Thanks for the plug, Mike. Hopefully I got things mostly right 🙂

It was awesome. I could not have done better myself 🙂

Great job….but it still doesnt explain why after a business owner creates his own listing and Google later creates another unverified listing that steals all the link juice from the user created listing, what to do. (e.g., there was no unverified listing to claim when the user generated listing was created to begin with)

For example, if you do community edits to correct the incorrect name spelling, address and number of the Google created (unverified), listing, it does not merge after three (3) weeks, and if the unverified listing created by Google uses a wrong floor number or address, or zip code, the business owner will never get the postcard.

Phone verification won’t work because Google returns this message: “Google is now calling your business phone to give you a PIN.
Please enter the pin against your listing in the dashboard to verify your listing.”

Google does not call to give you a pin. Normally they mail a postcard, but obviously when the data they provided in the unverified listing is bad, you never get that postcard.

So again, this is not a situation where the business owner is guilty of spamming and phone verification feature is turned off. On the contrary, it is a situation where phone verification does work, but the message in the LBC is utter non sense.

Next there is the issue of claiming an unverified listing stealing all the link juice from a live listing that is already ranking in the ten packs (but lower than it would be if it was benefiting from the stolen link juice from USA Info for example) and then getting banned for multiple listings for the same business (e.g., the claimed unverified listing and the user created listing that actually ranks.)

These are issues that go unaddressed by Mike, Jen and anyone else, and are very important, not just to me, but for anyone trying to negotiate the mine field that can be Maps.

I realize that I may be the wrong person to bring this up, as my business had been banned once when the Maps Spam rules were even more vague and ambiguous than they are now (i.e, I may be deemed a Leper).

But I remind everyone that I was eventually pardoned, have had numerous discussions with Westgate and Maslan, and was eventually allowed back into Maps. I have been in compliance with the still very vague rules ever since, and have even gone so far as to provide DBA info to G to prove compliance.