What to do if you don’t have a business address and still want to be listed on Google Local. Is Google’s advice a hack? Should they make provisions for sole traders or those working from their homes that don’t want to list their address?
7 Comments
7 Comments
Comments
Obviously I knew you could do just register a mail box and presto you’re on Google Local. In fact, I know of website owners who’ve done this to take advantage of Google Local listings when they don’t "technically" belong there. I just wonder how it’s supposed to be good advice coming from Google? Surely it’s just giving the green light to every spammer out there who’s going to try to game the system. The Google Local listings are now too prominent not to try and get on them whether or not one has a "right" to be there. And if you can just go get a mail box, well, why not get several in prime locations and register a Google Local company - taking care to use the best keywords as your company name. Most online yellow pages require a full business address but not all require it to be shown. As is mentioned in the article Yellowpages.com don’t. In the UK Yell and Thomson allow you to "hide" your address and some of the new ones like http://www.bizwiki.co.uk do as well. I could be wrong but I think Google have just told those wanting to game Google Local that it’s perfectly fine to do so.
I don’t believe Google intends to send any sort of message that it’s okay to game Google Maps -- that would be contrary to all their messaging around guidelines.Their intentions have clearly been two-fold: they wish to deliver a good consumer experience, and they originally desired to use physical street addresses for map location and update verification simultaneously.From my perspective, it’s possible to perform some types of owner verification/validation without displaying the addresses in the interface. With their moves to aggressively display more of their own local listings for web searches (they recently increased their local one-box listings from 3 to 10), I think it becomes more important for them to work out a method for displaying these business’s listings along with others who have addresses.Regarding webmasters who’ve spammed local listings in Google Maps, Mike Blumenthal and others have <a href="http://blumenthals.com/blog/2007/07/27/first-case-of-large-scale-abuse-at-google-maps/">identified this sort of thing previously</a>, and Google has always worked to revoke spammish listings when they become aware of them.
In the UK, you have to verify your listing with Google, either by telephone or by post.
I agree with you Chris that Google didn’t *intend* to send that message but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t. It certainly is possible to verify a real business, collect their business address and then let them choose whether or not it’s displayed and Google should work towards doing that, especially, as you so rightly point out, now that they are being so agreesive in the amount of space they’re taking up with the Local box.And although I agree that Google didn’t intend to send a free for all message to spammers and that it’s good at removing spam when it finds it, I still think that there are many "on the fencers" who will see this as a green light and the number of fake listings will increase."you have to verify your listing with Google, either by telephone or by post."That’s correct, and if you can use a rented post box there are plenty to choose from. That method is not very secure as far as verification is concerned, especially if you don’t have to use a registered trading address and can instead just use any address where you can access the post. Neither does it give perspective customers a realistic idea of where the company is based. Although I have to say that allowing a company to hide their address in their listing provides perspective customers with about the same amount of location info, possibly less.The real issue I suppose is whether Google will see the need to allow small businesses and sole traders and those working out of their garage flexibility and the right to be listed and yet not show their own address if they choose to hide it for privacy reasons. I seriously doubt every sole trader working from home is going to rush out and rent a post box to get listed (although obviously a fair few will).
I wonder if you can use the service Earth Class Mail to "game" the Google Map process. Because they have boxes all over the US and you identify yourself by an account number added to the street address, you could probably post profiles in all the cities they have addresses for. Using Grand Central, I bet it would be really easy to get a local number for each address (or an 800 number using gotvmail).
Many changes in Google Local and they way it takes in data. Category system has been revamped, video integration, and according to recent chatter at conferences, Google Maps now longer accepts P.O. Boxes addresses. Category changesVideos on Google Local
^^ The above comment was edited to remove the signature file with additional links.