Google’s Local Business Center (now called Google Places) hasn’t been without it’s problems in the past, but today I did come across an interesting tactic that can probably help you get listed in multiple places in the local business results. Now I don’t condone this tactic, but perhaps by highlighting it Google will get that little bit smarter and they in turn will update things. 
This morning I was looking for a T-shirt printer in Munich, and I typed in the following search query [tshirt druck] on google.de , and after position 3, I see the google places map.
Casually checking out C & D, I didn’t notice that they had the same phone number. But both results brought me to the same same website. On closer inspection we see that munich-t-shirt.com 301 redirects to stadtkopierer.de, but none the less google places lists them both.
btw. stadtkopierer I am also surprised you have 20 reviews, when your competitors have 0, but maybe that’s a topic for another day.
Steps to create a multiple listing
Things that will probably need to be unique :
- website URL
- email address
- business title
Things that probably don’t need to be unique :
- phone number
- location
I did notice that the two websites have different WHOIS & DNS settings, but I’m guessing that this also isn’t so necessary.
Adding your business on Google Places
To add your business to google places, simply log in to your google account and visit http://www.google.com/local/add/, here you will be guided through the process. My only tip here would be to include as much information as possible.
I’m not going to go too in-depth as to why being listed on Google places is absolutely important. But if you are selling a product and have a physical presence in a town or city, then having a listing will deliver you a great leads of customers who want your product in a specific area. (examples : wedding planner {city name}, dentist near {postcode} , gardner {town} , etc, etc.) You know that people searching for these types of things are more prepared to buy, than someone looking for general information. Test it yourself, google [tv shop] & [tv shop dublin], and see how Google treats the different visitors.
Now I’m off to do a little further testing
7.14.2010
Unless things have changed significantly (which is possible as I haven’t been keeping up with LBC) then a major drawback of Google Places is that only one business can be registered to any given address. I know this caused all sorts of problems, especially for large office blocks and the like where multiple businesses essentially had the same address. So I think you will need a unique address for each listing.
7.14.2010
Hi Richard, Thanks for your comment.
In this example both listings C & D have the same address, maybe try [tshirt druck muenchen] to see the query.
I’ve never had the case of registering two company listing for the one address, or adding a client whose neighbours have registered the same address on LBC.
You can verify the address via SMS / phone or postal address, so different phone numbers would work. Also you could have slightly different versions of the address, like putting in 45a instead of just 45.
Anyway one of my tests is in progress, I will report back
Paul
7.14.2010
Hi Paul. Interesting find. Although things have improved quite a bit with Google Places spamming I think there is still a long way to go. Is it worth taking a chance putting a 301 in place if there is a chance their account gets suspended in the future?
Richard, the one address for multiple Google Place pages was considered one of the main negative factors in David Mihns 2010 Local Search Ranking Factors.
http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml#67
However, many of the local search experts had mixed responses on how it effected accounts. We ran a test on it and it didn’t seem to effect it negatively in any way (so far!!). But we made sure the business information for each account was significanly different.