This is not my idea, it’s Google’s own advice. No joke. According to Chris Silver Smith’s post on Search Engine Land Google Earth VP Michael Jones, when asked how small businesses that did not wish to display their home address could get on Google Local, “suggested that those businesses could rent a post box”.

Now while this may seem like a good idea for the small business owner, it’s also giving license to every spammer out there. More about that later on.

What Google Local is saying is that a company cannot get listed on Google Local without an address and that the address they register with will be displayed online for the world to see. So, unlike some online yellow pages where you can “opt out” of having your address displayed, Google Local will not give you this option. Instead they suggest that you simply rent one. Why not save yourself the money and use your neighbours? Or your aunt’s? All you have to do is make sure you have access to the mail so you can pick up the card from Google with your Google Local pin on it to verify your listing.

Now while it seems a bit of a round about way for small businesses working from home to get listed without disclosing their private address to the universe, I can see a lot of them taking Google up on the offer because, after all, a Google Local listing is very important, especially when you don’t have a large or very well optimised website. You NEED the Google Local listing if you want to be visible online.

But before you rush out to the nearest PO Box or virtual office provider to register an address, take a moment to think about how people will search for a business like yours. If you only serve your neighbourhood or local village then you will want to register a very, very local address. If, however, you serve the larger area you need to try to find one that is at the heart of that area.

Do the exact search you want to show up for on Google (i.e. “interior decorator santa cruz” or “plumber london”) and note the Google Local results. The one at the top will likely be located (or will have been clever enough to rent a mail box located) in what Google considers to be the epicentre of that town/city/county/state. Google makes up its own “dead centre” rules so forget about what the centre actually is and work with what Google tells you it thinks it is.

By the way, the old Yellow Page scheme of registering AAAPlumbers or 1st Action Pest Control is fine on Google Local. They don’t do a check with Companies House or the US equivalent. As long as you get the pin and type it in to verify the listing they’ll let it through. So you can make up both your address and your company name - isn’t that fun!

Which brings me to the problem of Google telling people to just rent a mail box. What if you don’t have a company? What if you don’t really offer any services or products? What if you’re just one of the many spammy websites out there full of Adsense ads taking up the bulk of the search engine results pages? We all thought Google Local would help to reduce these. Think again.

Google has now actually given companies permission to use a rented address instead of their actual address. And Google doesn’t do any sort of checking other than the pin. This means that they are also in effect allowing you to make up a company name. So Google Local is in fact allowing anyone to make up a company and list it on Google Local.

Expect to see a lot of affiliates and Adsense sites in the Google Local listings, there are already some in there. But now that the Google Local “10 Pack” is eating up so much prime real estate it’s just going to get worse.