The address you use for your business on Google Places is such a big deal
that Google has just changed how home based and service businesses can use their address.

Let me set the stage.  There are many ways to try and game or spam Google Places.
Google seems to be on to many of these, but they also seem powerless to stop some.
The address spam was and is one of those issues.

If you are a service provider like an independent marketing consultant or have a home
business, you don’t really care if anyone knows your business location.
It is likely that you do most of your business by phone, internet, in the client’s
place of business, or at Starbucks. In addition, your service area is not the traditional
5 mile radius around your location that most retailers and professionals who see clients
in their place of business accept as their natural trading area.  In a major metropolitan area,
your territory might be a 50 mile radius or even more.

So, if I list my real address and Google Places only gives me credibility for a five
mile radius, I’m not going to get much benefit.  Moreover, my address might be in a
tiny city or a city not known for commercial enterprise, or a poor neighborhood, and
you are only blocks away from a much “better” city.  Google will possibly give you
great positioning for your real city and you won’t even be found on the city map a
few block away.  This is an issue for retailers and professionals as well as
consultants and service providers who don’t expect clients to come to them.

The result of these issues was to see some business owners making up addresses,
using UPS addresses for surrounding cities and setting up multiple “locations”  in
order to broaden their territory, and getting friends to let them use their address
in an important nearby city.

The problem persists, but Google Places has created one fix.  You can now choose
whether or not you even want to have your physical address showing, and you can
choose your geographic territory if you don’t want customers to come to you.  The
maximum size of the territory is 99km (about 60 miles.)

This change is so new that I have not yet seen reports as to whether such service
businesses are seeing their company pop up in good position on Google Places Maps in
cities 60 miles away.  But the idea make sense.  We’ll see about the execution.

For the retailer who is stuck with one local address, I recommend adding cities
anywhere on the listing they can do so.  So if you are Joe’s Bicycle Shop, an option would be
to name yourself, Joe’s Topeka Bicycle Shop. Change your name to include the city you
care about, even if you aren’t physically in that city.  Add cities served in your
description or the added attributes at the end of the listings.

I will be interested to hear of other strategies that might work for static
addresses.

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