Getting A Virtual Office For Your Google Places Page Is Risky Business
March 8th, 2012 by
Virtual offices have many uses. They are great for having a professional space to meet a client when you don’t have an office in the area. They can also be really useful if you are searching for a permanent office space and need somewhere to get business done in the meantime. However, using a virtual office address in a Google Places business listing is not something that will benefit your business. In fact, this practice technically goes against Google’s guidelines and could end up hurting your rankings in the long run.
According to Google, there is only supposed to be one business under the same address in Google Places. This isn’t an issue if each business at that address has a different suite number as they would in a traditional office complex. The issue with the majority of virtual offices is that, in order to keep the cost low, they assign all businesses the same address and suite number. This is where the problem with virtual offices truly lies: their ubiquity.
Virtual offices have become a popular way to, in essence, spam Google Places. Want to rank for Phoenix but your office is actually in Mesa? Not a problem; simply do a search for “Mesa virtual office” and with $100 and 30 minutes you can have your very own prime downtown address to use. Sound like a great deal, right? It should. In fact, some virtual office companies are using this as a selling point. However, as with many great deals, this one is just too good to be true.
Just as Google caught on to businesses buying UPS store P.O. boxes and using the store’s address as their own, it is catching on to virtual offices. When the virtual office provider is the first result to come up when searching for the virtual office address, it isn’t hard for Google to create an algorithm that can connect the dots. Not to mention there are a host of Google reviewers out there that are quick to flag a Places page that they believe to be associated with a virtual office.
Another thing to keep in mind when considering using a virtual office address for your business’s Places page is the fact that Google Places often merges different business’s listings together. This can happen to businesses that are across town from each other but might happen to have a similar name, phone number or even their profession. This common issue poses a significant problem for businesses that choose to use a virtual office address for their Places page. For instance, I’ve seen one law firm’s Places page share the same exact address and suite number with the Places pages of 17 other businesses. Some of them were other lawyers that would (or at least should) be attempting to rank locally for the same key phrases. Even the virtual office company itself had a Places page using that same exact address. This is common, especially for virtual offices with prominent addresses in large cities. It wouldn’t take much for Google to mix up information with so many businesses, some quite similar, sharing the same address.
Then again, maybe you could get away with it. Your business could end up being the exception and slip past the eyes of the spam watchdogs. Maybe your listing will beat the odds and stay free of merged information. But eventually, just as Google has done many times before, they will come out with an update targeted at the crack that your business happened to slip through.
I’m late to the discussion but I see the following all the time.
A successful business has a full page YP ad covering multiple incorporated municipalities that butt up to each other. Business is good, they can afford the full page ad.
Now YP ads lose pull and the shift is Google, Yahoo and Bing local. However, these businesses have their physical address in one municipality and are able to list on G Places for that address. But they have always serviced or brought in customers from the other municipalities. But they don’t show in P Places for their business because they don’t have an address there. Now they’ve lost a huge chunk of their market due to the digital age taking over.
What are their options?
I agree that strategy is too risky, the only answer if you really need to rank locally is to get a proper office, an expensive solution forced on us by the virtual monopoly posision Google holds at the moment.
I notice it allows you to create any address you wish to list next to an adwords advert enhancement.
Google can’t keep changing the rules and expect everyone to beg for mercy. If a business purchases a virtual office location in different cities, then it’s establishing a local presence. In fact the physical location is real and the company may enforce a policy where clients may meet at the virtual office location by appointment only. This gives a company a local physical address and a possible employee dispatch center for the surrounding service area. I hope Google leaves the Virtual office locations alone! If a business is creating an ad-boost with the physical location then what is the problem? Google is still earning money!!!!!! I miss the old days!
The problem here is that virtual offices are being used primarily to manipulate and create a local presence, not to do legitimate business. Sure, there are a small percentage of businesses who may actually use the location for an occasional meeting or two, but Google is making the decision that it does not want to rank virtual offices. Just the name “Virtual Office” gives all of those addresses less credibility. Like Joseph said, it’s not hard for Google to connect the dots.
I hope someone here can advise me. I was thinking a virtual office would be great for my business. I run walking tours in various cities. We have no need for a brick and mortar building, as all guests meet our tour guides in various locations. In most cities I have opened in, I have partnered with local tour guides and have and currently used their addresses. I see my business like any corporation with multiple locations. The main difference being we don’t need locations. We seem to be more like a cleaning service (just national). I think Google doesn’t account for us.
Is it possible to have one company address and have service areas throughout the U.S. and Canada? If so, is that a prudent thing to do? It certainly would save me a lot of headaches.
The best thing to do in your case is to setup you company on Google Plus Local (formerly Google Places) as a service-area listing without an address. Google’s guidelines state that
“Businesses that operate in a service area, as opposed to a single location, should not create a listing for every city they service. Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas.”
“Listings with a designated service area and no address appear on Google search results with a red circle and the city the business is located in.”
Here is a link that further explains setting up service areas on your local listing
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=177103
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I haven’t seen Google provide an answer to whether a business is allowed to use a UPS box as the address by hide it in the listing. I own a business ans have the Legal address setup at the UPS box. What’s the deal?