Can a local listing hurt my global visibility?

[perrywinkles]

I have a business that I run both locally, selling from a physical location in my city(Toronto), and internationally, selling online. The bulk of my business comes from the U.S. and I want to penetrate this market more. I submitted a local listing at the Google Local Business Centre recently with the hopes that this will improve my visibility, if only locally.

I've had a nagging feeling recently that maybe this could hurt my global visibility and therefore hurt my business by driving less traffic from the U.S. and other Canadian cities to my site.

Will Google and other SE's use information from the local directories to rank you less favourably if someone is searching for your products from across the continent? If so, I should probably remove my local listing. Or (in G's case) would they only do this if you set geo targeting in G's Webmaster Tools?

I'm talking about the case when someone from, say, Seattle searches for 'widgets' not for 'widgets in seattle'. I would understand if my site didn't come up in the latter search but want to make sure that I'm not hurting my chances in the first search.

Thanks!

[Duncan Pollock]

Only Google can tell you, but I'd be surprised if a local listing has any adverse effect PROVIDED, of course, that you aren't coming up with a duplicate site but have simply registered an addition to Google's local listings.
Case in point: I have a .com site that appears well for most of its search words/phrases, but I have also registered it locally with Google and it hasn't harmed my web presence at all, at least as far as I'm able to see.
All that's happening is that my site now appears twice in the SERPs when someone punches in a search phrase that includes my specific locality. One listing is what I usually see. The other is a locality map that shows (with what you can call flags) the different addresses (and business names) of my competitors and myself in the area. Thus, my overall web presence is increased/enhanced rather than being less than it was.

Duncan

[francis84]

Originally Posted by perrywinkles

I have a business that I run both locally, selling from a physical location in my city(Toronto), and internationally, selling online. The bulk of my business comes from the U.S. and I want to penetrate this market more. I submitted a local listing at the Google Local Business Centre recently with the hopes that this will improve my visibility, if only locally.

I've had a nagging feeling recently that maybe this could hurt my global visibility and therefore hurt my business by driving less traffic from the U.S. and other Canadian cities to my site.

Will Google and other SE's use information from the local directories to rank you less favourably if someone is searching for your products from across the continent? If so, I should probably remove my local listing. Or (in G's case) would they only do this if you set geo targeting in G's Webmaster Tools?

I'm talking about the case when someone from, say, Seattle searches for 'widgets' not for 'widgets in seattle'. I would understand if my site didn't come up in the latter search but want to make sure that I'm not hurting my chances in the first search.

Thanks!

I dont see any negative effect on being listed locally. It will not hurt / affect you global visibility.

[ctabuk]

Absolutely right - in fact you are doing exactly the correct thing - and keep doing it - all relative linking assists your internal pagerank and don't forget to link out as well to related sites.

[incrediblehelp]

Right David the more long tail and local you get with your content the better you will be on the more generic stuff. Watch it unfold with all the hard work.

[perrywinkles]

Thanks for all your reassurances! I'm glad to hear I didn't mess that one up!

[Janna122003]

Originally Posted by perrywinkles

I have a business that I run both locally, selling from a physical location in my city(Toronto), and internationally, selling online. The bulk of my business comes from the U.S. and I want to penetrate this market more. I submitted a local listing at the Google Local Business Centre recently with the hopes that this will improve my visibility, if only locally.

I've had a nagging feeling recently that maybe this could hurt my global visibility and therefore hurt my business by driving less traffic from the U.S. and other Canadian cities to my site.

Will Google and other SE's use information from the local directories to rank you less favourably if someone is searching for your products from across the continent? If so, I should probably remove my local listing. Or (in G's case) would they only do this if you set geo targeting in G's Webmaster Tools?

I'm talking about the case when someone from, say, Seattle searches for 'widgets' not for 'widgets in seattle'. I would understand if my site didn't come up in the latter search but want to make sure that I'm not hurting my chances in the first search.

Thanks!

I don't think it might hurt because once you target global visibility then you also targeting the local listing.