Google My Business pages for New Construction Communities

[TheKatzMeow]

I have a number of builders of new homes as clients. Typically, they build out a whole neighborhood at once and give the neighborhood a fancy name. We were planning to create Google My Business pages for these communities but then ran into some potential challenges.

1. As new communities, they are sometimes not on Google's radar yet
2. Some of them have model homes where you might take a tour with a realtor that serves the community exclusively but many don't.

So here come the questions...

1. Is there a way to make Google speed up its process of recognizing new addresses?
2. I have to choose an address to associate with the GMB page, probably the address of model home. Is this going to create annoying problems for a buyer who someday buys that model home?
3. Since some communities don't have a model home, I could arbitrarily assign an address of one of the neighborhood homes to the GMB page, but this leads to the same question about creating a GMB page that will exist after the builder has sold all the houses in the community. Will it be weird to have the GMB referring to someone's private residence down the road?
4. My assumption is that claiming a GMB page would help with local ranking if someone searches for something like "new homes" in addition to providing easy driving directions to someone who has done a bit of research and Googles the name of the new home community while out driving and searching for homes. These seem to be the main benefits, but are the challenges associated with questions 1-3 even worth the trouble of trying to claim listings for these communities?

[TheKatzMeow]

Indeed. Luckily organic is the client's top traffic and conversion source.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Paul,

Okay, glad to know you were at least able to determine that GMB listings aren't right for the business model. Sounds like you will need to rely on other forms of outreach (organic, paid, social). Good luck!

[TheKatzMeow]

Thanks for answering my question, Miriam. It looks like the client's type of business wouldn't work with GMB's rules. Thanks for making me aware of this. As to your business model question, each community has it's own brand name (e.g. Golden Homes by [Builder Name]).

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Paul,

So glad you asked. This is one of those rather complicated Google My Business issues, so my answer is going to be a bit long to be sure I'm being thorough. Google's guidelines have long stated the following:  (https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Ineligible businesses

The following businesses aren’t eligible for a business listing:

• Rental or for-sale properties, such as vacation homes, model homes or vacant apartments. Sales or leasing offices, however, are eligible for verification.

Historically, Google has forbidden the use of GMB listings for temporary sales offices located in model homes. If you had a sales office located somewhere permanently, you could list it, but if it was temporary, it wasn't eligible.

Now, the guidelines still read this way, and you can see GMB Forum Top Contributor Joy Hawkins citing them back in 2016 in this thread in which a business model similar to yours got all of its listings suspended:

https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Spam-Policy/Platinum-Homes-Account-Suspended-having-17-locations/m-p/739193/highlight/true#M4962

*Please note that the above thread contains references to Google Mapmaker which no longer exists.

However, a couple of months after that initial thread, Joy received some new information from Google (see: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Spam-Policy/Platinum-Homes-Account-Suspended-having-17-locations/m-p/825706#M5299), which I'll copy/paste here:

"I just heard back from Google because I double-checked with them. They told me:

_ We (GMB) recently decided to allow leasing offices for model homes on the Map so I'm wondering if that is what the user is saying they see often. If it's actually just empty model homes and not the leasing office, we should remove them."_

So, it seems that if you have a leasing office within a model home, Google is now okay with this (though you still should not list an empty model home).

However, moving on with your question, Paul, if the newly built communities aren't mapped yet, you will see further down in that second GMB forum thread that this represents a problem, which Joy addresses this way:

"Since Street View doesn't confirm or show any of your sales offices, the only way for me to get these all reinstated is for you to get photos of inside and outside each of them to help Google see they exist. The easiest way to do this would be to add them to your website and let me know where they are so I can reply back to Google. Let me know when you've done that."

So, what I'd recommend, then, is that you get photographic documentation together of any staffed sales offices located in a model home that isn't yet visible via Street View, and that you then post this to the Google My Business Forum, asking that a Top Contributor like Joy please help you get recognized. Hopefully this will help you avoid the problems that the poster in the Google forum ran into with suspension, but I can't guarantee it. It's confusing when Google's public guidelines don't reflect their current internal stance, and this is one they need to update publicly if they've changed their policy. At least you now have in your hands the forum threads that document what Google told Joy, in case you run into TCs or Google staff who do not understand this change of policy.

As for what to do when a sales office closes and is finally sold to a buyer, what is the model of this business? Specifically, are different communities they build branded with the same name? For example, are multiple communities named "Golden Homes", or is one called "Golden Homes" and the second called "Oceanview Homes" and the next called "Riverside Homes"? Please, let me know, as good advice on this question could depend on how the business operates.