Why is a Google Listing Showing Up in a Different Town Than Its Address?

[formandfunctionagency]

I have a client who runs a dental office on the outskirts of Racine, WI. His address specifically shows up as being in Racine, however, his GMB profile has always showed with the category of "Dentist in Mount Pleasant, WI" displaying below the photos. (Mount Pleasant is the next town over and his office straddles the line between the two towns in Google's overlay map of the town.)

Obviously this is frustrating and I'm concerned that his location is hurting his ability to rank in the larger, more populous town of Racine. Have any other SEOs ever encountered this? And if so, how have you approached the issue? Location pages? Mentions of the location more often on the pages?

tsLvH2B

[MiriamEllis]

My typical advice to business owners near the borders of a larger city they serve is to be honest about their physical location, but build relationships with/content surrounding the larger city.

Your case is different, in that you are half-in/half-out of both cities. The client's physical address is in Racine, as attested by the Google Business Profile, so this is how I would most strongly market and identify the business. Racine has more than 2x the population of Mount Pleasant, so it is definitely your bigger client pool. So, unless I'm missing something about your client's client base, I'm guessing the majority of your efforts on and off the website will be optimized for Racine.

Without a deeper dive into the client's scenario, I'm not sure what you should do about Mount Pleasant. It has a pretty good population of its own and it would be good to reach that audience. But, I'm wondering whether it would be better to leave that geotargeting to PPC rather than the website, if you're trying to make the biggest push for Racine. You only have one office you're working with, so I'm not a fan of optimizing the site for both without a creative plan to make it reasonable to do so.

So, I think the ball is in your agency's court to deeply review the scenario and decide on the best way forward for consolidating or dividing optimization. Good luck!

[formandfunctionagency]

Thanks for the detailed response Miriam, I really appreciate the help.

One final question regarding this... While Racine is the obvious population center in the area, Mount Pleasant still presumably has residents that need dental work done too. In your opinion, would activities intended to improve the client's visibility in Mount Pleasant detract from his ability to rank in Racine? For instance, would joining the Mount Pleasant Chamber of Commerce be advisable if they offer a link to members? Should we add Mount Pleasant as a service area in GMB, etc?

Again, thanks a million for the advise on this odd situation. If we make any notable progress, I'll come back to this thread to make an update!

[MiriamEllis]

Arggh! Definitely a frustrating and unusual case. Literally one of the best illustrations I've ever seen of how being on the border of a big city can create such a hurdle to rankings. Sorry this worked out this way, but yes, your options are:

1. Create content surrounding Racine. I would suggest that the dentist find some opportunities to interact with/contribute to the Racine community that you can then create content surrounding. There has to be something more to write about than just a "our patients come to us from Racine" reason to write about Racine. That's not interesting. But, if the dentist sponsors Racine groups/teams/events, if he speaks at schools, belongs to business associations, contributes to online news, etc. all in Racine, this is something to showcase on the website to highlight his community involvement in that city. It will also be the best kind of way to get linktations (see: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/linked-unstructured-citations) to support organic rankings for implicit and explicit Racine-related searches.

2. Invest in social outreach hinging on the Racine community.

3. Invest in PPC targeting Racine

4. Invest in offline advertising targeting Racine.

5. Run campaigns at your practice that in some way reward customers who refer Racine neighbors to you.

6. Use all available GMB fields to mention Racine. This includes Google Posts, Q&A, description, photos, review responses, etc.

7. Bear in mind that while it's not likely for a business to rank outside it's city of location where there is a fair level of competition, it's also not absolutely impossible. Don't make any promises to the client about this, but on the back burner of your marketing plan, keep in mind that you are trying to see if any amount of organic signalling can overcome that border bias. I'd track everything closely. If you manage to surmount this issue, you'll have a fascinating case study on your hands.

Honestly, the scenario of having the parking lot in Racine and the dental office in Mount Pleasant is so odd, I'm half-tempted to recommend you find some clever and funny marketing angle in it, but that could just be the local SEO in me who finds this scenario weird and exasperating. Maybe a goofy idea, but I've seen such things take on a viral life of their own for other local businesses. Good luck!

[formandfunctionagency]

Hi Miriam, an update on this:

I spoke to the client about this and Google is right. The Racine/Mount Pleasant line runs straight through his parking lot. The parking lot is in Racine while the building is in Mount Pleasant. A tough situation all around, but one that illuminates the right steps forward with strategy a bit.

Because of this, I feel we're always going to have a hard time ranking in Maps searches in Racine. What do you feel is the best path forward? Should we be treating Racine as a service area and creating city pages in hopes of improving organic rankings for Racine?

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks for the screencast. This is a super frustrating case for your client, honestly. When I first looked at the map, it looked to me like they were clearly on the Racine side of the line, but after looking at your screencast, I agree - it's borderline.

Sadly, because of this, I don't think you have much of a case to make to Google if they are insistent that the business is technically in Mount Pleasant. It's especially unfortunate, because clearly, the business has a Racine postal address. Obviously, the postal authorities believe the business address in technically in Racine, but Google follows their own lead on this.

I will ask around among some GMB forum Gold Product experts to see if there is any hope of appeal on this. I think I've seen folks make slight moves to the map marker to change this sort of thing, but I don't want to tell you to do something that could end up being problematic. If I hear anything positive, I'll return to this thread.

[formandfunctionagency]

PS: I'd recommend opening the screencast outside of DropBox, the quality on the website is awful but when I run it in Quicktime it appears just fine.

[formandfunctionagency]

Hi Miriam, it's honestly hard to tell. In addition to the city boundaries disappearing on zoom, the map pin has an animation that makes it slowly descend onto the map. It's literally on the line.

Check out the attached screencast I made to help us slow down and stop the Maps animation. At first, I have the boundaries of Mount Pleasant, WI displayed. Then I search for Dr. Gould's location. Based on where the pin falls, it looks to be on the Racine side of the fence but when you pull up the Satellite view and compare the placement of the building to Greenleaf Road (looks to me like the city limit comes through halfway between Greenleaf and Sunset/Byrd) it's possible that the limit line runs through the backyard. A tough call!

Thanks for your help!

Justin

Screen%20Recording%202019-04-02%20at%209.51.20%20AM.mov?dl=0

[MiriamEllis]

Hello Again,

Looking at this again after reading the reply you received from Google. The trouble is, when I zoom in enough on the map, Google's borders disappear, so I was having to approximate location. To confirm, can you let me know if this image is correct:

https://imgur.com/NhaXUj3

Thanks!

[formandfunctionagency]

Hi Miriam, thanks so much for your advice on this. I really thought we had this one, but Google disagrees! I tweeted support and got the following answer:

"Thanks for reaching out. Upon further investigation, we found that the listing is located in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin on Maps here: http://spr.ly/6015EwZYV  Since, the information is not incorrect, we'll be unable to update it. However, this does support the listings organic ranking. To learn more about local ranking and tips check out the link here: http://spr.ly/6016EwZYn  Thank you for your patience and understanding. "

It turns out that the map of Racine may omit this SINGLE plot of land. The business address comes up as Racine, the business owner probably even pays taxes in Racine, but according to Google, he's solidly outside of town. I personally feel like this is debatable based on the map, but Google is at least consistent-- other businesses in the building come back with the same city designation. It's especially a shame because the dentist practicing literally next door comes up as a "dentist in Racine" in his city designation. We've always had trouble ranking the client in Racine, even against competitors with lower DA, and I suspect this city designation could be part of the reason why.

I've attached a few screenshots you may find helpful and if you should want to write a blog post or case study about this, I'm sure Dr. Gould would thank you : )

roFTx5E

[MiriamEllis]

Hi There!

This must be very frustrating, indeed. It's a really interesting case, actually. Looking up "racine" in Google and observing Google's red border on the map, I see your client as actually being just inside the city border of Racine. So, I think you actually have a case here for speaking to a Google rep about the incorrect designation showing up on your Google Business Profile. I would take a screenshot of the client's pin marker, and then a screenshot of the map search for Racine. It proves that the client is physically in Racine rather than in Mount Pleasant, so Google's designation is wrong.

Once you have your screenshots, this is what I would do:

Send a tweet to Google's Twitter support at https://twitter.com/GoogleMyBiz telling them you have an incorrect city designation showing up in their category summary and want to show them an image.

Be sure you are following them on Twitter as they will likely want to DM with you.

Once they get back to you (I find it takes 1-3 days typically) upload the screenshots you've taken and explain the problem and ask if they can help, as the map shows their text is wrong.

See what they can do.

Come back to me and tell me what happened.

Hope this helps!