Virtual office for Google reasons

[Frimley111R]

Do any of you have a virtual office so that it looks better when Google shows it? Two of us started a business this year which is going well and next year there will be some 'proper' growth and I will build us an improved website in place of the budget one we started with (its fine but a little basic).

However we both work from home on this so we don't have anything very impressive to show when Google puts up a photo of our location and our houses are not very commercial. All we need is an address really and possibly, going forward some mail receiving/forwarding.

[jammy-git]

Can you use your accountants address?

I use my coworking office, but have worked for a previous company out of a Regus building. I think 80% of building will know if it's your own office or a shared/virtual office when they Google the address and a million different businesses are returned in the results.

[akirk]

Depends on your type of business:
- client doesn't care where you are based - don't bother
- client does care, a photo is enough to reassure them - look at options
- client does care / when they turn up to see you and they don't have to walk across a plaza / past the fountain and be greeted by your uniformed doorman - will that affect their relationship with you?

We have found that our clients like the fact that we don't spend large overheads on posh buildings - as long as we can still make them a decent cup of coffee and provide good biscuits, life is fine - but then I do also have clients who turn up in wellies and mud, just off their tractor - as well as city firms etc.!

[rival38]

I thought one of the benefits of having a `virtual office` or multiple ones, was that you could `trick` google into displaying your listing as being local to the search inquiry and hence climbing the displayed rankings on that basis.

Is that not the case?

[Craikeybaby]

I'd be interested in knowing how I could set up my business so that my house is not shown as the location on Google. However, it would still need to be in the same town.

[Newstuart]

I use my accountants address for co registration, correspondence address and invoice address, they just forward post on to me.

That being said I visit my clients they don’t typically visit me.

[DSLiverpool]

Yes we do it, we have a meeting room mail drop hot desk at Jordan st but the main office is birkenhead. Just looking at a Manchester hot desk after Xmas.

[CardinalBlue]

I work in SEO for a large digital agency so will hopefully be able to answer some questions.

jammy-git said:

Can you use your accountants address?

I use my coworking office, but have worked for a previous company out of a Regus building. I think 80% of building will know if it's your own office or a shared/virtual office when they Google the address and a million different businesses are returned in the results.

Realistically yes, this is pretty common so you'd be unlucky to be unsuccessful. However, in order to give full transparency - too many of the same type of business sharing a business could potentially be an issue.
https://searchengineland.com/august-22-2017-hawk-g...

Craikeybaby said:

I'd be interested in knowing how I could set up my business so that my house is not shown as the location on Google. However, it would still need to be in the same town.

It depends what business you have, but you can set-up what is known as a service area business. This will show the area that you cover, but not your specific location. More details here - https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038163...

rival38 said:

I thought one of the benefits of having a `virtual office` or multiple ones, was that you could `trick` google into displaying your listing as being local to the search inquiry and hence climbing the displayed rankings on that basis.

Is that not the case?

In theory yes. As long as there is a physical address that Google will send a post card to with an authentication code, then you can claim multiple listings - even real or virtual offices. However, I worked on a large scale local campaign with hundreds of locations operating a franchise model - some of whom worked from home or shared offices. Some of the locations were not given verified status as Google street view suggested that they weren't business premises, but homes. But, this was at most 10% of the total number of locations we saw, but it does happen. Lots of digital and PR agencies claim to have London offices, but don't and I've never known it to be an issue.