Wednesday, July 7, 2021
Customers are often looking for ways to contact businesses, and Google works to show the best available information to help them in a variety of ways whenever we can. You can help us with this by following several best practices that help ensure we're showing the most accurate information for your business or service.
In turn, following these best practices helps ensure that people are directly contacting a business, rather than reaching a third-party claiming to have an authorized relationship that can't be verified. It also helps Google direct people to correct support mechanisms, such as listing a company's support telephone number rather than a general switchboard number.
Add a contact or support page to your website
Be sure to provide a contact or support page that can be easily located by both visitors and Googlebot. For example, for visitors, it might be useful to provide a link to your contact page at the bottom of your home page, or from within an easily found menu option. Googlebot can usually find the page when it crawls and indexes your site. In addition, you can also include your contact page in your sitemap.
List all support methods
Be comprehensive and indicate on a support or contact page all the ways that you provide support, such as email, chat, social media, telephone, or other methods. Describe the information in the best way for your audience.
Consider offering a phone number with recorded support information
If you don't offer phone support, consider having a phone number that provides recorded information about the other support options you do offer. This helps Google have an official number to show for people who assume there is one and may help prevent third-party numbers that might suggest they offer official support from appearing instead.
Make it clear who is authorized to provide support
If you work with authorized third parties to offer support, consider listing these on your support page. That helps reassure your customers that the support is legitimate. If you don't work with third parties, also make that clear. This will help your customers know not to believe others making such claims.
Featured snippets and using nosnippet
If you've created a good support or contact page, that's the best way to increase the chances
that helpful information will appear within featured
snippets. While we try to show the most relevant material in featured snippets, like
anything, they're not always perfect. If there's support-related information on your website
that you'd prefer not appear in a featured snippet, use the data-nosnippet tag
to prevent information from displaying.
Set up a Google Business profile
If you're a local business, be sure to create a Google Business Profile and make edits to ensure it profiles the best information. Also consider making use of structured data for local businesses.
If you have any questions, you can reach out on the Google Search Central Community or on Twitter.