"Show map of <location>" under our listings, any way to remove?

[martaay]

We are seeing increasing amount of our listings in search results having the 'show map of <location>' links added underneath.

The problem this poses for us is we are a local business directory and by having this functionality present in the search results, the user may no longer need to even visit our site, which has the obvious drawbacks.

My question - is there any way to get rid of this unwanted traffic killer? <snip>

[edited by: Andy_Langton at 10:41 am (utc) on May 24, 2012]

[edited by: goodroi at 11:01 am (utc) on May 24, 2012]
[edit reason] No example URLs, please. Also let's keep the focus just on the SEO aspect. [/edit]

[goodroi]

If you remove the signals from your content that is triggering Google's local map link then it won't appear anymore. Google has probably noticed you are mentioning certain local keywords several times and thought they would add value for their users.

I wouldn't do this but you could replace the local keywords with images of text so Google would not see your local keywords.

Reminder to others: This is a discussion about Google SEO so let's keep it focused on just that.

[Andy Langton]

Google's own advice is here: [support.google.com...]

Is it your actual location showing? If so, you can verify it and then delete it. Otherwise, you can report it as incorrect to Google and they may remove it.

[martaay]

we have not added any of our directory information to google places, unfortunately some household brand directories did sell google all their data + combined with googles own organic places data, it seems to be these data 'connections' between our directories data and google places's own data which seems to be causing the show to map functionality. It's also way beyond the scale of reporting them as incorrect, we are talking about potentially hundreds of thousand of business information listings here.

We did markup our content with microformats on one site but the 'show map of' links have appeared on other sites which are completely seperate and not running the microformat markup code

any ideas? I suspect there is nothing we can do about it

[goodroi]

I encountered a similar issue with the directories that are on my sites. Google on their own, realized it is a company profile page and in the Google serps added a map link to the companies listed in my directory.

To avoid losing traffic in the serps I made a few changes. I tweaked the title & meta description to make sure it mentioned my editorial review of the company & customer reviews. Consumers love this value added information so they still click through to my site. Also by having this valuable information on the company profile pages in my directories, it increases long tail keyword traffic. If you have anemic directory pages I expect you will have problems.

[johnhh]

We are seeing this on a few of our pages. In our case Google is focusing on a road name and the + map link is to the office of a political party - which is nothing to with our widget site !

[Catalyst]

We've been getting lots of complains about this in the Google Places forum because often those map links are wrong. Sometimes they go to a business that's located in another state.

But it's not a Places problem or a maps problem per se. It's that the organic algo is scraping the wrong data from somewhere. I've worked through a few of these with the Manager at Places and she's had to work with the organic team to get them fixed.

EXAMPLE: In one case the company was in another country but the + map link was to a US location. Turns out originally their host listed the host US address on the Whois. Sites scraped the whois, so the business name got associated with the host's US address. And that's how G picked it up and gave the non-US business a + map link to a US address.

Not saying this to throw off the thread, but to shed light on the fact that if G can scrape address data for a listing she MAY attach a +box address.

If you have a business directory, you need to show the address. But if she finds the address, she may create a +map link. I'm not sure there's a way to avoid it.

Linda

[martaay]

goodroi, we have lots of additional information we collect from businesses in addition to the basic address and telephone information.

Are you suggesting we should be looking at testing alternate title and description tags to try and rid ourselves of this unwanted google feature?

[goodroi]

Good title & description will attract users to click on your listing instead of the map link. It will not stop Google from displaying a local map link for your page.