Why You Can Create a G+ Business Page For A Service Area Business (SAB)

On July 12^th I edited a client’s Google+ Local listing. (It is important to note that this client only serves customers at their location.) From then till October 17^th the listing was “pending review” and was gone from the Google 7-pack where it once was listing ‘A’. On October 18^th I called Google’s Local Phone Support and discussed the timeline of events, what was edited, and asked if there was anything I could do to push it out of review.

The Representative indicated that possibly the reason for the lengthy “pending review” condition was due to the merging of the dashboards BUT he informed me that there was something I could try. He asked if I had created a G+ business page for this listing to which I replied no, because it is a service area business and from my understanding G+ Business page was still not available for SAB’s. He then assured me that I could create a business page for this listing and that merging the two should help it show back up on Google Maps in 24-48 hours. After triple checking with him again that I wasn’t going to be breaking any guidelines I began filling in the basic information for the business page. The Representative stayed on the phone with me throughout the process and verified the business page immediately. He mentioned, again, to wait 24-48 hours before expecting it to show back up in Google Maps, I thanked him for his assistance, and that was the end of my first experience with Google’s Local Phone Support.

Service Area Business Results

Due to a lack of patience and a little OCD, I decided to do an incognito search on the term where our client’s listing once ranked 1^st in Google’s Local 7-pack but had been absent for a little over the past 3 months. There it was- listing ‘E’ (5^th) in the 7-pack just an hour later! Before totally losing it I had a couple of other coworkers perform an incognito search just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. (By the way, a week later and we are still moving up, listing ‘D’ (4^th) in the 7-pack.)

What Does It Mean?

So, here is the real question: “Is Google now supporting the merge of Local/Social with G+ for Business and G+ Local?

In a note to a previous post, On October 3, 2013, Mike Blumenthal stated:

“The relationship between the social page and the new dashboard is now different. Google’s rules about how they handle businesses with hidden addresses are different. If the social + page is associated with a new dashboard listing, deleting the social page will delete the listing…”

Could this be the reason that deleting the social business+ page deletes the listing? That is our assumption given the results we have described. We look forward to hearing from others, regarding what they are seeing. How do you feel about our new discovery? We’d love to hear your thoughts below!

A special note: We at drumBEAT would like to thank two people who have helped us by stay up to date and who keep many SEO professionals current on issues with Google+ Local: Linda Buquet of eCatylystMarketing who teaches Advanced Google+ Local and runs a very well known forum on local issues and Miriam Ellis of Solas Web Design who is also a Moz Associate very active on Moz.com’s Q&A. Both of these ladies have constantly provide information to people everywhere who run into roadblocks with their Google+ Local; their knowledge and their commitment to assisting businesses deserves applause.