Comments on: Google Maps: How to Remove Duplicate Records in the Local Business Center

By: Local Search Complexity = SMB Frustration

Local Search Complexity = SMB Frustration — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:27:18 +0000

[...] If there are listings that are showing information you don’t want to appear, or duplicates that you’d like to consolidate, somewhat counterintuitively you’ll want to claim all of them (at least at Google) and attempt to merge them as described here. [...]

By: Pavlicko

Pavlicko — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:03:10 +0000

I had to deal with this about 4 months back – my client had 8 different listings on google maps for his company. (he bought out 4 or 5 competitors in neighboring cities and modified their maps listing info a year or so ago before they moved out of their office. He kept their phone numbers also)

Long story short, we wound up deleting 6 of them, leaving 1 for his main office and 1 for an office in another county. It comes down to 2 things – verification of your address through outside data providers, like InfoUSA, etc. and proper categorization of services. Of course if all your competitors are on there already, there might be a little tweaking here and there to push yourself into the spot.

He now appears for his 3 BIG keyword search queries – and gets around 100 visits per week from just that maps listing during his peak months.

By: aimClear’s 2009 Daily Training Link Library » aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:34:26 +0000

[...] Google Maps: How to Remove Duplicate Records in the Local Business Center, Mike Blumenthal [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:23:27 +0000

It is likely that time for records to go live Maps are based on Google’s industry specific trust and independent verification by them of business name, address, phone & URL. The lower the trust and the less the verifiable info the slower it is to show.

If in the end, the listings do not pass trust muster, they don’t show. This process likely occurs at multiple levels of the LBC, Maps, Main search with the main search results requiring the highest level of confidence.

By: gary lewis

gary lewis — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:07:38 +0000

Just out of interest I have listed 4 different businesses for my customers one for cars, holidays, dating and coach travel and not one of them appears in google. It used to appear straight away I can see it in my local center when you click look at my listing but when I do a search for the business name or categorisation etc it is nowhere to be found. This has only started happening in past couple of weeks and not sure what the problem is. Anyone else getting this? Or could they do this to certain IP addresses etc?

By: Clive

Clive — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:14:42 +0000

Great post as this can potentially be a disaster for local companies.

This reinforces how important it is to take control of your Internet presence – not just on Google but everywhere. Google Alert is a good way of keeping track when you have it cleaned up. Set up alerts for your address, telephone and company name.

Thanks

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:22:40 +0000

@Sarah
Sure. The only problem with suspending is that you loose any citations or reviews associated with the business.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:42:10 +0000

Hi,

I wondered if it would be OK to suspend a listing that includes an old address of a business. Thoughts?

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:30:48 +0000

Travis

Use the above search function and search for “Whitelist”.

By: Travis

Travis — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:26:06 +0000

Hey I appreciate the help. I figured it wouldn’t be super easy, but that seems much more consistent for our purposes.

Can you provide the links for these tools? I think I found the comm edits you mentioned but I am having trouble finding the “Whitelisting” program.

Thanks again for the help!