Comments on: Basic Places Practices: How do you claim an owner-verified listing?

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 01:28:05 +0000

Valentina

Legal or not in the end it will cause significantly more problems for you. Rank does not follow the listing it follows the data for the listing and doing what you are suggesting will hose that data.

By: Valentina R

Valentina R — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 00:47:10 +0000

Is this legal? There is a company that was closed, but has a Google page and it has a #3 position. Is it legal, if I take this position and modify the business information into mine, including change of address, phone and email.

Thanks.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:19:20 +0000

@Donna B
Yes create a new listing that is identical to the old listing. Google will likely merge the two in their next purge/merge cycle but to speed it along you can report it via their “Report a Problem” link and/or the Google Help Troubleshooters.

If after they have merged there is either duplicate or unwanted photos or categories you can file another report via the same channels to have that content removed.

By: Donna B

Donna B — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:05:23 +0000

I have a client who has lost their login info for their google places page. Their listing shows up in google maps… but when I enter in the country and phone # google is telling me there is no listing. What to do then? Do I create a new listing – how do I solve the problem of duplicate listings? How do I delete the first one? Anybody out there know the answer and can tell me how to solve this? Thanks

By: Elisa A.

Elisa A. — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:37:28 +0000

There is a way to overcome the previous SEO company’s category & picture data, by reporting it as bad information via Google’s report a problem process. This takes patience and time, but eventually persistence and insistence pays off, and you gain full control over those areas. It also might be helpful for you to use a few key directory profiles to “confirm” the correct data you want the Places listing to display. Angie’s List, Yelp, Merchants Circle, and Superpages.com are a few directories where you may build your company profile with current info. It will not directly influence Places, but will provide confirmation from other authoritative sources to Google when you report the old data as out-of-date and/or not endorsed by the owner company.

By: PureSheer

PureSheer — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:52:22 +0000

@Jo

I agree with what Mike wrote, i’m suggesting not to touch the listings. BUT When competition will increase you’ll must have more good ranking factors by your side, hence i’m suggesting- try to claim one of your poorest listing to a non generic email account.

I must share that we are in such gradual process right now & we are going to reclaim all our listings (more then couple of dozens). As for now- no changes to positions.

Try & see.

Yam Regev

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:54:47 +0000

@Jo
Email at a domain is one of the many factors that Google uses when computing trust. It is always better to have more trust rather than less but sometimes it is nigh on impossible to set up an account with email at the domain. Given a choice it is the best. If your listings are doing well, I would not touch them at this point.

However claiming with the TLD is not the same instruction as claiming with email at the TLD. I do not agree that you need to claim with TLD. Would appreciate a link to that article.

By: Jo Shaer

Jo Shaer — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:32:17 +0000

Hey Mike,

I came to research this because I just read somewhere else that you should “always claim/create your Place Pages within a Google Account using your TLD…”. I didnt realise that you could set up a Google Account without using a gmail account? I thought that was all part of the Google web

Having already claimed several places pages using a regular gmail account set up for each client, is it worth me going back and trying to reclaim my listings with a new account using a TLD email address or am I just going to scum up the works since all Pages are currently performing well within their niches?

With Best Wishes
jo

By: Andrew Huskinson

Andrew Huskinson — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:39:14 +0000

Hi,

Where there is a previous Places account for a Maps index entry then once you have claimed and verified your own Places entry do Delete and Remove from appearing in Maps. This will break the link to the old Places account I believe. Once the Maps listing has been removed from searches you can make your Places entry show in Maps again.

If that does not work then after doing the Delete and Remove from Maps and its gone from searches then Delete your Places entry and re-enter. This will create a new ID for the Places entry.

Cheers. Andrew.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:34:59 +0000

Hi Nina
Flattery will get you everywhere!

Thanks. Glad both LocalU and this were useful.