be causing a problem, should have brought it up. Could have saved me and all these people some time.

That's the problem for sure.

Can only have one listing per business location and even if HE considers them separate businesses Google would not.

And Kat is right they are likely merged.

Even if one was in a totally different location across town, can't have the same # on 2 listings. It contributes to the merge problem.

So he should list whichever is most important - I would think, the gym and then in description also mention personal trainer is available and add that to the gym cat. Then also on the landing page the Gym's page goes to mention personal trainer.

 

[txsigma41]

Hi everyone, wanted to apologize for making you guys go through any un-necessary work

So what yall are saying is that the following two pages have been merged?
Austin Fitness Center https://plus.google.com/u/1/b/104428438994182149247/104428438994182149247/posts

Complete Fitness Design
https://plus.google.com/105656309431983838686/posts

Both have the same address/phone number but it looks like the Austin Fitness Center hasn't been verified yet? I never setup that profile - so I guess it's one of the pre-existing ones.

The Complete Fitness Design is the profile that we have been marketing and building out, so should we just delete the Austin Fitness Center page?

Thanks again for everyone's help on this!