I think the guideline is trying to say that if you receive mail at a PO box at your location rather than a mailbox located somewhere else, such as a UPS box miles away from your home. For example, if you live in a building that has a post office downstairs with mailboxes than you can put the PO Box address in the second line.

The case I wondered about is a midget who has an office in a post office box.

From Google’s POV a UPS box is the same as a PO box and is not allowed. That rule developed as a result of widespread spamming of the boxes. I assume that google determined that the impact of the spam on the index was was worse than excluding some legit businesses that use UPS boxes.

Looking at it differently, wouldn’t using the owner’s or an employee’s personal home address be more inaccurate than using the UPS store in that case since the real registered business address / location is the UPS store location? Even for Google purposes, using an owner’s or employee’s personal address to get a Places listing active if it’s not the real business address is arguably not correct?

@eric

I think google is adding that to their knowledge base. It interesting that it was algo based and automatic.

Haven’t claimed a listing in the recent past but it sounds about right.

If you operate from a location but receive mail at a mail box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2.

Doesn’t everyone receive mail at a mail box (apart from people who don’t have mail service in their area.)? Isn’t just about every home in America equipped with a mail box? You know, the little box nailed to the wall by the front door? I’ve now read those two sentences 6 times and feel they are extremely vague and confusing.

However, doing this seems to cause TWO listings to appear for each business. Then we have to merge the listings. Have you seen this too?

I just recently had a client provide me an address which was not a PO Box. So we went ahead and started building out their campaign for this new location. We set up a Google Places page and the client never received a verification letter from Google. After 3 requests, still no letter.

Well, it turns out that my client is simply friends with the owner of the actual building at that address. (the client is a pest control company). Guess what the business does at that address? lol… it is a PO Box company!

So I wondering if Google is somehow picking this up and adding all these types of companies to the algo… Looks like this is the case.

We always verify the accuracy of the address using USPS, but didn’t check what was at the physical location. So in the future we will be checking and recommend that you do the same.

Hey Mike, can I post an affiliate link to a virtual office company?