Google Places updated their quality guidelines again, and separate listings are now allowed at the same address for specific situations. This change was specifically introduced to accommodate separate practitioners who share the space with other professionals and for departments contained within a larger organization or a workplace.
For example: if you work at the University of Michigan in the Computer Science Department, your department can now have its own Google local business listing. Another great example would be if you work as a dentist in a building. You can now create a single listing for yourself as long as you are in the office during the hours specified.
We would also like to inform you that your listing could violate the guidelines if you are NOT “directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours.” This means if a Google representative ever calls to check or they find that you’ve listed yourself at two different locations then you could lose your listing completely.
Here’s a quote from Google Places Quality Guidelines:
“Individual practitioners may be listed individually as long as those practitioners are public-facing within their parent organization. Common examples of such practitioners are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and real estate agents. The practitioner should be directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours. A practitioner should not have multiple listings to cover all of his or her specializations.
Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.”
We will as always closely watch the advances of these Guidelines and keep you updated if needed in our upcoming newsletters.