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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Google+ Pages For Local – Known Bugs & Quirks After the G+ Local Merge

Vietnamese Giant Water Bug

The initial rollout allowing single location businesses to merge their G+Local page into the fully social G+ Page for local, while very limited, has surfaced very few bugs. The rollout which occurred on August 3rd has been smooth by Google standards for local but any time a company strives to “release early and often” there will be some.

Here is the list of known bugs, assembled with the help of the top contributors in the forum, to be on the watch out for. Most of these are non threatening but given the limited targeting of this rollout I strongly suggest that you be sure that your business is a good fit for merge. You should be a single location b & m business with both a G+ page and a Places/+Local Page, not be a service area business with hidden address and most importantly be sure that there are no duplicates or other issues with your existing listing.

Problem Description Comments
After a merge, the content on the About Us page doesn’t show at all or the content is from the description in the dashboard The entry from the G+ Page magangment area is not visible MB Note: Rich Text from the original G+ page doesn’t show after merge as it is likely that Rich Text is incompatible with other Mapping products. Google is apparently working on a solution
The content on the About us page shows HTML After rich text content has been approved/stripped for showing on the merged About us page, various HTML code shows to the public MB Note: This problem may have been solved.
Owner of Newly Merged Page Unable to respond to reviews.Reference If the Business page and the Places dashboard are claimed under different emails then the new page owner is unable to respond to reviews Googler Jade:@AutoRevo, I think that happened because your email address in Google Places for Business was different than the Google+ email address you are using now to manage your listing. This is known, probably won’t get resolved. Reposting the responses is the bes
Page in local business/place category disappearing after local verification.Reference After PIN verification “some” of the social Google+ Business Pages are returning a 404 Not Found although the Google+ Local Page will still be visible. The owner/manager can no longer see the Google+ Business Page through the Google+ Page management area Googler Jade: We’re investigating your reports that some Google+ pages in the local business/place category are deleted after going through the PIN verification process. Thanks for bringing it to our attention
500 Error when trying to verify social local Google+ page.Reference 500 Error when attempting to enter the PIN for verification TC Kaleh: Seeing reports of users getting 500 errors when attempting to verify their social local Google+ page. The team’s aware and working on it. I’ll post back on this thread with updates.
500 Error when trying to manage verified page from within Google+. Reference From within Google+ some users of verified pages are getting 500 errors when they are in the “Pages” area of their Google+ profile and click on “Switch to this page” TC Kaleh: Edit on August 17: Now I am also seeing reports of users getting 500 errors when trying to manage their verified page. Similar, but different issue — team’s looking into that one, too!
Some verified pages are not displaying the map.Reference 1, 2, 3 The lack of a Map on the merged page is a symptom of a merge gone wrong or only partially “taking”. It appears related to the fact that a duplicate listing exists in the index. It sometimes manifests itself with a missing URL and/or one of the 500 Errors MB Noted above TC Kaleh: No confirmation that they recognize this as an issueMB Note: Reporting the duplicate listing and affecting the merge will likely resolve
Only 1 or 2 Categories Display on Local Page.Reference The dropdown menu on the merged & G+ local page no long shows the additional categories. MB Note: It is not clear whether this is a bug or a feature. Given that Google has barely acknowledged and has done nothing this is likely to be the new normal. If you need to know categories of a listing visit the MapMaker record.
Some verified Pages not showing URLs This seems to occur when the merge occurs with a duplicate listing instead of the primary one MB Note: Reporting the duplicate listing affecting the merge will likely resolve

If you have any doubts here are three articles to read before your merge:

Google+ Business Pages: To Merge Or Not to Merge, That is the Question

Step by Step Guide to the Google+ Business/Local Merge Verification Process

Syncing Your Google Plus and +Local Pages: Plusses and Minuses

 

* Note: The image above is an Asian Giant Water Bug (Lethocerus indicus). Why a photo of a Giant Water Bug? Glad you asked. My daughter is studying in Viet Nam and has been trying a range of Vietnamese food. Last night she reported having tried Bánh cuon (literally “rolled cake”). This delicate roll made with  fermented rice batter occasionally also includes a drop of cà cuong, which is the essence of a giant water bugLethocerus indicus. Apparently the amount of this insect pheromone on the tip of a toothpick is enough to flavor a whole pot of soup. How cool is that?