I noticed today on a site that I managed that there are a few discrepancies in the addresses that Google Local / Google Maps is showing. Initially, it showed an old address that was the personal address for the person who had registered it years ago. The site had relatively little search engine presence so it really wasn’t an issue. When I came along, one of the first things I did was to update this info in Google Local so that the correct business address would come up rather than the owners address.

A few weeks ago I was alerted that the listing was showing the owners home address which was alarming to her. I found this odd because I had confirmed the change AND seen it live in Google. I was curious to know how it had reverted, so I did some searching and found some other dated references to her home address (Takeaway – don’t register your domain to your home address if you don’t want it public down the road). Anyhow, I attempted to update it, but it was still showing correctly in Google Local, so I picked up the phone and called my Google Local rep using the contact info on the site. The I WOKE UP because there isn’t any contact info, so I had to use the online form which didn’t give me an option to say that there was a problem without re-routing me to the help section, which by this point I could quote.

That brings us to today where I no only still have not heard from Google, still have the owners home address coming up on the Google Local listing, AND now I see where Google is picking up random addresses from the pages. I am not at liberty to share the site due to confidentiality, but having worked in the IYP (Independent Yellow Pages) world, I thought that surely they had seen this, so I went to Metro Directories, my trusty Atlanta Local Yellow Pages and did some checking. Sure enough, here is what I found:

You will see from this sample of listings from the site a listing with an address that is not that of Metro Directories:
http://www.oldschoolseo.com/images/gmap1.pdf

And here you will see the page from the Metro Directories website where the address was extracted from:
http://www.oldschoolseo.com/images/gmap2.pdf

I am curious to know if anyone else has experienced this. And Google, what’s the deal?

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