When your business has three different addresses

[Jo Shaer]

It's clearly going to be one of those weeks!!! I mentioned this client a couple of days ago in another thread but things have now got extremely messy.

My client has a shop which, when he first moved there, was in a shopping mall with open streets and he had a physical street address which reflected that.

Some years later, the shopping mall was given a make over. It got a roof and a new name and the street address was no longer used, he was just in * Shopping Mall.

In the last couple of weeks, Google has stopped recognising the original street address and, in confusion, has changed his Places listing to a street with a similar name that is about half a mile away but retaining the actual building number. Phone number and business name etc remain unchanged.

A couple of minor directories have now scraped that information, although the main ones still have the 'correct' street name - so we have two addresses floating around the internet.

He has now received notification from the shopping mall that the 'correct' street that Google is confused about is now going to be totally renamed as a postal address but it hasnt been finalised yet.

So, I currently have a Google Plus Business page which has the wrong street address on the public side although it does still mention the shopping mall and the map marker is in the right place - so there is a chance that customers could end up in the wrong place - AND an unrecognised address that will become a wrong address on the dashboard, but no official confirmation that the new proposed address actually exists for any services that matter.

His Google Plus page IS RANKING for the keywords he wants but his website is not. He relies on that Google Plus Page for his business.

Do I apply the rule of 'if it aint broke, don't fix it' in terms of ranking? Or do I fiddle because it actually is broke as far as part of the address is now wrong for both customers AND Google...

And, if I fiddle, what flipping address do I change it to? One that Google doesn't recognise or one that Google doesn't even know about yet!

I'm going to hell in a handcart so I'd love to have the benefit of anyone's experience on this one :O

 

[Andrew Sawyer]

It's clearly going to be one of those weeks!!! I mentioned this client a couple of days ago in another thread but things have now got extremely messy.

My client has a shop which, when he first moved there, was in a shopping mall with open streets and he had a physical street address which reflected that.

Some years later, the shopping mall was given a make over. It got a roof and a new name and the street address was no longer used, he was just in * Shopping Mall.

In the last couple of weeks, Google has stopped recognising the original street address and, in confusion, has changed his Places listing to a street with a similar name that is about half a mile away but retaining the actual building number. Phone number and business name etc remain unchanged.

A couple of minor directories have now scraped that information, although the main ones still have the 'correct' street name - so we have two addresses floating around the internet.

He has now received notification from the shopping mall that the 'correct' street that Google is confused about is now going to be totally renamed as a postal address but it hasnt been finalised yet.

So, I currently have a Google Plus Business page which has the wrong street address on the public side although it does still mention the shopping mall and the map marker is in the right place - so there is a chance that customers could end up in the wrong place - AND an unrecognised address that will become a wrong address on the dashboard, but no official confirmation that the new proposed address actually exists for any services that matter.

His Google Plus page IS RANKING for the keywords he wants but his website is not. He relies on that Google Plus Page for his business.

Do I apply the rule of 'if it aint broke, don't fix it' in terms of ranking? Or do I fiddle because it actually is broke as far as part of the address is now wrong for both customers AND Google...

And, if I fiddle, what flipping address do I change it to? One that Google doesn't recognise or one that Google doesn't even know about yet!

I'm going to hell in a handcart so I'd love to have the benefit of anyone's experience on this one :O

For Google Maps (including +Local) you need to use the physical location, which isn't always the mailing address. If the address isn't found it could be a variety of factors from a missing Address POI, to a street name being abbreviated, to the wrong city/subneighborhood being used, etc.

Can you post the business and the address and I can better advise/fix the problem? Feel free to PM me if you wish.

 

[Jo Shaer]

Thank you Andrew, I will PM you the exact details so we can work the conundrum of the address that is yet to come.

In the meantime, I actually checked the dashboard of the listing, only to discover that the owner has actually entered the address incorrectly in the first place! He has turned the street name from one word into two with a space that is not there in his listed postal address. So, there's a lesson for me - don't trust that data has been entered correctly in the first place!

Odd that Google has only just got around to being confused by it but that's what we're left with.

In normal circumstances, I would hope that careful editing of the dashboard to remove the erroneous spaces which have made the address unrecognisable to Google and then a user edit from the outside to try to nudge them into correcting the incorrect listing on the public Places listing and G+ page. And crossing my fingers to hope that verification is not then required.

But I will wait until Andrew has spoken as I don't want to change this one and then have to deal with a new address straight away.