Google My Business Enterprise Audit

Brian Walsh

Google Business Profile

Google My Business

SEO Specialist

Google Apps

Google Drive

Enterprise Google My Business Set-Up

During my time at City Experiences/Hornblower/ Entertainment Cruises (there were a lot of acquisitions during my time!), I worked to set-up and organize the organization's Google My Business Profiles which supported customer satisfaction and off-page SEO efforts for our local teams.

Company Profile

During my time at the company, the main offering was scenic dining cruises on iconic bodies of water. Over my three-year tenure, the offerings expanded into Canada, the UK, and Europe with other experiences as well, including national parks contracts.

Phase 1

Initially, the company (Entertainment Cruises) in 2019 only had locations in the in the continental US:

Baltimore

Boston

Chicago

New York/New Jersey

Norfolk

Philadelphia

Washington, DC

Potomac Water Taxi

Alexandria

National Harbor

For each of these cities, each boat/brand had a different Google Business Profile that was upheld locally, so they were missing consistency. Most of the vessels were also docked at the same "address" so they were being labeled as duplicates, confusing customers, and causing some listings to be removed as fakes.

During this phase, my focus was on ensuring that each vessel's listing on Google My Business was validated, had updated information from the local sales and marketing teams, and removing duplicate listings that former employees or competitors created.

Phase 2

When Hornblower Cruises acquired Entertainment Cruises, my role expanded to cover more locations, adding California and some Canada dining cruise locations to my remit:

Berkeley

Gananonque (1,000 Islands Canada)

Long Beach

Marina Del Ray

Newport Beach

San Diego

San Francisco

Toronto (Formerly Mariposa Cruises)

This also added a few additional lines of business that were interesting:

National Parks Services

Alcatraz City Cruises

Niagara City Cruises (Niagra Falls)

Statue City Cruises (Statue of Liberty)

Boston Harbor Cruises

Whale Watching

Provincetown

Cape Cod

Ferry

Hingham

Charlestown

Hull

Logan

Salem

This is the time that we realized that none of these locations were consistent with each other. I worked with the social media team, who oversaw our Yelp profiles to find consistency and consolidate the listings from vessel-based to ticketing-booth-based.

The Work

Reclaim any suspended/flagged listings

I coordinated with local teams to secure photographs of the physical locations, telephone confirmations, and postcard confirmations

Contacted Google My Business via phone (number now defunct) and email to submit claims against duplicate/false listings, and provide our proof of validation.

Facilitated communications between Google and our local teams to

Reinstate our falsely de-activated listings

Verify ownership of listings that we were locked out of from former employees

Establish new, correct listings

Consolidate listings from vessels to the location-based approach

Impact

This change allowed us to provide multiple experiences to customers from a single listing and let us use a single brick-and-mortar location for verification to remove the chances of the listing being flagged as fraudulent or duplicated.

The naming convention also influenced and aligned to how the website taxonomy was approached, with a focus by brand--> sub-brand -->city-->port/dock/ticketing booth which was much clearer for users to understand pre-purchase and when looking up directions to their experience.