Multiple Businesses at The Same Physical Address - SEO / Google Places

Question

I was wondering what kind if there would be any negative effects to have multiple businesses having the exact same physical address on their website. Currently we have five businesses at the exact same address and it shows on their website, so when people google one of the five businesses address their going to get multiple results from multiple website most of which will not be what their looking for. What is a way around this / what can I do about this? Would adding "Suite Numbers" be a solution?

A thought occurred that it might be a good idea to create a landing page for users that are looking up a business by it's address via google. The page will bring up multiple businesses since we have a few at the same address but if we have a landing page at the top which then leads to multiple businesses that might solve the multiple address seo problem. Going to keep researching it though.

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I also know for Google Places (possible bing local and yahoo local) this could also become a problem. I've submitted an inquiry with them but I wanted to know if anybody had a ready-made solution around this so that Google doesn't bunch all these companies together into one.

Solution 1

You can have multiple businesses listed at the same address just like this listing

http://www.google.com/maps?q=349+5th+Ave,+New+York,+NY+10016&hl=en&sll=40.720136,-73.998756&sspn=0.009286,0.021136&hnear=349+5th+Ave,+New+York,+10016&t=m&z=16&iwloc=A

This is WeWork at "349 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016"

It is a coworking space in NYC where many companies are located and listed on the left side of the map page. Clicking the company name lists them in the map then you can click the company name in the map and go to it's individual Places page

Solution 2

When someone's Googling the actual business address, chances are they've already made up their mind about your business, or are further researching your company to make that decision (or of course, just getting directions/information).

Google Places SEO should focus more on the individual business's offerings or services, and actively target those related keywords. If for example, they were all sushi restaurants operating from the same address, then you would be in serious trouble. ie. main searched keywords are generally "sushi + city" or "sushi restaurant + refined location"

Since I have no conception of your type of business, service, or location, it's hard to give curtailed advice to your exact situation. For example, my thought process would completely change if you told me you were based in NYC, where it's extremely common to share business location in place of actual name when making recommendations, and correlates with actual search terms. ie. "Pizza + East 4th and Broad" in which case, they know full well the business (Ray's Pizza,) but they want to get to the one recommended and not the ripoff artist down the street.

If you could provide more detail it would definitely help me answer the question with better insight.

Solution 3

I feel your pain. I believe having multiple business can have the same address. Think off a sharing office space. What would such businesses do?

Having multiple businesses should not be a problem for local SEO if they have unique NAP's. NAP's stands for name, address and phone number. Okay the address can not need to be unique in our case. But name and phone numbers need to be different.

Google just wants business to legitimately use its products and services. I am sure they realize businesses may share an address. But in no way can two businesses have the same phone number and email ids.

What they don't like is a business creating multiple website to get a larger share of their search engine real estate. That is when business stand to lose their rankings in search results.

Just keep everything besides the address unique. It will be fine. Fingers crossed. :)

Comments

[Howdy_McGee]

Great! That's one of the things I was worried about because I read a few threads about Google clumping businesses all into 1 page. Now I just need to figure out the SEO implications on multiple businesses having the same physical address. I feel like you lose 100% of your address seo that way.

[bekay]

They are combined into a single map page but you should also submit your business name and listing to sites like citysearch.com insiderpages.com who use microformats or rich snippets that help google see you're listed elsewhere on the web and can possibly help your map and places listings. Use a suite number if available and stay consistent with the format you use STE #123 or Suite #123 pick one stick with it.