Google has dropped my site from local business results yet i still have good natural listing. How does this happen? Has it happened to anyone else?
It appears as though I'm out all together!!! I think it's my own fault, i had added some keywords to my company name. Has this ever happened to anyone else? Am i likely to be excluded for a week, a month, 6 months? Or is it a case of how long is a piece of string?
It may not be your fault, even you said that. The keyword you just added might convince Google to think your company should be placed in a different market or location, but just placed in the more competitive market that caused a dropped. It is only my own assumption as I do not know what keywords did you add. Since I have too little experience about Google business listing to help you by my own, I think these one could be your help Seven Ways to Raise Your Local Business Listing Rank in Google Improve your Google Local listing | Small Business Trends
Guys, just to update. Now Google local changed to Google places and it is not supported to all countries.
I think your local listing is in competitive keyword. For improving your local listing you have to submit your site business listing and classified. your web site promotion is also help full in your local listing. Some time local listing take the data from your site if your site having good content it's help your local listing.
I'm back!!! I changed my business name to what it should be (no extra keyword) and within 24hrs i'm back in results!!!!
Yes, adding keywords to your name is against the TOS. But besides that it threw off all your citations that went to the legit business name, not the keyword enhanced business name. I just took a chiropractor from #44 to #1 on Google Places in 4 days. I did a lots of things that contributed but one of the most important was removing his cite from his name. He added it thinking it would help, but I told him he was being penalized for it and he jumped right up to #1 between that and all the other enhancements I did to his listing.
Yes, I was super excited when I saw it today. It's a great practice and they deserve to be on top - just didn't think I could get them there so quickly. It normally takes awhile.
Sorry typo above. That should have been removed CITY from his name. In addition to that (which was one important piece of the puzzle) we merged 2 extra rogue listings into his main account, added some important missing data to his Place page and had him make a few changes to his existing site, which was already ranking well in organic. Properly merging multiple listings if you have them is key, as each listing can have "trust juice" attached to it and you don't want to loose any juice. But you can't leave the extra listings up, as it's against the Google TOS and divides up your juice. But merges are tricky. So anyway those are a few of the things we did to get him to #1.
Yes, adding extra keywords to your landing page can harm the results. Whenever you want to add keywords, better to target a different page.
Actually priya123's advice doesn't apply to Google local listings at all. Local listings are totally different than traditional SEO and does not require landing pages. We are talking about adding keywords to the business name in your Google Places page which is against the TOS.