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Marie,

Since the links are pointed at a different domain that 301s to their site, would removing the 301 (killing the domain) be sufficient or do they still need to file a disavow?

Tom Waddington (one of the smartest people I know) pointed out, most of the spammy backlinks are pointing to a domain (reliant-plumbing.com) that is redirecting to your site.  Why don't you kill that domain (make it 404) and see if it fixes this?

I believe I found the problem on why they rank nowhere organically (not in the top 100) and it's likely hurting their local ranking as well outside their immediate area.  They have 97 referring domains with the anchor text "austin plumbers" and another 91 with "austin plumber".  The sites appear to be a giant PBN.  I'd suggest they do a very thorough link audit and file a disavow.

Hey GrueBleenAgency,

What tool are you using to track rankings?  Do you have the tool set to search from "austin" or from a specific zip code?  The reason why I ask is that searching from a city has been known to return really innacurate results since Google almost always knows the zip code of the searcher (usually about 90% of the time) so they don't default to a city, they default to a zip code or sometimes a very precise location if the person is using mobile.

Have you actually seen a decline in traffic or impressions according to GMB Insights?

I do actually get you for "austin plumber" when I search from your location as first in the local pack.  Organically you are way down but it's because Google is listing your emergency plumbing page which is a much weaker page vs your homepage.  Looking at the title tags, both your homepage and your emergency page are optimized for extremely similar keywords so I'd try and differentiate this more.  I'd optimize the homepage for generic plumbing terms (plumber, plumber near me) and make sure all references to emergency link to the emergency page.  Some solid internal linking will help here too.

Using the Local Falcon, it shows you ranking as expected and I have a strong suspicion you didn't actually have a ranking drop on the local pack end but just need to update the settings on the ranking tracker to make sure you're not searching on a city-level.

https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/image/3904914/1a5bb0a17deab2755bf9f579048e93a9

Ben,

If your goal is to replace every single phone number online with the tracking number, that's fine.  In my experience it is almost impossible to keep the old phone number from re-populating since it's published in offline sources (like the phone book).

What I was recommending would be good if you wanted to isolate/track JUST the calls from GMB.

I've never tried it for Bing so I'm not 100% sure.  I would not suggest doing this on Yelp.

Hey Ben,

There is a secret to doing this that won't mess up your NAP consistency or ranking.  What you need to do is move the "real" phone number to the secondary phone line inside Google My Business and then use the tracking number in the main phone number slot.

Whatever you do, don't use the tracking numbers on any other 3rd party citations.

Use this tool in an incognito tab: https://www.brightlocal.com/local-search-results-checker/

To get the most accurate results you need to search from a zip code, not a city name.

I've honestly always found it to be extremely accurate and is almost always the same thing the person I'm talking to is seeing.

I definitely would not put these in the footer.  Marie Haynes has a very good article on footer links that I normally reference: https://www.mariehaynes.com/footer-links-and-penalties/

Like Roman said, links in the footer don't offer much value anyway and put the site at risk for looking low-quality.

In order to provide advice, I'd need to know the website and the search term you're looking at.  Can you provide those?

I definitely would not put these in the footer.  Marie Haynes has a very good article on footer links that I normally reference: https://www.mariehaynes.com/footer-links-and-penalties/

Like Roman said, links in the footer don't offer much value anyway and put the site at risk for looking low-quality.

Do you have screenshots from before you started seeing the drop?  It's possible you have an influx of competitors now that Google has loosened the filter.  This happened on August 22 so it fits the timeline you're describing.

Here is my write-up about it: http://searchengineland.com/august-22-2017-hawk-google-local-algorithm-update-282269

I just wanted to clarify, what do you mean by main page? Are you talking about the homepage of the site?

Using anything other than the correct physical address will most likely cause driving directions on Google Maps to not function properly.  Also, I've seen cases where ranking was negatively impacted if Google is unclear about your location.  I'd strongly advise against doing this.

I agree with Miriam on point #2 because by 301'ing the domains you'll also get the benefit from all their links.

In the past I have asked Google My Business to mark the old listings as "moved" to the new one.  This will cause people searching for the old brand to see the new one.  In order to accomplish this, you'll need to make sure the Google My Business listings are not verified.  If the previous owners have them claimed in their account, you'll first need to get access to the listing so you can unverify them.

For more details, check out the article that just published this morning: https://moz.com/blog/duplicate-gmb-listings

Unfortunately like Miriam stated your business won't be eligible for a local listing anymore but since the office did exist there at some point, Google won't remove it and they will apply the "permanently closed" label to it. I'll check in with Google to see if there is anything else that can be done and let you know. This isn't the first time I've run into a scenario like this.

He should have a business license and should be ready to answer questions about his business to help prove he's an actual company.  The platform actually uses AdWords Express, not AdWords (unfortunately).

Oh, well in that case then I think you should be fine provided they don't overlap.  I copied a list of descriptions for the categories before MapMaker shut down so you can check this out if you are trying to figure out which one should go where.  You can see them here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_4yjYPVk0BFcaWHxUsmbObw8epJm-cXx-ZQstCE_byg/edit?usp=sharing

Each department would have its own listing on Google Maps if you set them up individually. There isn't a way to link them unless one is inside the other.

I would only suggest bothering with a G+ brand page for the entire company if you guys have a large customer base on G+ that would enable your posts to get +1s, shares, comments etc.

Hey Nathan,

Sorry this took so long. Our backlog is pretty long but Google got back to me yesterday to let me know they removed the listing all together

I haven't seen an article recently that addresses this but can say with great confidence that organic ranking has been one of the biggest determiners of who gets filtered or not filtered in the 3-pack ever since the Possum update.  In the dozens of cases I've analyzed, usually the listing that wins is the one that has the highest organic ranking.