Hi Steve,
Yes, this would do it. Excellent idea. I really appreciate you sharing your hands-on experience with the client with 2 locations. It sounds like you’ve made a smart adjustment with the on-site text. In a way, though, your client doesn’t quite fit the model I’m describing above because they do have at least one real location to send people to. This would definitely simplify things if all businesses did have at least one staffed brick-and-mortar address, but so many don’t.

I believe you are right that we will eventually see Google tackling this situation. It should be really interesting! Thank you so much for stopping by.
Miriam

I have a client with a “legit” physical location in one city, and a UPS pseudo-location in the city next door. They had this UPS address for some time and were using it for some shipping-receiving stuff. Come the advent of Google Maps they continue to use it as it’s original purpose and now also to help with maps rankings in another city they do operate their “go-to-client” services.

However, there have been problems. A potential client did a drive-by then complained to their sales person that there was nothing at that address. So we changed how the addresses are listed on their website. That UPS location is still there but now the text mentions it is simply a shipping-receiving location and if they need to see someone in person then please visit the main office. This helps alleviate the problems a bit.

Google is caught between a rock and a hard spot here in regards to home based business, mobile businesses, or any business without a true on the ground location. Google Maps is just that, a map. All info must inherently be tied to lat-lon coordinates that represent real locations on the ground. How then does a business without a hard location get listed? If listed without a hard location, how could it rank relative to those with hard locations? Perhaps Google needs to open up a system where business owners can set an operating area polygon, or radius, without the necessity of a real location at the center of the area. I’m sure that is eventually coming, but it would also open a new floodgate for spammers to exploit. So perhaps Goog prefers to keep things as they are now, till they get a better spam filter algorithm in place.

Miriam

I enjoyed your write up after Mike B. set the stage for this. I have been very shocked to really see the amount of horror stories that can exist for small businesses.

I feel that the main problem is that with every new feature added to local, it creates two things…

1. An opportunity for businesses to display more useful information

2. A disaster for businesses trying to display more useful information.

Before new features are rolled out I think you have got to fix the underlying issues or the problem will get deeper and deeper. It’s like putting a lift-kit on a truck with flat tires and trying to climb a mountain…it doesn’t solve the problem.

So, leave maps alone for a while and roll out a support system, focusing on end-user interface and a quick turn around on complaints, duplicate listings, spam, and verification issues, and I think that the rate of increased users will climb dramatically.

It’s lovely to see you here. I’d love to see an example or two you’ve seen of Google using UPS boxes if you have any handy. I haven’t gotten to look closely at any listings like that and I’d really like to.

Thank you for coming by, and happy beginning of fall to you!
Miriam

I was interested to note that Google will accept a UPS box address as a legit address, so perhaps some local businesses can do that instead of getting a PO box.