Where are all these businesses?
If you’ve casually browsed Google Maps before, you may have noticed a massive increase in the businesses around you. If you live in a residential area, you may have started to see colored pins dropping on the houses around you. No, people aren’t converting their houses into shopping centers. What you’re seeing is the growth of location marketing.
In the last decade location marketing has grown substantially, with nearly half of online searches being for local results: “what’s near me?”. Google, Apple, and Alexa are even pushing local results over other online results for product and service searches. The internet today is all about location, location, location. Check out this screenshot below, a neighborhood not far from our BeLocal offices. There are a dozen mysterious businesses in these few blocks, all hidden inside suburban homes.
But these new listings are popping up in neighborhoods and apartment buildings where businesses don’t actually exist. Location marketing is optimized to help bring people to your store, but what if there’s no store to bring people into? These new business listings fall into two broad categories: we’ll call them “fake listings” and “ghost listings”.
Fake Listings
Fake Listings have been a thorn in Google’s side ever since they launched Google Maps. Maps is a collaborative and crowdsourced platform, so anyone can make suggestions to create or modify listings. Google reports the creation of tens of thousands of fake listings every month, most of which are in the United States and India. Fake Listings are often scattered around metropolitan areas and are simply points on a map, maybe with a website and phone number where businesses don’t exist.
Google reports that the majority of these fake listings (about a third of all removed) are for on-demand services: things like locksmiths (25%) and other contractors (15%) according to research in 2016. These businesses benefit from having fake listings scattered throughout neighborhoods. When you’re locked out of your house, you’re going to call the locksmith that seems to be the closest, whether they are or not. Earlier this month, Nine News reported an influx of towing companies creating fake listings around Denver neighborhoods. These listings used fake phone numbers to redirect calls to towing companies that were farther away, but would upcharge for being “nearby”.
Google removed millions of these listings from their maps platform every year, but more are popping up every day. These companies will use PO boxes and VoIP phone numbers to circumvent Google’s verification process, and shuffle their listings around the neighborhood in order to evade any sort of confirmation.
Ghost Listings
Unlike Fake Listings, Ghost Listings indicate an actual business at that location: a catering service that serves the local area, a massage therapist that works from home, or many other businesses. Maybe these at-home businesses need a publicly listed address for registration purposes, or maybe they only serve a small, local area. We’re using the term “ghost” listing here because of the rising popularity of “ghost kitchens”: restaurants that only appear on food-delivery apps, because they serve a similar purpose. While ghost listings are legitimate businesses, their location may not have a public face or be publicly accessible. Because of this, they may run into the same verification issues as fake listings.
How to Avoid Removal of your Ghost Listing
In order to be listed as a business on Google Maps, you must conduct person-to-person business. So, vacation homes and AirBnBs are subject to removal, except under certain circumstances. As are online-only businesses. While these are legitimate businesses, they are still subject to removal by Google. If you conduct in-person business away from your listed location, consider registering a service area. That way, you’re still locally optimized, and your business listing is more accurate.
Google is constantly combing through their listings with both automated and manual processes to make sure businesses are in the correct location. Ghost listings may fall into the same traps as fake listings when it comes to verification, so there are a few things to make sure of when setting up your Maps listing.
Unless you conduct in-person business, avoid using Google Maps.
You can still optimize your website or online store for your location. Etsy, for example, allows you to add a shop location and many users search for nearby items first to support local businesses.
If you’re facing the street, make sure your signage matches your listing.
One of the first things Google uses to verify a business is Google Street View. If you have signage visible from the street, it’s best to have it match your listing exactly.
If you’re inside another business, update your Google Listing to say so.
You have the option of listing your business inside a shared office space, shopping center, or other business. This is especially useful if your business doesn’t have external signage.
Make sure your address and phone number are accurate.
In order to claim ownership of your business, Google will call or send a postcard to your business. Fake listings often use PO boxes and VOIP phone numbers, so a mailing address and direct phone number will help.
Managing location marketing for your business can be difficult, especially when you have multiple locations to manage. BeLocal Biz is dedicated to making sure legitimate businesses are optimized to find local customers. If you need help managing your online listing or want to learn more about how Google Maps can help you, reach out to us today.
