Comments on: Having Issues with Your G+Local Social Merge? My Advice: Don’t

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 21:24:01 +0000

Well, I had a client with 2 brick and mortar locations, the 1st merged nicely with no issues. The 2nd location merger has been quite a nightmare. We fell under this case:

“Help! My social local Google+ page (that I made in the local business/place category) has been verified but doesn’t seem to have merged with the correct reviews.

Submit these pages to be merged as duplicates here, selecting, “There is a duplicate listing that I would like to have removed.”
”

As we had the google + local page verified along with a verified google business listing for the same location. After multiple attempts to contact google and get this corrected, I finally followed the above advice and quoted the instructions from the ‘googler’.

I am excited to report that quoting one of their own in a response seemed to do the trick as the 2nd location (https://plus.google.com/111165657543633317645/about?hl=en) has now been merged successfully.

Note that I actually had to quote the information above to the responder from Google to my inquiry who initially just said that each listing was a separate product and nothing could be done.

Appreciate the heads up and am glad to be ‘post-merge’, at least as of today.

By: Denise

Denise — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:13:32 +0000

I merged months ago. I don’t think I have any duplicate listings anymore and other than some recent reviews not showing up, I thought my business page on Google+ was in pretty good shape. Until recently, I was coming up first in the 7 pack when I did a search for “dog boarding+my city.” When I checked it tonight, I don’t even come up as one of the choices that have a designated letter on the map. There is a dot on the map that will show my business name and info if I hover over it, but I don’t understand how I am not coming up in the 7 pack, first page or any for that matter, as I am the only business offering dog boarding in my area. Any idea what could’ve happened and what I can do to resolve this? Thanks!

By: Ryan Corcoran

Ryan Corcoran — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:59:53 +0000

Mike,
Just like Kelly above I also have merged a few of my clients pages before reading this article. These are “brick and mortar” businesses with no duplicates or merging issues. In a few instances the business listing disappeared from the first page of the search. The business was coming up in the 7 pack on page 1 and now after the merge, my client cannot be found anywhere in the first 30 pages. The clients listing is still there if you do a specific search for the business name. Has this happened to anyone else? What would you suggest to try to bring it back?

Thank you!
Ryan

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 13:49:08 +0000

@Kelly
My position has and is the same. For most businesses the merge is not quite ready for prime time and we don’t fully know Google’s direction.

If you are a Bricks and Mortar single location operation and have a need for a social presence and there are no dupes or merging issues with your listing then it makes sense to upgrade. For all others I would suggest waiting.

By: Kelly Larson

Kelly Larson — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 13:43:56 +0000

I have updated several of my dental clients to G+…before reading this post. I don’t see any problems so far. Is there danger or doing so, or just the chance that the road could be bumpy? Do you have an update to offer on your stance?

Thanks!
Kelly

By: Andrew Forster

Andrew Forster — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 05:09:56 +0000

Hey Mike,

As per my comment on November 29th, here’s the blog post I wrote up about the Google Places / Plus / Map Maker conversation Nyagoslav and I had.

I tried to ask a variety of questions (with links to sources) in order to help us all better understand our current predicament in the Google Local sphere:

http://www.adster.ca/blog/google-plus-local-optimization-tips-for-google-places-google-plus-map-maker-more

Thanks,

By: Desiree

Desiree — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 17:10:55 +0000

My business listing has been stuck in Pending Verification for over 4 weeks now. This is a new business listing, and for whatever reason, it did not publish automatically. I received the code and after submitting it, received the “verification pending” status.

Google gave me no choice but to publish it as a Google + Page, which is also aggravating, because now when my clients go to post a review on me, they must also join Google+ to post a review. So a simple review request to my clients turns into an hour long project for them. This is truly backwards customer service!

I’m in pending status still, but if I type in my business phone number, I can pull it up on Google Places. You can’t find it by typing in my business name or by typing in type of business, local city search. It basically is non-existent. So I don’t come up in any search results.

When I thought I had been published, I sent a link to a client who did submit a review for me. However, the review does not show up, so that is my indication that this is not working on any level.

What do you recommend?

Failing fast in Phoenix

By: Andrew Forster

Andrew Forster — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 03:31:59 +0000

What about in circumstances where a customer or client who doesn’t have a Google Places page (claimed or unclaimed) creates their business listing through the new platform of Google Plus found here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/pages/create (you need to be logged in)

I did this for a client of ours, as this is supposed to be the new way to create a business. You select whether you’re a local business, product or brand, company or organization etc. and then do a search by phone number to see if they have any records. However, after doing this AND VERIFYING the business through the new platform – when logging into the clients master Places dashboard, the new business that was created isn’t listed in the dashboad – therefore no edits can be made to categories etc. Has anyone else noticed this? Me an Nyagolsav were quite stumped …

By: Andrew Forster

Andrew Forster — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 02:20:37 +0000

Funny timing of this post. I just had a 2 hour conversation with Nyagoslav about whether or not, and what kind of updates to do via Map Maker, Google Places Dashboard and the new Google+ Local Platform. I’ll maybe post a link to my blog post containing our conversation transcription here when it’s uploaded if that’s ok?

By: Jo Shaer

Jo Shaer — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:53:24 +0000

This from Google when I tried to get into the new Google+ page that they had set up for me after I had a ‘location not supported error’ and agreed not to display my address. I found that I couldn’t make any status updates:

Thanks for contacting us about your Social Local Google+ page. It looks like your listing is a mobile service and should have service areas instead of listing an exact address. Unfortunately, we’re not ready to support service area businesses yet. You will need to continue to manage your listing through Google Places where service area business are still supported.