{"id":6710,"date":"2010-05-24T10:46:49","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T14:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=6710"},"modified":"2010-05-24T10:46:49","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T14:46:49","slug":"google-place-lbc-while-listing-in-multiple-languages-is-ok-beware-of-merging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/24\/google-place-lbc-while-listing-in-multiple-languages-is-ok-beware-of-merging\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Place (LBC): While listing in multiple languages is OK beware of merging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last summer, Google confirmed<\/a> that having a listing in multiple languages was allowable. At the time Google noted:<\/p>\n

Yes, users can do this. The thing is, there isn’t a feature currently available, but there is a workaround. What users can do is first create the listing in English. Then they can select the appropriate language from the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner of the Local Business Center and create the same exact listing in that language.<\/em><\/p>\n

We hope to make this easier for users in the future.<\/em><\/p>\n

Creating the same listing in a different language doesn’t violate our guidelines. Our policy states that a business owner can’t create 2 different business listings at one location. <\/em><\/p>\n

But because of how the cluster works<\/a>, most clients that I worked with were leery of the potential for mergings<\/a> and decided that multilingual listings could potentially cause more harm than good. Google had suggested that for single location businesses that the secondary language listing should be created in a distinct Google Place account to avoid mergings. Apparently, according to this forum posting<\/a>, that is not enough:<\/p>\n

I work for a local attorney who serves clients speaking both english and spanish. He is very committed to his latino client-base and, as such, we have a fairly robust translated version of his site, in addition to his English site. <\/em><\/p>\n

The problem is when we try to get local search results for terms in both languages. We’ve tried a number of different approaches to this, eventually going with a recommendation we found on a reputable local seo blog that had been suggested by a Google employee: we have two listings, one for each language. However, when we created the Spanish one we first changed the language interface of LBC to Spanish. This allows us to choose spanish categories, for example. We set these two listings up using two different Google account, a recommendation that was supposed to avoid merging. <\/em><\/p>\n

Despite all of our efforts to do this on the up-and-up, the listings keep getting merged, with the spanish URL trumping the English one on every search result. Obviously, this is not ideal. We want to send clients searching with spanish terms to the spanish site and clients searching with English terms to the English site. <\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the fact that Google Maps allows multi language listings, caution is obviously the order of the day if you wish to list your business in more than one language. <\/p>\n

I would suggest that you perceive enough business benefit in attempting to have your listing in multiple languages you experiment with the following:
\n-create the listing in a separate Google Place account
\n-use a slightly different address (ie add an office number)
\n-use a different phone number<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last summer, Google confirmed that having a listing in multiple languages was allowable. At the time Google noted: Yes, users can do this. The thing is, there isn’t a feature currently available, but there is a workaround. What users can do is first create the listing in English. Then they can select the appropriate …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t