Google Local Ranking Phone Number Tip
It’s always a good thing to be a the top of the search engine result pages and for local brick and mortar businesses that means showing up in the search engines’ map sections. Just like their regular search result placements search engines have algorithms for their local / map results. One of these is your phone number. All things being equal it is better to have a local number for showing up in these results, but what you really don’t want to do is have a shared number. Many of our clients are small businesses that share space with other small businesses. For example, several massage therapists might share the same office building, front desk staff and phone number. While this can be a great way to save costs, it can be a killer for local rankings.
We’ve certainly seen situations where until business B got a different phone number than business A they couldn’t rank well. Once they got their own number the situation completely changed. So, if you’ve set up your local listing and can’t figure out why you’re not showing up and you have a shared number it’s time to make a change.