Google’s guidance on listings for businesses selling products at non-owned locations has changed a little, but it’s substantially the same as you’ve highlighted. I have a client sod farm competing with another sod farm in Colorado and the competition has created Google Plus Local sod farm listings for the 65 Home Depot and Lowes store locations across Colorado that stock its products. I reported about 10 of these Google Plus Local listings in the Denver area to Google using the link in each listing and the responses from Google were “we checked it” and nothing was changed, and if something is still wrong, report it again.

This practice seems to be a clear violation of Google’s permitted business guidelines and I’m wondering if I need to report it again to get Google’s attention or if I’m wasting my time in trying.

Have a great Thanksgiving and I hope you and Local U can make it to Houston next year!

Paul

I found this PDF today h–p://seo-factor.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Ranking-in-Google-Places.pdf which has a lot of good information about getting your listing on Google Places and improving your ranking.

(Replace the — with tt to get the URL above. I’m in no way affiliated with the above site or information – I just thought it may help someone. If it’s a problem Mike, I’m sorry – please remove it.)

Arggh…

Mike – thanks for all of the great info here! …and to everyone else for all of your comments.

I’ve got a question I’m wondering if you might have some insight on, one that I THINK fits under the title of this post – “Ineligible Business Models”.

I have a client – a real estate agents – who I recently began setting up a Place page for. It has since shot up to page one and – I suspect after being flagged by the actual owner of the REMAX office – dropped back into oblivion after the owner of the office complained to my client, an independent real agent that her Places listings (the one I set up for her) violated the acceptable REMAX verbiage. …and which, also as it were, was quickly creeping up onto her space for the main REMAX office’s Places position on page 1.

Here’s my question, and I’ve been searching the Places help forum and here on your blog and just can’t seem to get a clear answer on something that SEEMS like it should be made very clear by Google, unless I’m missing it.

When you have a given office – let’s say a real estate office with 10-12 independent agents operating under that same address/location, or say 5 dentists all operating out of the same clinic…is it not acceptable by Google’s own guidelines and TOS to create one Place page for the business itself and one for each professional therein?

I could swear I read that on one of Google’s pages somewhere fairly recently…but now my client (the independent real estate agent)’s listing has dropped nearly into oblivion and I can’t figure out if that’s because the main woman who owns the local franchise flagged the listing, or possible if I somehow violated Google’s TOS and it sandboxed the listing.

I am very well aware of general form, quality guidelines, etc. and have taken great care not to spam the listing in any way.

The other problem with the listing is that Google is merging data from the main company – photos and other data – in spite of the fact that I set up my listing with a phone number (and suite number) discreet from that of the parent company.

Am I missing the big obvious here?

Same thing I’m wondering for the dental clinic I’ve got right now as a client. I set up their Place page and claimed it on their behalf for the actual clinic.

And Google has actually created distint listings for each of the 5 doctors operation out of that clinic – each of which are unclaimed.

I assume since Google itself is creating these – one for the company, and then additional listings for each practitioner within the business, that this is acceptable to do.

But how in the @#$% does one keep from getting all of the data merged and mixed up in the end?

Any thoughts on this? Thanks much!!

-Aubrey

You are so right…. the real world isn’t either or… its both. Google needs a multilevel access that would handle this situation where both parties get control to varying degrees….