Phil

Google Review Filter Fail

September 13, 2012 by Phil 7 Comments

People’s exhibit “A”:

Yes, I can see that the review is from 4 years ago, and apparently has been grandfathered in. (Though, as I recall, even 4 years ago Google had some way to filter reviews.)

Maybe the review is from a legit (but clueless) customer. Or from a guy who fell asleep on his keyboard and held down CTRL+V with his nose.

Still, in light of Google’s egregious mishandling of reviews, this is the sort of thing that makes you wish Google would just stop taking wild stabs at review-QC and just leave it to potential customers – humans – to make up their own minds.

Local SEO “Substitutions”

September 10, 2012 by Phil 23 Comments

I’ve always liked the part of cookbooks with the “substitutions” chart. It’s a life-saver for those of us who buy all the right ingredients at the market but gobble up half of them before we can cook anything.

One reason I like the substitutions chart is it reminds me that good cooking isn’t necessarily perfection.

Sure, you can’t substitute every ingredient in a recipe.

But if you’re a little short on time or ingredients and need to improvise, the finished product still will turn out great (usually).

The same is true of local search. Some people seem to think that local search “optimization” means “everything’s got to be perfect.” It doesn’t. There isn’t just one correct way to do the steps that will make your business visible to customers in the Google+Local search results and beyond.

Granted, for some steps in your local-search campaign there’s no such thing as “good enough.” For instance, you must follow Google’s “Quality Guidelines,” or you risk having your business flicked off the local map entirely.

But for other steps “close counts.” (No, it’s not just in horseshoes and hand-grenades, as the saying goes.)

If you’ve had a tough time of implementing some of the local SEO best-practices you’ve heard from me or from other people, check out my list of “substitutions,” below.

By definition, a substitution isn’t perfect. These are no exceptions. Think of them in terms of “if you can’t do this, do that.”

For your Google+Local listing

If you…
Can’t include all your main services as categories in your Google listing (you can list yourself under a maximum of 5 categories).

Then…
Have a separate page of your website devoted to each specific service you offer. This page should tell potential customers all about that particular service. Then make sure you’re linking to these pages from your homepage (or whatever is the landing page you use for your Google+Local listing).

Explanation
Categories are the best way to tell Google, “Yoo-hoo, over here…OK, these are the services I want to rank for.” But probably the next-best way to do this is to have distinct, focused pages that describe in detail each specific service you offer (e.g. one for heating, another for air-conditioning, etc.). That makes it easy for Google to scour your site and determine exactly what kind of business you’re in and what you offer.

Have a page for each service you offer - esp. if you run out of categories

If you…
Can’t think of any eye-catching (but relevant) photos to upload to your Google+Local page

Then…
Upload screenshots or photos that aren’t necessarily eye candy but that are relevant to your services and informative in some way. Things like handwritten testimonials, “fan mail,” your BBB accreditation, or documents that show you’re certified to do whatever it is you do.

Explanation
I haven’t found that photos affect local rankings. But good photos will make people more likely to click through to your site or pick up the phone. Which is what it’s all about. And which means it’s perfectly OK to upload photos that aren’t flashy but that tell potential customers something they might want to know about you or your services.

For your website

If you…
Don’t have a keyword-relevant domain name.

Then…
Create a page (or subdomain) on your site with a keyword-relevant page name, and use it as the landing page for your Google+Local listing.

Explanation
Let’s say your competitor’s website is AcmeChiropractic123.com. He ranks well locally for search terms that contain “chiropractic.” Your website is DrJohnDoe.com. Consider building a page named “Doe-Chiropractic” that talks all about your chiropractic care.

Then use “https://www.DrJohnDoe.com/Doe-Chiropractic” as the landing page for your Google+Local listing (in other words, enter that URL into the “Website” field of your Googl+Local listing). That should make you a little more likely to rank well locally for “chiropractic” and similar searches.

If you…
Can’t or don’t want to use hCard or Schema.org to mark up the name/address/phone (“NAP”) block of text that should be on every page of your site

Then…
Put the NAP on every page of your site without marking it up with hCard or Schema.

Explanation
I haven’t seen any evidence or noticed first-hand that marking up your name/address/phone number with search-engine-friendly code (AKA rich snippets) helps your rankings significantly.

Sure, we know Google pays attention to rich snippets. If you or your webmaster can implement them, great (one easy way to do it is with this excellent Schema generator). But it’s OK if you can’t or don’t want to use the markup for some reason. Just make sure the name, address, and phone number of your business is on every page of your site.

For citations

If you…
Can’t claim your business listing on a given third-party site (Yelp, CitySearch, etc.).

Then…
Make sure that the listing at least has the correct info on your business – regardless of whether you’ve claimed that listing – and make sure you get any listings with the wrong info removed.

Explanation
In my experience, the consistency of your basic business info (name, address, and phone) as it appears all across the web is the biggest factor in how well you’ll rank locally. Getting this consistency needs to be at the top of your priority list – and it doesn’t really matter how you do it.

If for any reason you can’t claim a given listing for your business, that’s OK: I haven’t found that Google will give you any brownie points for having done so. But if the listing has incorrect info, you’re in trouble. The good news is there’s almost always an area on these business-directory sites where you can suggest corrections.

If you…
Aren’t using the Local Citation Finder but want to get all the citations your competitors have.

Then…
Use this neat citation-discovery technique or my Definitive Citations List, or some combination of the two.

Explanation
Citations matter. A lot. ‘Nuff said.

For reviews

If you…
Have trouble getting Google or Yelp reviews.

Then…
Get some CitySearch or InsiderPages reviews (or other sites).

Explanation
Google reviews are central to your local-vis efforts, but there have been serious problems with them recently. The filters are WAY too strict. Legitimate reviews from real customers in many cases won’t “stick” on your Google+Local page. Similar story with Yelp, although their review “filters” have always been pretty draconian.

But even if you have loads of Google and Yelp reviews, you’d still be smart to get customers to review you on CitySearch and InsiderPages. (For a little more detail on this, see my “Local Business Reviews Ecosystem”.)

If you…
Can’t get reviews because it’s nearly impossible to do so in your particular industry – to the point that even your competitors don’t have reviews.

Then…
Put a Google +1 button on your site and ask customers to “+1” you, or ask them to email you (or even handwrite) a testimonial that you could feature on your site. Preferably ask them to do both.

Explanation
Reviews help your rankings. Most likely so will having “+1’s” – at least in the near future. Reviews are great “social proof” that show potential customers why your services are worth their attention and possibly some of their hard-earned money. Testimonials can do that, too.

—

In case you want something to slap on your fridge, here’s a little chart that sums up all of the above:

Your handy-dandy local SEO "substitutions chart"

Any other local SEO “substitutions” you can think of – or have actually used? Leave a comment!

Yelp Ranking Factors

August 23, 2012 by Phil 47 Comments

For a while I’ve pondered a simple question: how does Yelp.com rank the businesses listed on it?

A few of my clients have wondered that, too. They’ve asked, “Phil, my local rankings in Google are great, but why am I only on page 2 of Yelp for my big search terms?”

Until now, my answer has been “Well, I’m not sure, but I do know priority #1 is to get more customers to write you Yelp reviews.”

I was right – mostly. Reviews in general are the biggest factor in your Yelp rankings. (Duh…reviews are Yelp’s whole claim to fame). That may not be news to you.

But there are specific aspects of those reviews – not just sheer numbers of them – that likely influence your rankings. Plus, there seem to be entirely separate factors that matter. (More on those in a second.)

Why should you care about your Yelp rankings?

a. Yelp is already a giant in the local-search realm. It’s a close second to Google+Local, and the site appears to be growing rapidly.

b. Yelp has a hardcore user-base. Yelpers love writing reviews, and they read others’ reviews. They’re a good group of people to be visible to.

c. Yelp reviews are fed to other big sites. Bing Business Portal gets many of its reviews from Yelp – and should be getting more over time. Plus there’s the soon-to-be partnership with Apple Maps.

d. If ever we witness an epic “Google fail” (or, more likely, a series of smaller ones) and Google ceases to be the place people go to search for local businesses, my guess is Yelp will fill more of that role.

That, gentle reader, is why you need to pay attention to your Yelp presence (if you don’t already).

But Yelp, like Google, doesn’t exactly broadcast how it ranks businesses on its site.

First, a few notes

The little lawyer on my shoulder just reminded me that I should mention a few points before we get into the likely ranking factors.

This is based purely on my observations. Yelp has not “told” me or anyone else what goes into their secret sauce.

Nor is this supposed to be some “scientific study” (as if there really is such a thing in the world of SEO). Apart from a few years of dealing with Yelp for my clients, all I did recently was spend a couple hours studying the rankings in a variety of local markets.

All I’m trying to do is sketch out the basic moving parts that seem to make up Yelp’s machinery, so that you can make the most of the factors you can control and just be aware of the ones you can’t. It would not be smart to try to game Yelp’s rankings (not that you’re the type to do that!). Even if you could do so, the results probably wouldn’t last for long: Yelp has a lot of employees who “make the rounds” and keep the search results fairly clean.

One thing I want to show is the rankings are NOT just about how many reviews you have.

The rankings I’m referring to are the ones you see by default when you search on Yelp – the ones ranked by “Best Match”

The Factors

Major factors (I’m 99% sure Yelp takes these into account):

1. Existence of reviews. Almost all of the businesses that have reviews rank above the businesses that do not have any reviews. Think of it as a poker game with an ante of one review. If you don’t get that one review, you’re not even at the table.

2. Keyword-relevance of reviews. Spammers and scammers know about this, too, but Yelp’s filters do a pretty good job of weeding out the bad apples.

3. Business categories specified.

4. Name of business. This is something you just can’t control on Yelp. But if you have a relevantly-phrased business name, that will work in your favor.

5. Number of reviews.

6. Reviews by “Elite” members. These people are the wizened, weathered village elders. Their words seem to carry extra heft.

7. Check-ins via smartphone. These are going to be even more important once Apple Maps rolls into town.

8. Quality of reviews. Are they 1-star or 5-star? This doesn’t seem to be as big a factor as you might think, but it does seem to be a factor.

Possible additional factors

9. Number of reviews left for other businesses by reviewer.

10. Completeness / thoroughness of business profile.

11. Location-relevance of reviews.

12. Recentness of reviews.

13. Frequency of reviews.

14. Age of listing. I’d bet you a box of stogies that older listings are assigned a certain amount of “trust” by Yelp, and that they generally rank a little more highly as a result.

15. Business info from third-party data-providers (particularly Acxiom, according to David Mihm’s Local Search Ecosystem).

16. Editorial discretion of Yelp employees.

How might you improve your Yelp visibility?

Get duplicate listings removed. You want any and all reviews your customers write to benefit one listing, rather than sorta-kinda benefit two listings. You don’t want your reviews spread thinly.

Try to prevent future duplicates from popping up. If this has been a problem, what I suggest you do is go to the upstream data-aggregators – Acxiom, InfoGroup, and LocalEze – and make sure you only have ONE listing per location on those sites, and that those sites list the same business info that your Yelp listing has.

Specify as many relevant business categories as you can. Emphasis on ”relevant.”

Claim your Yelp profile so that you can write in-depth descriptions of your business and services.

When asking customers for reviews, your first question should be “Have you ever written Yelp reviews?” If the answer is “yes,” simply ask those people to post a Yelp review for you. They’ll know what to do. Reviews left by first-time users are more likely to get filtered out. Even if you ask someone who’s never heard of Yelp, that’s fine; just know that there’s a chance his/her review will never see the light of day.

If you’re face-to-face with a particularly enthusiastic, smartphone-fondling customer, ask him or her to give to go onto Yelp real quickly and give you a check-in.

Get in the habit of asking customers for feedback on Yelp. Don’t have a Yelp-review binge weekend. Ask customers as close to real-time as possible – not 2 months after you’ve provided your services. I guarantee you won’t be able to drum up many reviews if you do it in bursts. Just stick with it.

—

It would be very cool if someone else – maybe you! – continues to dig into the question of why some businesses rank more highly on Yelp than others do.

I’d love to hear any of your first-hand experience with Yelp rankings and visibility, or if you do some research and draw some new conclusions about Yelp’s likely ranking factors.

17 Questions with Darren Shaw – Creator of the Local Citation Finder

August 17, 2012 by Phil 12 Comments

Recently I had the pleasure of grilling Darren Shaw of Whitespark.ca about his “Local Citation Finder” – the ultra-handy local-search optimization tool he created.

If you’ve spent more than a few minutes grappling with local SEO, you’ve probably heard of the Local Citation Finder – and there’s a good chance you use it, too. It’s one of my very favorite tools for building up my clients’ local search rankings.

I’ve used the LCF since it came out in 2010. Since then, I’ve had some questions I’ve been itching to ask – mostly about how to use the LCF to glean every last bit of local-search visibility for my clients. For that there’s no substitute for “insider tips.”

Plus, the LCF is a really popular tool, so I also wanted to learn more about some of the secrets behind its success.

I went straight to the horse’s mouth, and Darren was kind enough to answer my questions

In case you didn’t know, Darren is kind of a big deal. In some parts of the world he enjoys the spoils of an emperor:

Darren Shaw: ruler...er, creator of the Local Citation Finder

If you have any interest in getting your business more visible in local search, or if you just want some tips on how to launch a successful venture…read on.

—

Phil: If you were in an elevator with someone who knows nothing about local search, how would you explain the Local Citation Finder?

Darren: The Local Citation Finder is a competitive analysis tool for finding out where the top ranking competitors are getting citations, and for seeing where you already have citations. It will automatically tell you which ones you don’t already have, and includes SEOMoz’s Domain Authority and Majestic SEO’s ACRank metrics so that you can identify the best possible citation sources that are helping your competition rank locally.

Phil: Why should a business owner—as opposed to a local SEO junkie—get the Local Citation Finder? It’s not like that person necessarily needs to build citations every day.

Darren: Currently, I don’t think a business owner would need to use the LCF for more than a month. I think it’s pretty typical for a business owner to sign up for a month, use the tool, export a CSV for all the citation opportunities they found, and then cancel. They can then work through that list when they have time.

We are working on citation monitoring services though, so a business owner will be able to track when new citations come live, and also get notifications when their competition gets new citations. When those features roll out, a monthly subscription will make more sense for a business owner.

Phil: What would you say to someone who has all the basic citations (Yelp, SuperPages, etc.) and isn’t sure why he/she needs a tool to find more? When is “good enough” good enough?

Darren: The basic citations are an important starting point, especially the key sites you mention and the primary data aggregators, but we find that smaller city specific and industry specific sites strengthen your business’ association with your location and your niche and provide a noticeable rankings boost. The LCF helps you find these sources.

Phil: Let’s say I need to build 50 citations for my business. How much time could the Local Citation Finder save me, roughly speaking?

Darren: I suppose we need to think about what the tool does, and what it would take to do that manually.

First you would want to run a keyword search and record all the businesses that are ranking locally.

Then you would want to find and record all the sites that the first business has a citation on. You could do this through various Google queries and then paginate through the results

Repeat for each of the other ranking businesses. You would then combine the lists, cross-referencing to make sure you’re not listing the same site twice.

Finally, you would repeat the process for your own business and then make note of which sites you’re already listed on, and which ones are opportunities.

Oh, and then you’d also look up SEOMoz Domain Authority and Majestic ACRank metrics for each site.

For an efficient and focused worker, I’d guess that this manual process would take at least six to eight hours

Our tool typically returns results in one or two minutes, and this is just one keyword search. At our lowest plan level you can run up to twenty different keyword searches per day.

In addition, the tool provides direct links to the “add your business” form for thousands of sites that get returned in our results. No need to spend time hunting through the websites to find the place where you can submit.

So, roughly, I’d say that the tool saves days of work.

Phil: A lot of great tools are created by people who are fed up and just know there’s a better way to do a particular task. Before the Local Citation Finder, how many hours would you typically spend gathering citations for a given client?

Darren: Surprisingly, we didn’t do much citation building prior to developing the LCF. I was just getting interested in the topic, read a post by Garrett French about a technique you could use to find citation opportunities, and figured we could build a tool to automate the process.

Phil: Did you have a prototype that you used for your own clients, before you realized “Hey, this might make a good tool for sale”? In other words, was there an “ancestor”?

Darren: No ancestor. The first version of the tool was developed and released in three days. It was an extremely simple tool that would just email you lists of potential opportunities. You can see some screen shots of the first version of the tool on Matt McGee’s post, “Local Citation Finder: Must-Have SEO Tool”.

Phil: Yeah, I remember using it at that early stage. Why did it come along when it did (summer of 2010)? We’d known for a couple years beforehand that citations were important. There was a niche and a need for it before 2010.

Darren: The existence of the tool needed Garrett French’s brilliant idea for citation finding to spark the idea. 🙂

Phil: Roughly how long did it take you to develop the LCF— from when it was a few neurons firing in your brain to when you put the “Order” button on the site?

Darren: The free version we developed in three days was up for about six months before we rolled out the full-blown system that exists today. A few months of solid development went into taking it from simple/free to awesome/paid. It has evolved considerably since then as well.

Phil: What’s a complaint or suggestion you’ve received on at least a couple occasions about the Local Citation Finder?

Darren: This one comes up all the time:

“Why are there so many sites that I can’t submit to?”

The answer is because the tool performs a competitive analysis to find ALL the places that the top ranked competition is getting citations. A site doesn’t have to have a “submit your business” form on it to be a good citation. In fact, just like in link building, the harder a citation is to get, the more valuable it may be.

For example, the New York Times doesn’t have a “submit your business to our local business directory form”, but if your competition has done something newsworthy and has received a citation from the NYT, that’s a great thing for you to know about so you can look at what they did to get that citation.

Phil: What’s a favorite “secret tip” of yours for getting the most benefit out of the LCF?

Darren: We use the LCF in our client work to find “hyper local/niche” citation sources that we think have a significant impact on rankings. Here’s the process:

Create a new project. Call it something like “Local-Niche citations for __business-name__”

Run a bunch of different keyword searches in your specific city and industry, and assign each search to the project you created. So, for a plumber in Denver: Denver plumbers, Denver plumbing, Denver drain cleaning, etc. Try to be exhaustive.

Go under “Your Projects”, select “view sources” for the project you created, and ALL the citation sources from all of those different queries will be listed on a single page.

Hold down Ctrl and press “f” to bring up your browser’s search function. Now search for “plumb”, “drain”, “Denver”, “Colorado”, etc. Any words, or portions of words, that are related to your location or industry. The browser search feature will find sites with these words in their domains. These are going to be some very targeted sources that should help your rankings.

Phil: How much room for improvement do you see for the LCF? Any features you’re dying to add?

Darren: Yeah, I’m dying to add the citation monitoring features I mentioned above. We’ve been super focused on our latest project, our local rank tracker, but it’s almost done, finally! Once it has launched and is stable, we’ll be jumping back to those LCF features. I also have plans for a NAP consistency tool that will complement the LCF nicely.

Phil: Tons of people in the local-search community—and many people outside of it—use or at least know about the LCF. What’s been the most important part of your strategy for “getting the word out”?

Darren: Honestly, it’s just been dumb luck. We built a tool that the community needed, and word spread naturally. People liked what we built and started blogging.

Phil: I’ve never encountered another tool that’s specifically designed for citation-gathering. There doesn’t seem to be much competition—or even any knock-offs, for that matter. Why do you think that is? Why aren’t there any Pepsis to your Coca-Cola?

Darren: Hmm. I don’t know. I suppose it’s just so narrowly focused. Citations are just one piece of the local SEO puzzle, and local SEO is just one niche within SEO overall. People that can build quality tools probably prefer to focus on bigger opportunities.

Phil: The LCF has been around for long enough that the kinks have pretty much been smoothed out. At this point, how do you spend your time on it? What work do you have to do regularly on the LCF?

Darren: Our time on the LCF is mostly support and troubleshooting at the moment. Kinks and edge cases do continue to come up, and as our user base has grown we have run into minor scaling issues here and there. There are a fair amount of behind-the-scenes processing performance and monitoring tweaks we’ve made over the past couple years. The end user doesn’t see anything different, but these tweaks keep everything running well.

Phil: What’s a tool that you, personally, would love to see someone create? (Unless it’s something you’re working on and can’t spill the beans!)

Darren: I’ve got IDEAS man! So many tool ideas. There isn’t one tool that I would love to see someone create that I don’t eventually plan to create. Sorry, nothing I can share.

Phil: What advice would you give someone who has a great idea for a local-search tool and just wants to get it off the ground? Or, for that matter, what general advice do you have for someone who has a good idea but isn’t quite sure how to develop it?

Darren: I’d advise anyone who has a great idea for a tool to email me with all the details. 😉

Really though, you just have to do it. Have an idea? Don’t sit on it. DO IT. Millions of people are sitting on great ideas and they’re all on the back burner because they’re busy with the regular day-to-day of their lives. Block out some time and force yourself to dedicate it to developing your idea.

Phil: Whitespark offers local search optimization and a bunch of other services, but you’re not some ho-hum SEO / SEM agency. You create tools. That’s kind of your niche. In general, what advice do you have for someone who’s trying to develop his/her niche and stand out from the pack?

Darren: If you want to stand out you need to do something to stand out. Building tools is one way to do that. You can also do it by picking one specific area and becoming an expert on it. I think you have done that with reviews, for one thing. You are regularly publishing excellent advice about review acquisition and that makes you stand out. I often think of you as “the review guy.”

—

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Darren Shaw [applause] A HUGE thanks to Darren for his tips and insights, and for tolerating my questions :).

I highly recommend you follow him on Twitter (@EdmontonSEO) and Google Plus. While you’re at it, it’s also worth following Whitespark on Twitter (@Whitespark).

If you’re not already a hardcore LCF user, check out the excellent free trial of it.

Any questions for me or Darren? Leave a comment!

Can You Rank Well in Local Google without Revealing Your Street Address Anywhere?

August 13, 2012 by Phil 87 Comments

If you run your business from home and don’t want your address to be visible in Google, on your site, or on third-party sites…then yes, you should still be able to rank just fine in the Google+Local search results.

But balancing local visibility and privacy takes a little finesse. I’ve written this post to show you how to pull it off.

A little background

One of my clients – whom I’ll call Frank – asked me a great question at the beginning of this year that went something like this:

I work from home. I like and trust my clients and I always travel TO them for each job, but I want to keep my family’s home address private. Can I still rank OK in local Google?

What I told Frank was that, yes, he can (and should) hide his address from showing up on his Google Places (now known as Google+Local) page, and that, no, he doesn’t need to have his street address on his website.

I told him that’s a good start, because most of the people who will ever become clients will have found him through either his Google+Local page or his site – and therefore wouldn’t have occasion to see his address if it’s not listed on either of those places.

But there’s a rub: I told Frank that a HUGE factor in ranking well in local Google is being listed accurately on third-party sites. That is, on sites like Yelp, CitySearch, SuperPages, etc., plus the two major “data-providers,” ExpressUpdateUSA.com and LocalEze.com (which feed other sites across the web).

What I didn’t know was the extent to which you can choose to hide your address from these third-party sites.

And you do need to be listed on those sites. In a semi-competitive market, if you’re not listed correctly on at least a few specific third-party sites, you’re unlikely to rank well. (In just a second I’ll tell you exactly which sites I’m referring to.)

Sure, you still need to optimize your Google listing and website and probably drum up some reviews, and even then there’s no guarantee you’ll outrank anyone.

But if you can at least list your business on the major third-party sites, you’ll probably be in good shape in terms of rankings.

Therefore, if privacy is a concern of yours, your challenge is: can you list your business on all the important third-party sites you need to list it on without revealing your address on those sites?

I recently found that the answer is yes: with a little work you should be able to keep your address off of these sites, and so you should be able to rank well locally.

Which sites to focus on?

I’ve found that the sites you see when you do a GetListed scan are the biggest determinants of how well you’ll rank. Being listed on them is no guarantee you’ll rank well, but if you’re not on them you’re far less likely to rank well locally in Google.

They’re also important because some of them get a lot of “eyeballs” in their own right – eyeballs you may not want your street address in front of if you’re concerned about privacy.

Anyway, go to GetListed.org and do a scan of your business. You’ll see the big, important sites on the right:

Not all of these sites matter much to your rankings in local Google.

As you probably know, Yahoo and Bing are Google’s competitors (albeit very small in comparison). Your local listings there simply don’t affect your Google rankings. But because some people use Yahoo and Bing instead of Google, it’s very much worth having your business listed on those sites. Which also means it’s worth making sure your address doesn’t show if privacy is a concern to you.

FourSquare is becoming more important, but it doesn’t seem to affect local rankings at this stage – partly because it doesn’t even accommodate most service-based businesses, but instead mostly caters to eateries and tourist-y destinations.

Also, people can’t “check in” to your business on their smartphones if they’re not coming to your location – which they won’t be, if you’re trying not to reveal your address.

So for local-rankings purposes you don’t need to worry about FourSquare – and to the extent you want to keep your address a “secret” it’s probably best to avoid it.

If you want to keep your address private, priority #1 is making sure the following sites do not list your address:

Google+Local (formerly Google Places)
Bing Business Portal
ExpressUpdateUSA.com (AKA InfoGroup or InfoUSA)
LocalEze.com
Yelp.com
Yahoo Local
SuperPages.com
YP.com
CitySearch.com
HotFrog.com
Local.BOTW.org

What do you need to do on these sites?

Now that you know which sites to pay attention to, the question becomes: how do you conceal your address on each site?

On which sites can you simply click a button and choose not to have your address displayed? On most of them you can do this. But a few of them are slightly more involved. Here’s the site-by-site breakdown:

Yes, you can choose to have your address hidden. To do this, log into the “Dashboard” area of your listing, go to “Edit,” choose the option for “this business serves customers at their location,” and then choose the “Do not show address on Google Maps” option. (According to Google, you must do this if you travel to your customers, rather than the other way around.)

Yes, you can choose to have your address hidden.

No, you can’t simply “turn off” the display of your address on your ExpressUpdate listing. But you can search for your listing on the site and request its deletion, OR you can call up Customer Service and ask them to suppress your listing. For ranking purposes it’s ideal to have an ExpressUpdate listing, but many businesses that don’t have listings there still rank well in Google. In any case, the bottom line is if you really want your address as close to 100%-private as possible, you need to “silence” your ExpressUpdate listing, because otherwise it will spread your address to countless other sites across the web.

Yes.

Probably. As of this writing (August 13, 2012), the only way to add or modify your CitySearch listing is to send in a manual request to the support team at myaccount@citygridmedia.com. If you don’t have a listing on CitySearch, email them with all your basic business info (name, phone, what type of business yours is) and just ask not to have your address included. Because CitySearch is fed by InfoGroup (AKA ExpressUpdateUSA.com), they may very well have your address listed. If that’s the case, just email them and ask to have it removed, and they should do so. (For a bit more detail on this, check out my blog post on the topic.)

If you happen to be reading this and there’s (finally) an “Add listing” form on CitySearch that gives you the option of hiding your address, great; do so.

Yes.

On most of these sites you’ll need to claim your listing in order to get the address removed.

Obviously, you’ll also want to try to get any unnecessary or duplicate listings removed (which is a good practice to follow anyway, by the way).

Recap

If you want to keep your address as private as possible while allowing yourself the best-possible chances of getting good rankings in local Google, do the following:

1. Don’t include your street address on your website. However, make sure to include your business name and phone number as crawlable text on every page of your site.

2. Hide your address from showing up on your Google+Local listing.

3. Go to the other sites I listed and get your address hidden, as I described.

4. To the extent you have the time and inclination, go to other third-party sites and see if/where your address pops up. On sites where you can’t remove the address yourself, just send in a request to have it removed. Which sites should you check? The ones on this list, for starters.

A few notes

I’ve had clients who don’t want their addresses revealed in Google+Local or on their website, but I’ve never had one who wants to keep it so much of a secret that nowhere on the Internet can it be found. In these few cases to date we just hid the address from showing on Google and left it off of the website. The reason is that, until now, I didn’t know whether you even could take it a step further and hide your address from showing on all these other sites. Now we know you can. Still, I’ve never had a client ask me to try to hide his/her address to the degree I just described.

Nor have I run across a business “in the wild” where the address truly is “Top Secret” and can’t be discovered with some determined digging. Then again, I don’t imagine most people want it to be absolutely undiscoverable, but simply just don’t want their home addresses to be broadcasted all over the web. I imagine that’s the case with you, too. But if you’re absolutely adamant, check out step #4 (above).

Is there a “ceiling” or a “handicap” on how well you can rank if you choose not to display your address anywhere on the web? I dunno. But I do know that as long as you’re able to be listed on the major third-party sites, it’s at least possible to get visible but stay private.

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What’s been your experience with keeping a business/home address under wraps? How well have you been able to rank? Let me know in a comment!

Phil

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