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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Google Places: Another Reason to Move to Canada; Duplicate Listing Removal

I can think of several reasons one might want to move to Canada: they have single payer health care that every citizen receives and they usually are not using unmanned drones to shoot people in Pakistan and Yemen. I have found a third reason: the duplicate removal procedure in Google Places.

In the U.S., the current duplicate removal procedure is to use the “Report a Problem” link at the bottom of the Places page of the duplicate. It would be wonderful if it worked but the process now is to “Report a Problem”, pray aggressively, wait 8 weeks and then try again. It is an endless cycle of frustration that as often as not does not result in the removal of the dupe.

It appears though, that in Canada, where the “Report a Problem” link doesn’t exist, Google suggests that “since Report a Problem is not live in Canada, the user should go ahead and claim the listing to remove it”. Once again they can use of the “claim the dupe, strip any enhanced content, wait for the merge, delete the listing from Places” procedure.

This is a process that actually works. It is a process that many in the US have reverted to using because the “Report a Problem” link doesn’t work.

Maybe we should once again start a campaign to make Canada the 51st state. We could end up with a single payer health care AND a dupe removal process that works…