Hiding Your Address on Google Places
Today we wanted to talk about Google’s recent efforts to get local businesses to hid the business address on Google Places. For the past two years local search professionals have all claimed that hiding your Google Places address is a negative ranking factor and I would have to agree. Now Google is claiming that hiding your address for a business industry like carpet cleaning will not negatively impact your ranking for Google Places.
We are discussing carpet cleaning since our client study is for a local carpet cleaning company located in Las Vegas. We have had this company ranked in the local map results for over a year until we went ahead and tested removing the business address. One thing I would like to note is that this business does have a real physical address. After we selected to hide the business address we fall off the first page of the search results. We used to be in position D on page one. After we removed the address we fell to page three.
I have recently changed the listing again to show the business address and we are now one position away from being back on page one. So after we completed everything we fell 4 positions which could have to do with the recent Google algorithm changes in late April.
To our right is a recent screen shot of the local business that are now on page one for “carpet cleaners las vegas”
Notice how the current position D has a hidden address. You just never know with Google!
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