Thanks for flagging this one. This is a tricky case due to the fact that there are two hotels with similar names in the same building, which is quite rare. We don’t have a great answer for that
situation right now, but we’ll look for ways to cases like this better in the future.

Thanks,
Jen (aka Maps Guide Jen)

see these reports:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2008/02/21/google-maps-more-reports-of-merged-listings/

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2008/02/20/google-maps-conflated-records/

Mike

Jonah, a pleasure to finally see you here . I’ll look at what we can do to update the address.

As to branding, Kyle you have a great point. I don’t know what control I have on that, frankly, but I’ll bring it up with the hotel’s folks. Also appreciate the point about different suite/box numbers.

I am at a loss for good specific SEO advice on this problem, but I’ll still see if I can help out. The problem you outline is because there is little visible difference between the hotel & hostel by the SEs. This is where I think you should focus, and may be more of a branding push than anything else.

First, I would suggest creating 2 physical “addresses” for the different businesses. I assume that both of them receive mail separately, or if they don’t, they should. They may have the same street address, but consider recommending different suite #’s, box #’s, or some other differentiating feature. You can do this and still keep the same front office, as far as I know.

Also, I would rebrand both of the titles between the hostel & hotel. The best example I can think of for this is what Courtney Tuttle has done on his blog (http://www.courtneytuttle.com). By branding his site as “Court’s Internet Marketing School,” he has been ranked highly for the term “Internet Marketing” for a long time. Right now the s of the 2 hotel sites are too similar. Create a marked difference between how the 2 locations are branded, and the anchor text leading to each site will change in the future.

Off the top of my head, that is all I can think of for now. I’ll mull over this for a while and get back to you if I can think of anything more.

My evidence shows that Google has been working very hard to integrate physical addresses and proximity into results and having two names with identical addresses is a pretty clear signal to them that it is the same business.

I suggest you claim a Google Local Business listing for the hotel using a unique address, something like 901A, rue Sherbrooke E.

Assuming the Canadian Post Office will deliver to the address and you verify it, you will at least get into Universal maps.